Suvielise Nurmi

This study examines philosophically the idea of relationality as a feature of moral agency and analyses the implications of adopting such an idea in ethical theories as frameworks for environmental ethics. The purpose is to fill the gap in academic philosophical discussion concerning the relationality of the operations of moral agency. In environmental philosophy, relationality is a quite widely defended idea with regard to the concepts of nature and human nature. However, as far as I know, relationality as constitutive for moral operations has not been previously scrutinised to any large extent. The main task consists of two parts. The first is to construct the idea of moral agency as ecologically relational on the basis of the parallel with the lines of thought taken in two critical stances in environmental ethics towards the mainstream modern conception of moral agency, namely evolutionary naturalism and ecofeminist constructivism. The second is to analyse the philosophical implications of this relational shift in moral naturalism and moral constructivism. Together they clarify the implications of relational moral agency for environmental ethics. The study starts by analysing the concepts of moral agency in the three distinguished strategies of environmental ethics: the modernist one, which is used as the reference line, evolutionary naturalism and ecofeminist constructivism. Both of the latter take a critical stance towards the first, but from philosophically opposing directions. This study shows that these two criticisms parallel each other and are directed towards a converging idea of ecologically relational agency. The concept of relational agency is sketched through interdisciplinary support from the natural sciences, psychological and philosophical anthropology, epistemology, and philosophy of mind and action. It is argued that a currently plausible notion of moral agency challenges the view widely presupposed by modern moral philosophy. According to the analysed sources, human mental processes, knowledge and value formation included, are extended to their environments, relationships providing knowledge, experience or even intention are mutually interactive, and even intentional activity can be a non-individual issue. Research on these features refer to environmental relationality of mental operations. Relational agency fulfils the environmentalist’s quest for a plausible notion of agency. However, to consider moral identity, as well as knowing, reasoning and acting as ecologically relational challenges common conceptions of moral autonomy and rationality. Question is raised whether this compromises the autonomy and authority of ethics. The philosophical implications of ecologically relational notion of agency are analysed in contexts of Humean naturalism, neo-Aristotelian naturalism (especially Martha Nussbaum) and neo-Kantian constructivism (especially Christine Korsgaard). Korsgaard’s theory is proposed to offer a mediating tool to reconcile relational explanation with normative authority. It is argued that the relational approach to ethics can survive the quests for moral realism, although it challenges the usual restrictions of metaethical categories and points towards a modest, relationally realist ethics.

Introduction: Acute ethical issues are increasingly linked in one way or another to the complex relationships between planetary boundaries and good life. However, the ability of modern individual- and reason-centered ethics to address systemic environmental problems, such as the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and the structures and relationships of multispecies communities with matter, is known to be quite limited. I believe that the future social relevance of Enlightenment ethics depends on its ability to better adapt to dealing with complex environmental issues. The ethical legacy of the Enlightenment is closely tied to the view of humanity that prevailed at the time of its birth, which seems to be the main source of its difficulties. For Enlightenment philosophers, the world was boundless and inexhaustible, and humans were free and almost omnipotent in relation to nature. This is reflected in the background assumptions on which ethical discourse within the modern frame of reference is based. In multidisciplinary environmental discourse, the range of tools for cultural sustainability change often includes a critical assessment of Enlightenment humanism and some form of posthumanism. However, environmental ethics faces a dilemma in relation to the Enlightenment tradition: in pursuing scientifically defined ecological sustainability through moral means, environmental ethics strives to be both scientifically credible and philosophically valid. Against this backdrop, the humanistic ethics of the Enlightenment appear both impossible and necessary. On the one hand, belief in the individual as independent of the world has rendered ethics toothless in questions concerning the material limits of life and humanity's self-destructiveness, and not without reason. The background assumptions of modern ethics, which draw on the legacy of the Enlightenment, seem to be based on the established idea that moral agency requires a kind of individual autonomy that disconnects moral agency from its material and social environment, emphasizing the freedom of the individual mind. However, in the light of current scientific research, such an assumption is implausible – humans are simply not like that. Nor does the ideal of individual autonomy in any way promote ecological sustainability. On the other hand, modern moral theories based on the tradition of enlightenment have succeeded in justifying the universal binding nature of moral demands, and this is also what environmental ethics hopes for when it calls for attention to planetary sustainability. The effort to change the world also requires the freedom of actors to choose differently, and the effort to make the world "better" presupposes the autonomy of morality. An important question in resolving the dilemma of environmental ethics is whether responsibility and normativity require a mystically isolated, non-naturalistic autonomy from the world. I argue that freedom of will should be critically evaluated without assuming that there are only two answers. I will first examine the influence of the Enlightenment tradition and its critique in environmental ethics. I will then describe the efforts of environmental ethics to improve the ethical relevance of non-human reality by examining moral agency as relational. Alongside this, I introduce enactivism, which has recently gained prominence in cognitive science and draws partly on phenomenology. In my view, enactivism sheds interesting light on the need for a relational revision of the concept of humanity, and I use it to assess the implications of the proposed conceptual shift from an environmental perspective. Finally, in light of these challenging discussions on the concept of agency, I reflect on new possibilities for the legacy of the Enlightenment in environmental ethics. (Translated with DeepL(dot)com)