Thomas Heyd

This paper seeks to answer the question how environmental ethics is approached in Latin America. I begin by discussing a suitable method for interpreting the question of whether there is a culturally based ethics, given that one may focus either on theory or on actually existing moral practices. Next, I consider some of the possible sources of Latin America's distinctiveness, namely its professional, cultural, and economic-historical particularities, followed by a discussion of the practice and theory of environmental ethics extant in the area. I claim that there is a concrete environmental ethics in Latin America, which can be described by the notions of community, resistance and autonomy, and suggest that this concrete ethic may be assessed both from a culture-internal and from a culture-external point of view. I close by proposing that Latin American environmental ethics may provide illuminating models for appropriate ways of acting in hybrid communities made up of human beings and nature

Nature and culture are usually treated as opposites. Nature, on this conception, is on the wane as a result of culture. A fresh analysis of the relation between these two terms in the light of the notion of “cultural landscapes” is needed. This account allows for nature to be understood as an important, distinctive category, even while granting the constitutive role of the culturally structured gaze. Culture and nature need not be conceived in opposition to each other, for it makes sense to speak of, and pursue, a culture of nature. These considerations have important consequences for natural heritage conservation.

Physical science is coming to an increasingly clear understanding of natural environmental changes, their causes and their effects on the landscape. Human beings have lived through significant climate variability in historical periods, and through repeated periods of relatively sudden climate change, as well asmultiple other drastic natural events in prehistory. In this paper I propose that we should take into account the cultural dimension when considering adaptation to drastic natural events, such as powerful storms (hurricanes), whose intensity may grow as a result of climate change. I discuss an example of a cultural pattern that offers an alternative conception of natural processes to the mainstream of Western societies, and point out how such alternative conceptions of the human‐natural relationship also imply alternative value systems. I conclude that a deeper understanding of the cultural dimension of human responses to drastic natural events may be of significant value in the development of resilience to events of the sort that characterise climate change.

In order to develop sustainable relationships with the natural environment it is necessary to focus on approaches that may yield workable models of sustainability. Here I sample a few approaches from Latin America that point toward a promising model of sustainability. I argue that these approaches share the idea that the natural environment is in very close interdependence with human beings and their communities. I also outline the beliefs and practices of certain Latin American populations which exemplify this idea, and conclude that the crucial feature for achieving sustainability is a particular type of cultural matrix.

This essay discusses ways of thinking about botanic gardens that pay close attention to their particularity as designed spaces, dependent on technique, that nonetheless purport to present (and preserve) natural entities (plants). I introduce an account of what gardens are, how botanic gardens differ from other gardens, and how this particular form of garden arose in history. After this I contrast three ways of understanding the function of botanic gardens in the present time: as sites of recreation, of conservation or of encounter with nature. Finally I develop the idea that these gardens may serve as archetypes of collaboration with nature. I conclude that, in principle, botanic gardens can model alternative, creative new ways for human beings to relate to the natural environment

: An appeal is made to the foot travels of Matsuo Basho, especially his 1689 journey to northern Japan, reflected in his Narrow Road to the Interior, as examples of wandering. It is suggested that while the travels of a poetwanderer such as Basho are notably distinct from shamanic travels in some respects, they are similar in other important ways, for example in their capacity to give perspective to our everyday experience. Based on Basho's example, three aspects of wandering are discussed that may be of aesthetic interest, and it is concluded that in the face of various technological and social developments in industrial societies that increasingly alienate us from our environment, wandering may help us to recover a sense of the depth of space, the real diversity of places, and our human lives in the larger context of nature

Éste ese! momento crucial para emprender formas de vida sustentables, por lo que resulta esencial adoptar una ética de la tierra que reconozca el valor intrínseco además del valor útil de los seres que pueblan nuestro medio ambiente natural. En este ensayo empiezo enfocando los obstáculos a que se enfrenta el desarrollo de una ética de la tierra, obstáculos que resultan ser el producto de conocimientos limitados y suposiciones equivocadas. En resolución de esas problemáticas prácticas apunto, primero, la existencia de inclinaciones naturales hacia la tierra y la vida. Además propongo que en el saber tradicional de los pueblos que han convivido mucho tiempo con sus espacios tenemos modelos de formas del conocer que nos pueden servir de modelo para llegar a desarrollar una cultura de aprecio de la tierra y de sus habitantes.

Industrial interventions in the landscape leave their imprint in a permanent way, but there remain options on how to deal with land even at that point in time. In this essay, three alternatives are considered: leaving such sites as they are, restoring them to a condition resembling their original state, or transforming them into artworks. The author focuses in particular on the third option in order to determine to what degree it is possible for artistic reclamation to redeem such blights in the landscape. the work of art is beautiful to the degree that it opposes its own order to that of reality . Herbert Marcuse, 1978, p. 64.

In view of humanity’s vast and accelerating environmental impacts on the planet in its more recent past it has been proposed to think of this period as a new geologic epoch called “the Anthropocene.” While some suppose that our present situation justifies large-scale, corrective interventions, Michel Serres has proposed “a contract with nature,” which, to the contrary, calls for a reduction in our interventions on the planet. Although there are difficulties in engaging in a contract with something lacking autonomous agency, rationality, and sentience, the idea of a natural contract does make sense. It offers a richly suggestive reconception of socio-political relationships between human society and the natural world, and has enough precedents to serve as a source of inspiration and guidance for the urgently needed transformation of our approach to the natural environment.

Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding has generally been read as primarily concerned with epistemology. In particular, it has been claimed that the Essay attempts to defeat epistemological skepticism, but fails in this enterprise because of the veiling character of Locke's ideas. By way of reexamination of the texts in question I show that epistemological skepticism is not the topic of the Essay, and that there is not sufficient reason to claim that Locke's account of knowledge leads to epistemological skepticism. I argue, moreover, that the motivating topic of the Essay is moral skepticism, and I explain the central role of ch. 8, book 2 in Locke's argumentation for the claim that we may achieve a science of morality. I conclude with an account of some of practical consequences of a science of morality, as conceived by Locke

On the face of it, the expression "nature restoration" may seem an oxymoron, for one may ask whether it makes any sense to suppose that human beings could restore that which is not human. Several writers recently have argued that, strictly speaking, this is nonsense and, furthermore, that the conceptual confusion involved may lead to ethically problematic consequences. In this essay I begin by discussing the problematic perceived in the notion of nature restoration. I proceed to consider Japanese gardens and earthworks, insofar as both types of art forms foreground the relationship of artefactuality to nature. I conclude that the counterintuitive way in which these arts engage us with nature may help us understand the manner in which nature restoration is plausible

Parece contradictorio que los seres humanos intentemos restaurar la naturaleza, ya que el término "naturaleza" parece significar la antítesis de lo creado por nosotros. En este ensayo propongo elucidar la problemática de la restauración de la naturaleza a base de la consideración de los jardines japoneses formales y de las obras de la tierra (earthworks), en cuanto que ambas formas de arte constituyen formas de aculturar la tierra de tal manera que la relación del artefacto entra en relación directa con lo natural. Mi conclusión es que estas artes pueden servir de modelo a la restauración