Facing Nature: Levinas and Environmental Thought

11. Toward a Relational Model of Anthropocentrism: A Levinasian Approach to the Ethics of Climate Change

229 ELEVEN Toward a Relational Model of Anthropocentrism A Levinasian Approach to the Ethics of Climate Change J.AaronSimmons CLIMATE CHANGE AS A METAETHICAL EMERGENCY Although there is a history of political emergency situations, examples of such emergencies in ethical theory are far less common. One possible exception to this is Michael Walzer’s notion of a “supreme emergency,” which he develops in Just and Unjust Wars. Walzer appropriates this phrase from Winston Churchill’s account of Britain’s situation in 1939. Walzer suggests that Churchill implicitly offers the following argument: “there is a fear beyond the ordinary fearfulness ...of war, and a danger to which that fear corresponds, and...this fear and danger may well require exactly those measures that the war convention bars.” According to Walzer, the requirements for supreme emergencies are “defined by two criteria,” “the first has to do with the imminence of the danger and the second with its nature.”1 These two criteria are necessary requirements; the danger must be close and serious .2 Walzer goes on to consider whether a situation that meets these two criteria might lead us to override other moral intuitions about prohibiting intentional attacks on innocent people in the course of war. The specifics of his reflections are not important to my concerns here, but the structure of his basic framework is crucial. His question 230 J. Aaron Simmons is not only one of praxis (e.g., when is it legitimate to do X or Y?) but of theory (i.e., when is it legitimate to affirm a variant conception of legitimacy?). Walzer invites us to consider the possibility of a situation in which we must revise our commitment to a particular moral theory because it fails to be adequate to the demands of the situation in which one finds oneself.3 In the context of human-caused climate change, and the ethical challenge that it presents, I contend that Walzer’s conception of an ethical emergency situation continues to be something worth considering . As I will demonstrate, some of the most prominent theoretical contenders in contemporary environmental ethics potentially fail to be able to countenance and adequately motivate a workable solution to this moral challenge. Hence, a transition in our moral theory might, then, be temporarily required in order to address this problem. In this chapter, I will argue that, for anyone who affirms that human-caused climate change (HCC) is the overriding moral concern of our time, HCC serves to inaugurate a metaethical emergency situation.4 I contend that this situation can most successfully be addressed if we pay particular attention to the unique relationship between temporality and ethics that it requires. That is, the moral considerations and particular obligations in light of HCC only exist as long as HCC continues to be something that can be affected by human action—I will term this the challenge of limited time (CLT) and suggest that it stands in the place of Walzer’s requirement of “immanent” danger. In light of this temporal concern, I contend that we should be willing to allow for the possibility that an anthropocentric approach to environmental ethics (once suitably formulated) might indeed be the most promising way forward for addressing the ethical challenges of HCC—I will term this the challenge of anthropocentric requirements (CAR). I will defend the CAR by arguing that the CLT component of HCC encourages a decidedly anthropocentric approach to environmental ethics that allows for a hierarchy of ethico-political significance. By allowing humans to be valued higher than nonhumans, we will be able to respond, perhaps a bit more adequately, to HCC. But, in light of challenges also faced by some anthropocentric conceptions, I believe that a new anthropocentric model is called for. Allowing A Relational Model of Anthropocentrism 231 for the complex network of social and temporal relationships that results from considering humans and nonhumans as part of the same “ethico-political community,”5 I will draw upon the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas and advocate a relational model of anthropocentrism (RMA). In particular, I will suggest that Levinas’s philosophy yields important ways of reconciling responsibilities to presently existing individuals with obligations to future generations and also offers an innovative notion of nonhuman value that opens important spaces for expanding the limits of our community. Namely, nonhuman others are valuable only by virtue of the existence of the ethical relation between humans, but their value...