Nature
This theme runs through several big questions. Here are the ones where it plays out.
The questions that illuminate it
To whom do we owe moral consideration?
Where we draw the circle, we decide whom we may use without scruple and whom we must spare: too narrow, it licenses cruelty; too wide, it makes ordinary life impossible. To take a position is to say who truly counts, and how far what we owe extends to other beings.
Do we have duties toward future generations?
Can we owe anything to beings who do not yet exist, who claim nothing, and whom our choices will bring into being as they will be? Making room for them can weigh heavily on the living; ignoring them means mortgaging a world we will never see. To take a position is to say how far our responsibility extends in time.
What place should human beings hold in nature: master, guardian, or simply one member among others?
Are we the owners of a nature to exploit, the caretakers responsible for a garden entrusted to us, or one species among others with no special right? Depending on the answer, what we allow ourselves to do to forests, animals, and the climate no longer has the same limits. To take a position is to set what nature can legitimately expect of us.
How should natural phenomena be explained: by mechanisms, by purposes, or by a vital impulse?
Depending on whether we see blind causes, ends being pursued, or a life unfolding, nature becomes a mechanism with no purpose or a world reaching toward something. Behind the method of explanation, what is decided is the presence or absence of meaning in the living world.
Are human behaviors explained primarily by nature or by culture?
If our conduct stems from our nature, it changes only with difficulty and some differences seem given in advance; if it comes from culture, almost everything could be otherwise, at the risk of denying very real constraints. To take a position is to say what, in the human being, can be transformed, and what education and politics can hope to achieve.