5 Beyond intrinsic value: undermining the justification of ecoterrorism

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, Jan, 2007 by Charles S. Brown

The account of value developed here runs counter to the uncritical notion of "intrinsic value" prevalent in mainstream environmental ethics. That notion of instrinsic value--a property inherent in the thing-in-itself--falls out of a tradition interested in providing a metaphysical grounding of value. Such accounts will always be highly speculative and subject to endless challenges. The account developed here focuses on the dynamism and temporality of value experience. This account urges us to understand moral experience as emerging from social relationships--from the face-to-face openness to others structured by compassion and care. Moral philosophy has been too long dominated by an abstract, universalizing rationalism that takes acting from abstract principle as the center of moral phenomena and pushes sentiment and feeling to the margins. The account developed here sees moral phenomena as emerging from relationships, from particular contexts and particular situations. (12) Moral phenomena, in this understanding, is open-ended, in process, and ultimately, although beyond the scope of this paper, in dialogue.

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