Environmental Ethics, Ecological Theology, and Natural Selectionby Lisa H. Sideris

Environmental Ethics, Ecological Theology, and Natural Selection by Lisa H. SiderisReview by: Frederick FerréSoundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 86, No. 3/4 (Fall/Winter 2003), pp. 469-477Published by: Penn State University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41179121 .

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Readings for St. Brevis 469

lective bliss? Why not see the flourishing of the self under capitalism as a good start, as something that will achieve greater richness and value under socialism, when individualism might no longer entail hostility among human beings? Why not, in other words, follow a Marxist such as Terry Eagleton, whose friendli- ness toward the human subject is far more marked, instead of longing for a prehistoric intimacy that we cannot even conceive of? A Singular Modernity never raises such questions; that Jameson considers them settled is all too clear. We may be waiting, like Benjamin, for the messianic time in which all will be redeemed, but Jameson gives us little in the way of instructions to help it along - only a statement of faith whose tenets, to many, look increasingly undesirable.

Thomas F. Haddox The University of Tennessee

Lisa H. Sideris Environmental Ethics, Ecological Theology, and Natural Selection New York: Columbia University Press, 2003

This book will come as a cold bath to a number of my friends in the environmental ethics industry. Sideris is tough, well-in- formed, and relentless in her critique of fluffy evasions and feel- good phrases, whatever their provenance. She has taken to heart Darwin's lesson about the painful struggle that underlies mecha- nisms of natural selection. She has done her homework on the state of current evolutionary theory (which, she concludes, has not revised Darwin significantly on this matter) . And she remains unmoved by rhetoric - secular or religious - touting "intercon- nections," "communities," or "ecological balances," as the com- fortable way out of ethical traps.

Sideris is currently on the faculty at McGill University, Mon- treal, with responsibilities both in Religious Studies and in the McGill School of Environment. In this book, which began as part



470 SOUNDINGS Haddox, Ferré, Trinale

of a doctoral dissertation in religious studies at Indiana Univer- sity, she brings both sides of her dual appointment into sizzling contact. She means the book to be explosive, I believe, and she succeeds. It will have to be noticed and carefully answered by a wide array of prominent thinkers, including Sallie McFague, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Charles Birch, John Cobb, Jürgen Moltmann, Michael Northcott, Larry Rasmussen, Peter Singer, and Tom Regan, who are weighed and variously found wanting, primarily (at bottom) for inadequate attention to the rigors of evolutionary science. Conversely, the roster of thinkers who in- spire Sideris's praise include Aldo Leopold, Baird Callicott, Mary Midgley, James Gustafson, and, above all, Holmes Rolston, III. The main difference between these two groups of thinkers is that the latter tend to pay more heed to the well-being of species, in keeping with hard-nosed evolutionary perspective, and less to the sufferings and satisfactions of individual organisms. Sideris labels the former group, in various ways, too "anthropocentric," in senses I shall explain; the latter is described as scientifically "bi- ocentric," or, in the case of Gustafson, "theocentric," with a dis- tinctly non-anthropocentric flavor.

The book is well structured. After her Introduction - which provides a useful overview of the whole volume - the author offers a chapter, "This View of Life," establishing her compe- tence in handling current evolutionary literature, describing the lines of tension and overlap between evolutionary biology and ecology (pre- and post-Darwinian), and offering a mini-introduction to environmental ethics, broadly defined as denoting "ethical arguments regarding sentient beings - both wild and nonwild animals - as well as the ethics for nonsentient nature such as 'land ethics'" (14).

The next chapter, provocatively titled "The Best of All Possible Worlds," launches her sharp attack against the ecofeminist theologians exemplified by Rosemary Radford Ruether and Sallie McFague, both of whom appeal to nature's "holism" and "inter- relatedness" as the model for establishing a "community" ethics toward the environment and other humans. Sideris demurs:

The interpretation of nature as normative for human relationships involves a much greater emphasis on themes of ecology than evolution, as I delineated these concepts in the previous chapter; often the ecological data invoked is outdated or contains misrepresenta- tions. As such, both Ruether and McFague present arguments that



Readings for St. Brevis 4 71

are incompatible with current scientific understandings and both exhibit serious shortcomings as ethics that could realistically be applied to nature. (45)

What is missing in both cases is adequate acknowledgment of "evolutionary processes involving conflict, prédation, and competition" (46). Ruether romanticizes the intimate "web" of production, consumption, and decomposition into a scenario where only man is vile. That is, only patriarchal oppression dis- turbs the feminist idyl. "Competition only appears to be competition; it is really cooperation, symbiosis, and interdependence" (51).

Similarly, McFague views nature through the metaphors of Christian love and, consequently, overlooks or suppresses the facts of prédation, competition, and cruelty on which evolution runs. Even taken modestly, as an experiment with using mental models for reorienting attitudes, "this experiment is on the whole unhelpful" (71), Sideris declares, since the models do not rise from nature as it is. Instead, they are imposed by wishful thinking (or religious hope) on a domain that is not adequately captured by them. Further, treating all "others" in nature as equally "subjects" for Christian love would create impossible di- lemmas in choosing between competing interests unless an im- plicit hierarchy of "subjecthood" is smuggled in, on which those more "like us" have more value and stronger claims. Here we see the "anthropocentrism" that haunts all who would make distinc- tions based on qualities in which humans excel.

Yet another type of "anthropocentrism" lurks, Sideris com- plains, in Michael Northcott's theological vision of the cosmos as longing to be transformed into what (for humans) would be an ideal state of "peace, harmony, and justice in the natural realm" (88). The needs of predators - if lions are really required to lie down with, and not devour, lambs - would have to be frustrated, on this view, which therefore constitutes "a human agenda imposed on nature as much as (if not more than) Ruether's efforts to understand nature through the lens of women's oppression" (88).

In the following chapter, "The Ecological Model and the Rean- imation of Nature," Sideris continues using the same sharp scythe to mow down the environmental proposals of theologians Jürgen Moltmann, John Cobb, and Charles Birch. Their posi-



472 SOUNDINGS Haddox, Ferré, Trindle

tions, she argues, are either factually mistaken about how nature works or objectionably anthropocentric, or both. Against Moltmann, she points to a grave omission in his treatment of evolution, with which he ostensibly attempts to ally his hopeful theistic worldview. His goal of linking religion and evolution is laudable, but "Moltmann has in fact tailored certain scientific statements about nature to make them fit the account of creation and redemption central to his theology" (96) . His theological fil- ter profoundly distorts his account of reality. "Despite Moltmann's express desire to bring together a theology of creation with a modern evolutionary account of nature, his theology selects only those aspects of nature that complement a belief in harmony and community" (97). As she summarizes:

Processes of evolution such as competition, prédation, and extinc- tion are virtually nonexistent in this account, aside from some vague references to suffering and struggle, which are themselves assumed to be only temporary conditions that will ultimately be banished. (102)

This leads to a deep incoherence. If everything in nature is so rosy, where did the suffering come from that needs to be re- moved or redeemed? "As we saw with ecofeminists' arguments, their descriptions of nature leave out the presence of suffering and strife, even while their ethic aims largely at the removal of it" (103).

Moltmann offers no answer, but process theology, exemplified by Cobb and Birch, has a better stance on the matter. For process thinkers, Sideris acknowledges, "discord is an inherent feature of all life" (104). Struggle, loss, and ugliness constitute, as it were, creativity's dark shadow. Unlike Moltmann, process thinkers res- olutely offer no eschatological guarantees of a happy ending. They are much more in tune with genuine evolutionary science than the others previously considered. But Sideris is not at all content with Birch and Cobb for two primary reasons. First, in an inversion of the incoherence noted in Moltmann, Birch and Cobb oddly urge an environmental ethic aimed, they say, at "lib- erating life" from suffering, even while they admit that suffering is an inherent feature of life. Here they drift away from their alli- ance with Darwin. Second, they make too much of suffering itself as a primary "evil." Their reason for doing this is their understanding of all intrinsic value as rooted in subjective experience.




If it feels good, to that extent it is intrinsically good. If it feels bad, it is intrinsically bad. All other sorts of value are merely de- rivative. This seems, to Sideris, to miss a great deal of other sorts of intrinsic value. But, worse, they also set great store by a hierarchy in the richness and intensity of subjectivity found in nature, a hierarchy that tops out (interestingly) at just the sorts of experience which are manifested exclusively, as far as we know, at peak moments in human life. Thus, Sideris concludes, process theology fails both from internal incoherence and from blatant anthropocentrism. In my view, Sideris misses something important in process thinking, but, rather than interrupt her scythe while in such full swing, I shall defer my metaphysical quibbles to the end of this review.

Her next chapter, "Darwinian Equality for All," goes in pursuit of two prominent secular philosophers who, she believes, deserve cutting down for many of the same reasons that are now familiar. Peter Singer and Tom Regan are not accused of distorting their visions of nature through the lens of theology, but still, Sideris holds that their views, respectively, are distorted by scientific error and anthropocentric bias. Singer, whose slogan is "animal liberation," asks that humans extend ethical protections to everything capable of suffering, offering special solicitude toward imprisoned organisms used by humans for laboratory experi- mentation and for food. He denounces, as "speciesist," any dis- crimination against animals just because they are not human. What we would not do to a baby, we should not do to a calf in a stall or a cat in a laboratory. But, Sideris objects, by making the ground of all value the psychological capacity for feeling pain or pleasure, Singer has entirely excluded everything but individual animals from ethical consideration. A habitat is not the sort of thing that can literally feel pain, nor, of course, is a species, in contrast to its individual members. This has two profound de- fects, Sideris says: First, by departing entirely from the Darwinian emphasis on species as far more important than individuals, Singer fails to ground his ethics on good science; and, second, by pinning all his concern on subjective flourishing, something humans consider of great importance for themselves, he (like the process theologians) has fallen willy-nilly into anthropocentric attitudes, ignoring the possibility that other values in nature might trump individual subjective satisfactions. Further, as a utili-



474 SOUNDINGS Haddox, Ferré, Trindle

tarian, Singer has made an expensive error. He has left wild animals out of his account, concentrating on captive animals. But adding in wild animals, as he must to have a genuine environmental ethic, would make a "liberation" environmental ethics ab- surd and inapplicable, since no cost-benefit calculation could weigh, must less justify, the price of intervening not just into animal husbandry and scientific laboratories, in order to remove human-caused suffering in captive animals, but also into wild nature, where natural prédation could not be stopped without un- doing the web of life itself.

Tom Regan, in contrast to Singer, is no utilitarian. Instead, Re- gan approaches ethics from a deontological perspective, arguing not from probable outcomes but from higher duty. Considera- tions of impracticability weigh little for Regan. What is right is right, though the heavens fall. And, according to Regan, every "subject of a life" has a right to equal moral consideration, whatever the consequences. Sideris notes that Regan bases his appeal for animal rights on apparently evolutionary arguments, pointing to functional similarities and kinship bonds between various branches on the evolutionary tree. But this is a pseudo-evolutionary argument, Sideris concludes, since it omits the inherent struggle, pain, and waste of individual lives that real Darwinism recognizes as fundamental in the evolutionary process. In nature, it makes no sense to claim that the prey has "rights" not to be torn to pieces and eaten by the predator. Noth- ing could be further from a Darwinian understanding of natural selection than sentimental solicitude toward the charming individual organisms on which Regan focuses. Therefore, once again, Sideris issues the verdict of bad or partial science against another environmental ethicist. And, once again, she charges that anthropocentrism lurks in the choice of criterion for attrib- uting "rights" to natural entities. This criterion is subjectivity, capacity to feel, admission into the club of psychological entities. "But what about other beings who are not conscious subjects?" she demands. "Are insects also our kin? Trees and plants?" (157). Thus, even aside from considerations of impracticality, Regan's duty ethic is profoundly flawed, if the whole environment is to be the domain of environmental ethics, since "a vast number of organisms - the majority of living things on earth - are granted no moral consideration" (159).




The remainder of her book, though divided into three chap- ters, can be taken together as Sideris's way of reaching a positive conclusion on what an environmental ethic should be like. She is in such a fighting mode, however, that even when introducing her allies, she does it by negative indirection in a chapter entitled "Philosophical and Theological Critiques of Ecological Theol- ogy." Here she goes over many of the same criticisms of the same "soft" ecological positions and people she has already attacked at length, but this time through the criticisms leveled by those with whom she agrees. They are an admirable crew, all of whom take species well-being as much more important than individual or- ganism welfare, therefore honoring the key Darwinian insight and doing justice to evolutionary science. They are led by Aldo Leopold, who names the general ethical position Sideris sup- ports, the "land ethic." They include, on the philosophical side, Baird Callicott, Mary Midgley, and Holmes Rolston, III, plus the highly "theocentric" theologian, James Gustafson, who insists that God should be conceived as caring no more tenderly for the human species than any other, and further raises doubts about any sentimental attributions of "tenderness" to the remote and impersonal Creator who bears down with equally dispassionate sovereignty on all creation. We visit again, in this chapter, the deficiencies we have seen before in the ecofeminist theologians, the process theologians, ecological theology, and Moltmann's eschatological theology.

Once the "critiques" are duly rehearsed, these same doughty champions are redeployed by Sideris as she constructs a positive position in a chapter called "A Comprehensive Naturalized Ethic" - a phrase she draws from her primary inspiration, Holmes Rolston (245) - then restates it succinctly, if somewhat redundantly, in a final "Conclusion." Hers is an intelligent and defensible position, though not quite so seamless as Sideris sug- gests. Rolston, especially the later Rolston of the Gifford Lec- tures, stands at a significant remove from the austere, uncaring "theocentrism" of Gustafson. Additionally, Rolston and Callicott have significant unresolved differences about "wilderness," the concept of "nature," and the human place in the environment. But despite its internal stress-points, Sideris's recommendations for an environmental ethic are worthy of deep consideration. Her main addition is a well-modulated ethic of love toward na-



476 SOUNDINGS Haddox, Ferré, Tnndle

ture as it is in all its nonhuman otherness. Beginning with a phrase from Rolston, "a love of life beyond self-love" (245), Sideris offers a tempered exposition of what this might entail in non-sentimental caring for the environmental order as it is, with its suffering, competition, waste, alien beauty, and all. The ethic would discourage interventions to "fix" nature, even when cir- cumstances involve suffering that humans could fix with minimal effort. The one exception is for suffering that is anthropogenic, suffering for which we as a species are responsible, and therefore for which we are morally guilty. In those cases, human interven- tion to avert animal misery can be a legitimate expression of our species' unique capacities for anticipation, deliberation, and pur- poseful action. But, otherwise, we should love nature by letting nature be nature. This means that in shaping our ethics for human society, we must not take our cue from nature's ruthless natural selection, just as, conversely, we must not take sensibili- ties refined in human affairs as applicable to the environment. The ethics for culture and for nature are, and should be, simply different.

Is this the best we can do? Thoughtful and distinguished voices in the field, including Holmes Rolston, argue that we must settle for the two-ethic solution. But then we are left with no ethical guidance for resolving the gut-wrenching issues that rise when environmental ethics and cultural ethics simply collide. When the precarious livelihood of Ruandan farmers is threatened by an invasion of protected elephants, for example, and carefully delib- erated cultural ethics finds the farmers' case justly defensible while equally thoughtful environmental ethics finds that the elephants should not be interfered with, then what? In Sideris's bi- furcated position, there is no common criterion, no shared arbiter between culture and nature, to work out principled, if difficult, answers. The problem is that her "comprehensive naturalized ethics" is not comprehensive enough. It stops at the boundaries of culture, and thus it potentially immunizes human claims from being dealt with on a level, or even a shared, playing field with nonhuman claims. Oddly, this offers an anthropocentric safe-haven for human claims against the environment, with no encompassing way of judging when they are legitimate and when they are simply speciesist and specious.



Readings for St. Brevis 477

The problem of the Ruandan farmers is one cited by Sideris from Birch and Cobb's attempt to ground an ethics for all, for whom the "line" between nature and culture is deliberately breached by a metaphysical theory that joins all life as in princi- ple significantly similar. She dismisses as "anthropocentric" the painful, nuanced judgment offered by these process theologians that e/all things could be considered, including human popula- tions controls, alternative agricultural technologies, relocation of humans and/or elephants, governmental subsidies, and so forth, then it might, though not necessarily, be the case that the human values involved could legitimately be found to outweigh elephant values. This is not knee-jerk anthropocentrism. It is made of the stuff of real ethical deliberation. And it is made possible by something that Sideris never explores in any depth: namely, a metaphysical world-view in which capacity for experience provides a continuum linking all entities, in particular all living entities. Dif- ferent centers of experience create their own sorts of beauty. All are to be honored. Each sort has its own integrity, its own intrinsic value for the entity experiencing it. Thus each entity has its own real claim for moral consideration. Different sorts are more or less complex, more or less intense. Different claims carry different weights. This is not a sentimental position. It starts from A.N. Whitehead's famous dictum, "All life is robbery." In this, it reflects Darwinian realism at its core. But it offers to such animals as (sometimes) guide their behavior by ethical norms - that is, to our species alone in the presently known universe - an alternative to sheer, unprincipled competition with each other and other species, even when push comes to shove. As an ethic this (and every ethical position) is only as realistic as the coherence and adequacy of the metaphysical arguments that underlie and com- mend its supporting worldview to critical minds. In her next book, I hope Sideris will apply her powerful talents to taking deeper account of environmental metaphysics, too.

Frederick Ferré Emeritus, The University of Georgia



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Environmental Ethics, Ecological Theology, and Natural Selectionby Lisa H. Sideris