Environmental ethics has achieved a prominent role in contemporary philosophical reflection for many years, especially within analytical matrix thinking. Since man began to be aware of his destructive capacity towards the environment, in fact, he has also tried to develop reflections that had as a privileged object his own relationship with non-human living beings. In this sense, the contemporary age has brought with it an interesting change of perspective: modern man has developed a deeper consciousness about his relationship with his environment and with other living beings, discovering their purpose and at the same time the limitation of the entire ecosystem..
Another powerful indicator of this critical awareness can be found in the birth of disciplines such as bioethics, capable of emphasizing once again the impact of man's action on the ecosystem, an action that seems radically changed by the development of technologies that some do. decades were totally unknown. In this sense, Potter (1971) recognizes in ecology the paradigm from which a “science of survival” can be modeled, that is, a knowledge that can constitute a bridge between the world of facts and that of values.
Keywords: Prudence as a means of survival for the human being.
Introduction
Life in search of its quality and its meaning is the original source of all rights. As a dynamic totality, the biological structure of our planet constitutes an interactive fabric that implies the set of relations between the biotic and the abiotic, and consequently the man-man, man-nature relations. The normative mood of the biological sciences that envision a logic of life must be considered an antecedent and unquestionable basis for the rethinking of contemporary culture for the consolidation of a culture of life.
One of the greatest challenges facing humanity today is harmonious coexistence with nature. It is impossible to conceive of the human being independent of the resources that the environment provides; Their food, and all the material inputs that sustain the production of goods and life itself, is supported by the ecosystems of the earth, hence the importance of conserving them. On the other hand, the demands of the population go beyond meeting their basic needs; they include improvement in comfort levels and, in some sectors, the accumulation of wealth. This, coupled with the inadequate management of natural resources, has caused the alteration of practically all ecosystems and the consequent impact on human well-being.
The problem with common resources occurs when they are freely accessible, which means that their use has no cost, but unlike public goods, their depletion or degradation is possible due to rivalry in consumption and lack of regulation. The market does not provide any indicator of the value of environmental resources, hence, in many cases they are considered free because their use and enjoyment do not have any monetary cost. When this happens, the cost of appropriation of a good or degradation of a service is paid by society; that is, they become hidden subsidies that prevent us from perceiving the importance of conserving resources.The economic system considers this situation as an externality because it occurs when the activity of one person affects the welfare of another without the latter being able to charge a price for it if it is negative, or pay it, if it is positive (Azqueta, 2002). Environmental economics proposes to convert these negative externalities on a scale that is comparable to the elements of the economic system; To do so, it proposes the use of some techniques that allow assigning a price to environmental goods and services, which will be useful when designing specific instruments such as taxes, subsidies; or, for its direct integration at the price. In this way, these negative externalities would be internalized and activities or actions that degrade the environment would be discouraged.The environmental assessment is the tool that allows this assignment.
From human intervention, the future destiny of the environment is at the same time the fruit and the cause (transformed nature) of the criteria, policies, strategies, to use the resources of nature. There is an urgent need for a new vital responsibility based on an environmentalist and ecological conscience that inscribes the human being within the biotic community itself, as an adequate environment to be able to guarantee the survival of the biosphere. Promoting respect for life and its environments is a health, educational, cultural and fundamental imperative of Bioethics as a critical instance of sustainable development in full coherence with the environment. It is also imperative to strengthen this type of reflection with a view to consolidating environments conducive to human health (environmental health).
Terminological clarifications.
If we look at the definitions of bioethics and ecology we find that there is no scientific consensus on them.
Regarding the term Ecology
Etymologically ecology derives from the Greek "oikós" which means home, heritage; In other words, it is about the man taking care of his "house". In this sense, ecology is the study of the residence or house of man.
Ecology includes the living and the non-living. The term life encompasses not only the life and health of man, but also the life of other beings and their balance between the different manifestations of life. It is this last sense that includes ecology as a science that allows the balanced coexistence of all living beings, including man himself.
The definition we assume is that of the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy:
Ecology is the science that studies the relationships between living things and the environment in which they live.
Regarding the term Bioethics, there are two fundamental currents:
-a broad one, which includes the study of human behavior regarding the living.
-a reductive that limits the study of man's behavior with respect to the sciences of human health.
The Encyclopedia of Bioethics defines Bioethics as the systematic study of human behavior in the field of life sciences and health care, examined in the light of values and principles.
Ethical causes of the ecological crisis
In recent centuries we have witnessed an increasingly accelerated process of industrial growth and urbanization, which has led us as humanity to the current global ecological crisis. One of the causes has been the expansion of huge concentrations of population in modern metropolises, which, by their very nature, involve much more impersonal and casual contact, rather than the more intense face-to-face relationships of earlier times. Along with this, the other cause is the importance that our technocratic and bureaucratic society gives to instrumental reason: everything is understood in terms of the rationalistic domain of nature, considered as one more means at our disposal. This can only strengthen atomism, because it induces us to consider our communities, and our world, like so many other things,with an instrumental perspective, with “an undeniable decline of the law in favor of an incredible proliferation of rights” that makes our societies much less manageable (Ferry, 2008: 64-68), and without orientations towards the future (Küng, 2008: 17-20).
Some years ago, Lipovetsky splendidly analyzed the “twilight of duty”, how the painless ethics of the new democratic times leads to the desperate search for individual morality, when universal and social duty has been abandoned (Lipovetsky, 1994: 81-84). Together with social atomism to this proliferation of individual rights, it is very difficult for our societies to face the current challenge of the ecological crisis, since, in short, it is about sacrificing for a future ecological balance, when present individual rights and instrumental reason prevail..
We are in an anthropocentric culture, which encourages us to adopt an “instrumental position in front of all facets of our life and our environment: in front of the past and nature, as well as in front of our social dispositions” (Taylor, 1994: 92). Everything is at the service of the interests of humanity, and the predominant economic interest "makes it lose all scruples towards its materials, its environment, other people, the Earth and the forces of nature" (Cordúa, 2007: 326). It is the mission of philosophy - as Heidegger (Cordúa, 2007: 322) commented - to help man reach a satisfactory relationship with the essence of technology so that technological and scientific progress goes hand in hand with ethical values: this was the sense of the initiators of bioethics as a discipline (Potter, 1971; Jonas 1995),and it has been one of the causes of its expansion in recent decades.
Both capitalist neoliberalism and Marxism have been inclined to extreme forms of anthropocentrism. Neoliberalism has a notion of freedom of the human being that does not recognize borders, nothing in particular that I have to respect in the exercise of my self-determined freedom that is not the freedom of others. Duties to the environment or future generations do not come into play easily - except for utilitarian reasons. Marxism, for its part, has far surpassed capitalism in ecological aggressiveness (Taylor, 1994: 100-101).
Many of the solutions that are proposed have to do with the effects that the ecological crisis can produce or is already producing on human well-being: we must have a moderation in the ecological impact so as not to lead the human species to disaster. But it is not only for this consequentialist reason. If we allow ourselves to be carried away by this imperative of domination of nature, we will produce a "disenchantment" of the artificial world that we create with our industrial civilization. Hence the current admiration and interest in the life of pre-industrial peoples, or the defense policies of aboriginal societies and interculturality, in a world not only dominated but globalized and “banalized” perhaps also due to scientific-technical expansion. And here bioethical reflection has a lot to contribute.
How to help solve the ecological crisis from ethics
The ecological crisis challenges all of humanity, and the solution must also be sought at the global level, not individual or state. “The problem of an effective organization of the joint responsibility of human beings in the age of science, ultimately, cannot be solved within the framework of particular States with a democratic constitution. For a long time, in addition to this, cooperation in the international arena is imperatively necessary. This is evident, for example, with respect to the problems of the so-called “ecological crisis”, essentially arising from the consequences of scientific-technical civilization. It deals here with the problems, closely linked to each other, of the threat to the human eco and biosphere as a whole by overpopulation, the depletion of raw materials and energy reserves,air and water pollution, destruction of forests, altered climate, etc. With this, the problems of a fair distribution of resources with planetary criteria depend jointly: thus, for example, the fight against hunger and poverty in the Third World ”(Apel, 2007: 84). A political ethic is necessary for the worldwide organization of this solidarity responsibility in this age of science, which leads us to international relations based on the peaceful resolution of conflicts, without violence.the fight against hunger and poverty in the Third World ”(Apel, 2007: 84). A political ethic is necessary for the worldwide organization of this solidarity responsibility in this age of science, which leads us to international relations based on the peaceful resolution of conflicts, without violence.the fight against hunger and poverty in the Third World ”(Apel, 2007: 84). A political ethic is necessary for the worldwide organization of this solidarity responsibility in this age of science, which leads us to international relations based on the peaceful resolution of conflicts, without violence.
The ecological crisis is also very present in the proposals of a world ethic
that raises the need to overcome the morals of each civilization, culture and religion, such as that carried out by Hans Küng (1992): among the fundamental principles that he proposes, it is very first of all that “we are all responsible in the search for a better world order; A commitment to human rights, freedom, justice, peace and the conservation of the Earth is essential ”, so that the amazement at God's creation leads us to respect all life.
The problem is also to determine who has the responsibility for the direct or indirect consequences of collective human activities, as in the case of the ecological crisis. Some exhort to stay attached to the responsibilities of the traditional ethos of each one of the forms of life; others after Kant seek a moral compass for all mankind. It is necessary, in the words of Apel, an “ethical-discursive organization of co-responsibility” (2007: 110). He gives the example of the thousand conversations and conferences on issues related to the environment and the ecological crisis, which “represent precisely the realistic alternative with respect to that onerous impotence of singular people in the face of new responsibilities for the future consequences of our collective activities. in science, technology,the economy and politics ”.
A universal ecological ethic for the global ecological crisis.
One of the ethical propositions to reach "joint responsibility in this age of science" is the one made from the ethics of discourse. In the words of Apel, we must reach international relations based on the peaceful resolution of conflicts, without violence: “As much recourse to strategic procedures (for example, threat of revenge and the like) as necessary; as many efforts in consensus-discursive mechanisms and conflict resolution (for example, “Confidence-generating measures”) as possible ”(Apel, 2007: 91).
The Ethics of Discourse, with its pragmatic-transcendental conception -in Apel's vision- covers respect for this diversity of cultures and philosophies, but it does not stop only in occasionally sharing common values. Not only is a universal ethic necessary, but possible to overcome the challenge of globalization, but it cannot remain in an empirical-inductive demonstration of "common values" (very similar to the "common moral sense" of Beauchamp and Childress in his proposal of biomedical ethics) and an agreement for the specific case on this basis, although this would be very useful. If we do not arrive at the communicative consensual rationality of the ethics of discourse, let us at least develop that strategic rationality that leads us to a reasonable mediation,in order to cooperate in the modification of the existing relations in the direction of the long-term generation of the conditions of application of the discursive Ethics, that is to say: of the production of the relations of the ideal community of communication in the real community ”(Apel, 2007: 111-112), which also takes into account those not yet present in the dialogue, future generations.
And for this, dialogue between scientific worldviews and religious ones is necessary. In a recent book, Habermas insists from the ethics of discourse on the need for dialogue between two opposing tendencies, which today characterize the intellectual situation of the time (Habermas, 2006): on the one hand, the growing implantation of "naturalistic images of the world ”And on the other, the“ recrudescence of religious orthodoxies ”. He probes the tensions between naturalism and religion, and advocates a properly naturalistic understanding of cultural evolution that accounts for the normative character of the human spirit. It also proposes an adequate interpretation of the secularizing consequences of a cultural and social rationalization. An ecological vision is also spread from the religions,that dialogues with naturalistic visions, closer now to that global dimension of our action in the environment (Bautista, 2004: 149-159).
On the other hand, Apel insists on the need to recover the notion of duty: universal declarations of rights are not enough, although they may have political influence and utility; Universal declarations of moral duties or responsibilities are also necessary, within the rational framework of discourse ethics (Apel, 2007: 187-188). We think that this is one of the fundamental contributions to the solution of the ecological crisis, from the proposition of dialogic ethics.
The importance of the person and their dignity
Both phenomenology and ethics of values have focused on the experience and affirmation of the ethical being of man. It is not possible to establish an ethical duty towards the environment or animals without the affirmation of man's ethical being over the rest of living or inanimate beings. Heidegger criticizes the view of nature as a mere resource at the expense of man's decision, need or well-being (Heidegger, 1989). Scheler bases it on the capacity of man as a spiritual being, with the capacity to love and recognize values (Sánchez-Migallón, 2006; Torralba, 2005: 176-181). Values are objective and it is possible to know them, both in one's own life experience, and in relationships with others and with everything else, including the world around us. By not considering the person isolated from his life experience,his relationship with the environment is included in this experience and ecological values are also included in anthropological and ethical reflection: man is a being-in-the-world also in terms of his relationship with nature.
Personalism has also insisted on the primacy of the person in ethical analysis: the notion of the person is considered the essential philosophical category and it is considered that their dignity is an absolute value and human rights are inalienable principles of social order and political (Burgos, 2007). And social responsibilities are personal responsibilities too. In the field of economic progress, Amartya Sen has expressed this very clearly in the title of his latest work: "People First" (Sen, Kliksberg, 2008). It is not the individual person, it is the person in society, as communitarianism of a personalistic nature has emphasized, which is why there is both a right to the environment and a duty to protect it, as a person and as a species (Pisanò, 2008).
Ecological perspective of health and bioethics
Both from dialogic ethics and personalism, the same conclusion is reached: the need for universal ethical guidelines, and also universal rights and duties, which must include future generations, and the conservation and promotion of environmental good-value.
There is a double possibility of approaching the aspects of the environmental crisis and ecology from bioethics. One is to approach the problem with global proposals, from global bioethics, with an ecological ethic, on the one hand; and on the other hand, to help solve the health problems posed by the ecological crisis from an adequate anthropology and ethics of health. The environment interacts with the health situation, and influences the duty of health care and the ethical approach to public and institutional health. Both ways are important. From the dialogic ethics these global normative proposals can be based, and from personalism and communitarianism it is possible to deepen the need for an anthropology and ethics of health, and help the ecological sustainability of progress (Vendrell, 2008: 467-488).
Conclusion.
Neither reason nor faith leads us to look down on this created world. The same dialogical condition of the specifically human experience leads us to be responsible for life and the created world before our fellow men. In reality, we are not just responsible for something to someone. Whether we like it or not, we are always responsible for "someone" to "someone." The object of our responsibility is never reducible to the inanimate world of things.
Ecology is today, consequently, a universal concern, both from the socio-philosophical, theological or ethical point of view.
"Save the Earth" or "promote peace with Creation" are not just slogans of the moment. They are a gesture of love that, in its double diachronic and synchronic dimension, tries to make the world a home-oikós-for man and for life. Ecology is not just a fad. Not a political claim. It is a moral task.
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