For an environmental ethics: questioning the sacrality of human life

Abstract

This article intends to show how the non-anthropocentric environmental ethics deals questions about sacrality of human life, wich is considered, in general, the foundation of traditional morality. The sacrality of human life is taken as a basis to claim the superiority of human life in relation to other forms of life and for to limit the moral community to members of the Homo sapiens species. To achieve the purpose of this article, the biocentric outlook on nature proposed by Paul Taylor is refered. According to this outlook, all living entities have a good of its own that should be promoted and protected by moral agents. These entities are members of the moral community on the same terms in which human beings are members of that community. The questioning of the sacrality of human life in environmental ethics results in the profanation. According to Agamben, the profanation consists in restore to free use what was separated in the sacred sphere, allowing the realization of new uses. Thus, questioning the unavailability of human life and addressing it for a moral community now extended to nonhuman living beings, it is possible to make a new use for human beings. As a result, the environmental ethics indicates a new ethical dimension.