New German Critique

On the Meaning of Eudemonic Arguments for

a Deep Anthropocentric Environmental Ethics

Konrad Ott

“Deep” and “Shallow” Environmentalism

In the 1970s Arne Naess, the leading proponent of the deep ecology move-
ment, polemically introduced the difference between a supposedly superficial
anthropocentrism and a supposedly deep physiocentrism into environmental
discourse.1 This distinction, which became widespread among environmental-
ists, ascribes a twofold logical advantage to physiocentrism. Environmental-
ethical concepts that attribute an inherent moral value only to humans (i.e.,
anthropocentrism) cannot hope to transcend a technocratic management of
natural resources. Concepts, on the other hand, that recognize in some or all
natural beings a moral value (i.e., physiocentrism) will be better positioned to
lend theoretical support to many conservationist intuitions and convictions, for
example, the conservation of species, wilderness, and biodiversity. Further-
more, deep ecology maintains that physiocentric conceptions are more likely
to offer new and more radical solutions, both on an intellectual level and on a
practical level, for the environmental crisis of modernity. In the spirit of this
distinction, a demand has been frequently issued to transcend the supposedly

This article is based on the lightly modified and edited inaugural lecture held in winter semester of
2012–13 at Christian Albrechts University in Kiel. The German version has been published in Wo
steht die Umweltethik?, ed. Marcus Vogt, Jochen Ostheimer, and Frank Uekötter (Marburg: Metropo-
lis, 2013), 149–64.
1. Naess, “Shallow and the Deep.”
New German Critique 128, Vol. 43, No. 2, August 2016
DOI 10.1215/0094033X-3511895  © 2016 by New German Critique, Inc.

105

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106  Eudemonic Arguments

superficial anthropocentrism in favor of a new and allegedly “deep” physio-

centric ethics. In this sense, deep ecology endorses a biospherical egalitarian-
ism whose supreme value axiom states that all living beings have an “equal
right to live and blossom.”2
On greater reflection, this distinction proves problematic in several
aspects; I enumerate here the five most important ones.

1. Physiocentrism itself falls into several categories with respect to the funda-
mental question of which natural entities should be regarded as having
inherent moral value. Thus, sentientism recognizes all things capable of per-
ception, biocentrism recognizes all living things, and holism recognizes all
entities as having inherent moral value. Ecocentrism meanwhile attributes
intrinsic value to both individual entities and ecosystemic structures as such,
although the hierarchy of the ethical obligations toward individuals and nat-
ural entities arising from this approach is contested within ecocentrism.
2. The distinction between the “deep” and the “shallow” implies that anthro-
pocentrism is capable of conceptualizing humans only as entities exclu-
sively oriented toward the domination of nature in a broader sense. Thus
Baird Callicott elaborates in a classic essay that a degree of misanthropy is
an attribute of a genuine physiocentric environmental ethics.3 It is to be
conceded that this misanthropic assumption can be justified not only inten-
tione recta (in a direct perspective) with a view toward ecologically destruc-
tive practices but also intentione obliqua (in a more reflexive perspective)
with recourse toward philosophical and economical conceptions of goal-
instrumental action (i.e., toward the model figure of the homo economicus).
In point of fact, if philosophy regards only purposive rationality as mea-
sured by individual maximization of utility to be legitimate and marginal-
izes altruistic preferences as random contingencies, then one of deep ecol-
ogy’s misrepresentations seems to be proved, namely, the assumption that
anthropocentrism regards nature as little more than a warehouse of raw
matter, resources, and cultivable land yielding returns in the form of grain,
fruits, vegetables, animal products, and timber. If this is the case, then
physiocentrism suggests that anthropocentrism must inevitably rely on con-
cepts of being human (Menschenbilder) that model humans as exploitative
and oppressive beings with respect to nature.
Attributing inherent moral value to natural beings seems a proper way
to overcome such exploitative behavior. Indeed, humans who are inclined

2. Ibid., 96.
3. Callicott, “Animal Liberation,” 326.

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Konrad Ott  107

to instrumentalize and exploit nature should be morally committed to

respecting nature by recognizing the value inherent in natural entities. Inher-
ent moral-value doctrines in environmental ethics suppose a Kantian out-
look on human beings: humans tend, by inclination, to dominate and exploit
nature, while they are, by moral obligations, able to respect natural beings
that possess their own inherent moral value. Even if they are unwilling by
inclination, they have to conform to moral duties if there is inherent moral
value in nature. If so, the conflict between moral obligations and natural
inclinations would both multiply and intensify for most humans. Any moti-
vation for conservationist conduct would have to be guaranteed and but-
tressed by moral principles and by duties derived from these principles. Con-
servation of nature, then, would be grounded in obligatory restraint.
Proponents of deep ecology, however, subscribe to a wide range of
“ecosophies” by which they deem themselves beyond moral reasoning
(particularly Naess in his “Ecosophy T”).4 These ecosophies are supposed
to overcome mere moral bounds of behavior that are needed to regulate
ordinary people’s behavior. In this sense, the latent contradiction of deep
ecology can be summarized as follows: from an esoteric point of view, it
promotes speculative ecosophies, whereas from an exoteric point of view, it
promotes both a general misanthropy and inherent-value doctrines. Implic-
itly, deep ecology ascribes the ability to reason on a high moral plane to
humans, since otherwise compliance with a physiocentric environmental
ethics could only be enforced and commanded imperatively on unwilling
human beings. (Naess, who studied in the Wiener Kreis, was influenced, in
meta-ethical terms, by Rudolf Carnap’s imperativism and might even have
sympathized with this latter resolution.)
3. The distinction between deep and shallow (trivial, superficial) has often
been made in philosophy to denounce opponents. It has a rhetorical flavor
to it. Historically, this distinction can be traced back to the critiques of
the “Shallow Enlightenment,” or “Aufkläricht.” The distinction rests on
the assumption that “deep thoughts” are able to touch the actual essence of
a topic, while allegedly superficial modes of thoughts are only able to grasp
its symptoms and manifestations. Deep is about essence, shallow about sur-
face and appearances. Thus the distinction is full of presumptions and value
judgments and becomes even more problematic if one attributes “depth” to
one’s own approach. From G. W. F. Hegel to Theodor W. Adorno, this dis-
tinction between philosophical depth and shallowness was viewed in a
critical and reflexive way as a potentially (or possibly) misleading and even

4. Naess, Ecology, Community, and Lifestyle, 163–213.

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108  Eudemonic Arguments

unfair dichotomy.5 Adorno rightly warned against pseudodepth in philoso-

phy and emphasized that the qualifier “deep” does not refer to ultimate
essences, substances, or hidden groundings but to critical reflection, close
analysis, and conceptual distinctiveness. Thus, a rather darkly murmuring
tone of voice is certainly no sign of philosophical depth, and the self-asser-
tion of philosophical depth is nothing more than a presumption that one
should be able to couch in standards inherent to philosophical discourse,
that is, in standards of conceptual, analytic, and argumentative work. These
standards vary in accordance with the object of scrutiny. The question of
depth could, then, in Adorno’s terms, be explained as a question of the
depth of justification and reflection appropriate to the object, and of the
standards of justification bound to it. To Adorno, depth is about reflective-
ness. After the linguistic turn in philosophy, however, reflectiveness should
be taken as clarity in argumentation, critical scrutiny against one’s own
assumptions, analytic rigor, and a continuous quest of how to improve jus-
tification of claims being made. If one wishes to keep this qualifier “deep”
at all, the “depth” of any concept in the field of environmental ethics should
not be judged according to the sheer amount of entities that hold inherent
moral value. It should be judged according to standards of substantiation
and rigor common in other domains of philosophical inquiry. In this article,
the qualifier deep is used in this respect.
Given this understanding of philosophical depth, physiocentrism as
such has next to no advantage over anthropocentrism. The tired assertion
that natural entities “have” or “possess” inherent moral value is as valuable
as its opposite. Some physiocentrics claim that biocentric or holistic
approaches are more comprehensive than anthropocentric approaches, but
comprehensiveness is by no means “deep” in Adorno’s sense explicated
above, but only more extensional. In terms of philosophical depth, only sub-
stantiation and analysis count. The inherent value terminology of physiocen-
trism and deep ecology could prove to be temporary jargon that, on closer
inspection, lacks actual philosophical depth. I do not mean to assert that this
is necessarily the case but, rather, that this possibility cannot be ruled out.
4. Even if one does not drop the distinction between deep and shallow com-
pletely, one should distrust how Naess has conceived it. On reflection, there
is not only one but two distinctions: that is, anthropocentrism versus phys-
iocentrism and deep versus shallow. Two mutually independent distinc-
tions, in logical terms, form a quadruple relation, or four-way classifica-

5. See Adorno, Philosophische Terminologie, 136–47, with reference to Hegel.

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Konrad Ott  109

tion. This classification forms a four-field schematic: deep physiocentrism,

superficial physiocentrism, superficial anthropocentrism, and deep anthro-
pocentrism. This scheme can be used under the meaning of depth given in
the previous section.
The four-field schematic leaves open the possibility of a philosophi-
cally deep anthropocentric environmental ethics. Physiocentric approaches
should acknowledge principally this possibility. Environmental ethicists
are, however, not only able abstractly to concede this possibility; they can
and should also conceive the specific profile and stature of a presumptive
deep anthropocentrism.6 This naturally does not imply the removal of
moral value from natural entities. The option of a deep anthropocentrism
sets aside the problem of inherent moral value in nature for the moment as
a still unresolved but tractable moral problem.7 It removes the implicit mis-
anthropy of deep ecology and entertains the hypothesis that humans can
perform many nonexploitative attitudes toward nature. There is far more to
say about being human within a natural world than the image of humanity
as a greedy conqueror of natural bounty suggests.
5. Environmental ethics has long taken as its basis a dichotomy between
instrumental value and inherent moral value. In accordance with this
dichotomy, the entire field of natural aesthetics, to name one example, must
be part of the domain of instrumental value. Within the framework of this
dichotomy, several intuitions and forms of experience that speak in favor of
a noninstrumental but also nonmoral approach to nature begin to appear
unsuitable. The varied conservationist intuitions and experiences of nature
that cannot be sensibly assigned to the category of instrumental value must
then be (re)interpreted in the sense of an inherent value of nature. The dis-
tinction between deep and shallow proposed by Naess runs parallel to this
dichotomy, inherent moral value versus instrumental value, and thus implic-
itly infers that an environmentalism labeled “shallow” can by definition
only acknowledge instrumental values in nature.

Through this false dichotomy, contemporary environmental ethics has

severed itself from several patterns of reasoning or argumentation that have
played significant roles in German conservationist and proto-ecological move-
ments since the time of Goethe and Romanticism. In particular, I would like to

6. I regard Eugene Hargrove, Allan Holland, and Bryan Norton as representatives of such an
approach.
7. See Ott, “Modest Proposal.”

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110  Eudemonic Arguments

draw attention to the eudemonic conceptualization of nature for which Alex-

ander von Humboldt’s term Naturgenuss (enjoyment of nature), coined as
early as 1836, is representative.8 The notion of Naturgenuss refers to positive
experiences of nature (in the sense of life-enhancing and joyful experiences),
whereas the ambivalent experience of the fascinosum et tremendum (a fasci-
nating and awful mystery) of nature refers to borderline experiences of
nature. The sphere of Naturgenuss was understood by Humboldt as a rela-
tionship of reciprocal and spiral-like progression with natural history and
natural science: the better we understand the biospheric nature of the Earth
in scientific terms, the more intensively we can experience Naturgenuss in
aesthetic terms.9 By aesthetic Humboldt refers to a broad conception of “ais-
thesis,” namely, the whole range of sensory experiences open to humans.10 It
includes listening, touching, and smelling. Such sensory encounters with
nature go far beyond the sphere of instrumental values. Viewing landscapes,
listening to birds, and smelling fruits and flowers is not simply valuing
nature instrumentally.
Thanks to the work of several environmental ethicists, this third cate-
gory of eudemonic values of nature prevailed over the dichotomy instrumen-
tal versus inherent moral values.11 Environmental ethics should not fall back
behind this threefold extension of categories: instrumental, inherent, and eude-
monic. The concept of ecosystem services also recognizes an internally com-
plex category of so-called cultural values that conform to the category of eude-
monic natural values. I claim that eudemonic (or, synonymously, cultural)
values of nature are a solid pathway into a deep anthropocentric environmen-
tal ethics, although I concede that such values are hard to operationalize scien-
tifically and hard to monetize economically. Eudemonic values refer to “mean-
ingful” experiences with nonhuman nature that include leisure, recreation,
beauty, sublimity, belonging, place making, listening, restoring, transforma-
tion, and spiritual awe. In an industrialized age, such modes of being human
within a world of nature have been downplayed, discarded, or ridiculed as
“Romanticism.” This is a loss that can and should be reversed. Whatever the

  8. Humboldt, “Über die Verschiedenheiten des Naturgenusses.”

  9. Concerning Alexander von Humboldt’s general conception of nature, see Botting, Humboldt
and the Cosmos; and Ette, Weltbewußtsein.
10. This understanding goes back to Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten’s Aesthetica (1750–58),
which wielded considerable influence in Goethe’s age. Baumgarten defines aesthetics as the science
of sensory recognition (“Wissenschaft der sinnlichen Erkenntnis”). He conceives of the perfection of
sensory recognition as beauty.
11. Krebs, Ethics of Nature; Muraca, “Map of Moral Significance”; Norton, Why Preserve Natu-
ral Variety; Seel, Eine Ästhetik der Natur.

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Konrad Ott  111

proper solution of the demarcation problem may be, the realm of eudemonic
values must be reclaimed for environmental ethics.12

Eudemonic Values of Nature

Since Aristotle, the concept of eudaimonia has been used to refer to the defin-
ing characteristics of a worthwhile, fulfilled, or “good” human life.13 Such a
good life results in the performance of human practices, and in the exercising
of human capabilities. I propose that a good life requires institutionalized nor-
mative safeguards, for instance, through a morally founded and justly docu-
mented system of the rights of human beings and citizens, without delving into
the notion more deeply. For my current aims, the notion of experience as intro-
duced above is more important, since the eudemonic values (and the natural
goods that correspond to them) cannot be determined without regard to spe-
cific modes of experience.
The concept of experience is to be distinguished from the scientific con-
cept of observation. Observation is an epistemic concept; experience is a phe-
nomenological one. As an umbrella concept for observation and experience,
the concept of sensory perception lends itself well. Both observation and expe-
rience would then be two differently stylized modes of sense perception. I
focus solely on experiences.
One might suggest tracing the eudemonic value of nature back to natural
experiences that can be contextualized within a phenomenology of nature.14
Gernot Böhme’s phenomenology of nature was decisively influenced by the
work of Hermann Schmitz. (The new American phenomenology of nature, as
championed by, for example, David Abram, is unfortunately not familiar with
this Continental tradition.)15 Schmitz departed from Edmund Husserl’s idea of
a “pure” phenomenology of the mind and connected the phenomenological
method with the sensually experiencing living body (German Leib).16 By doing
so, he opened a vast field of stimulating phenomenological inquiry, from sex-
ual attraction to sacred spaces. Special attention is given by Schmitz to atmo-
spheres experienced as by-products of gatherings, celebrations, weather events,

12. Eudemonic values are only one domain of deep anthropocentrism. Deep anthropocentrism
must combine this domain with a justice-based concept of a fair intergenerational (“sustainable”)
legacy of natural capital. This article deals only with eudemonic values. Problems of future ethics
and sustainability science are left aside.
13. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, especially the first book, deals with eudaimonia.
14. See Böhme, “Phänomenologie der Natur.”
15. Abram, “Reciprocity.”
16. For an introduction, see Schmitz, Der Leib, der Raum und die Gefühle.

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112  Eudemonic Arguments

and auratic places. Schmitz’s general ideas have been adopted and applied to
nature by Böhme and his research group.17
This approach of a phenomenology of nature is not directly an ethical
one, and it has no overt implications for nature conservation. In the first
instance, it opens up, widens, and sharpens the capability of our human senses
to encounter nature through viewing, smelling, listening, and tasting. Phenom-
enology is not about the technological enhancement of sensory capacities but
about an increased and nuanced awareness of how natural entities and atmo-
spheres impress themselves on the human mind through the senses. A phe-
nomenology of nature is a method that enables humans to perceive and value
nature in nuanced ways. (By doing so, it is more akin to a humanist than a
posthumanist approach—at least the variant that focuses on enhancing the
senses by technical means.)18
Phenomenological experience of nature is not a conceptual experience
in Hegel’s sense, nor is it a “pure” experience; rather, it is a sensory experi-
ence of natural entities, biocenotic systems, and landscapes. Experience is
never unmediated or instantaneous, although particularly intense natural
experiences may appear instantaneous. Each individual experience exists on
the horizon of long past and possible future experiences. The sensory experi-
ence is to be understood not passively but as an active, performative, and
organic structure, without which we would not be able to understand human
existence in the world in its complexity. In the light of this approach, humans
are not just using natural resources but experiencing nature in many different
ways—including eudemonic ones. Phenomenology of nature aims at encoun-
ter, not at domination. Such ways to come closer to nature can and should be
articulated through language. Nature essays, poetry, literature, and ecocriti-
cism have articulated eudemonic encounters with nature that can be intense
and sublime.19 Thus phenomenology of nature comes close to poetry in lin-
guistic respects.

17. Böhme and Schiemann, Phänomenologie der Natur. For an English-language introduction,
see Rigby, “Gernot Böhme’s Ecological Aesthetics of Atmosphere.”
18. As far as I can see, the writings of Nick Bostrom represent this mainstream of posthumanistic
(or “transhumanistic”) lines of thought. To Bostrom, transhumanism is about enhancing the human
condition through “virtual reality; preimplantation genetic diagnosis; genetic engineering; pharma-
ceuticals that improve memory, concentration, wakefulness and mood; performance enhancing
drugs; cosmetic surgery; sex change operations; prosthetics; anti-aging medicine; closer human-com-
puter interfaces” (“History of Transhumanist Thought,” 10).
19. From the many meanings of sublime I adopt the feeling of facing and experiencing something
in nature that transcends human scales and is overwhelming. The intrinsic ambivalence of being
overwhelmed is about the coalescence of attraction and repulsion.

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The reference point of experience is broadly conceived as nature. The

concept of nature is not to be identified with wilderness. Mostly, nature has
been modified and shaped to some degree by human interference. (This is also
true for environments that look like wild places for Western people but are
used by indigenous people.) The divide between nature and culture is therefore
not a dichotomy. Human interferences have modified nature in many respects,
but modified nature remains natural to some degree. Human modification of
nature does not make nature vanish. If so, even climate change and the global
dispersal of chemicals do not imply the “end of nature,” as Bill McKibben
argues.20 Restoring nature is a practice of interference that diminishes past
modifications and, by doing so, creates emerging novel “nature.” A landscape
remains partly natural by its solid relief and its vegetation cover even if there
are buildings and agriculture in it. Nature reserves are managed by humans.
Thus phenomenology and eudemonic values can move within a broad range of
seminatural environments, as forests and meadows, and even parks, gardens,
and graveyards. Phenomenology of nature is not restricted to experiences of
presumed “wilderness,” although such experience may be intense and extraor-
dinary. From a phenomenological point of view, one can perceive the natural-
ness of flowers, trees, meadows, wildlife, and fruits even if one knows that
they have been planted and harvested, and are managed and the like. The
atmosphere of a bog in autumn can be intensively felt even if one knows that
it has been restored by conservationists. One can deeply enjoy the smell of a
flower even if it is known as a neophyte. In the actuality of experience of
nature, biological and environmental knowledge becomes its horizon. The
phenomenology of eudemonic values in nature is not constrained according to
some concepts of original or genuine nature.
Despite all the destruction, devastation, and degradation of natural envi-
ronments, there is still much nature left in the Anthropocene across the planet.
The system of protected areas has, despite the “paper park problem,” been
increased in the last decades. And without denying the ongoing depletion of
the natural world, one can, without contradicting oneself, imagine the Anthro-
pocene as an upcoming period of protecting remaining (semi)wilderness areas
and restoring nature in many areas. What I have been calling deep anthropo-
centrism, in this context, wishes to contribute to such an outlook. Therefore it
is an antiapocalyptic mode of thinking about the future.
Inasmuch as the mundaneness of nature and the sensuality of the human
body correspond in experiences, and inasmuch as the group of experiences

20. McKibben, End of Nature.

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114  Eudemonic Arguments

labeled by Naturgenuss can be phenomenologically reconstructed, the phe-

nomenological approach is a methodological guideline and a subcategory of
the proposed deep anthropocentrism. It is a trivial insight that we can experi-
ence Naturgenuss only from a human perspective. Even if we were to attribute
a sort of enjoyment of species-specific environments to chimpanzees, horses,
geese, or even to bees or dragonflies, the how of these experiences remains
obscured to us.21 Thus, to phenomenology, anthropocentrism is constitutive, but
this fact raises no moral problem because the moral demarcation problem is not
directly addressed in phenomenology. Phenomenology of nature can make us
more sensitive to features and traits of natural beings that may be of moral rel-
evance. Becoming more sensitive to nature may imply closer consideration of
the demarcation problem, but its solution must rest on moral arguments. The
capability to enjoy one’s life might be a morally relevant feature common to all
sentient beings. The general ethical attitude of phenomenology of nature is
rather a longing to move around in nature without leaving traces. This attitude
is compatible with different solutions of the demarcation problem. The point I
wish to make is that there are no strict inferential relations between a phenom-
enology of nature and solutions of the demarcation problem.
The eudemonic values of nature are admittedly only a small portion of
all experiences of nature. Another portion is that of experiences of menace,
peril, bodily need (hunger, thirst, cold, etc.), abandonment, poisoning, and vio-
lability to the point of the extreme experience of being hunted, as Val Plum-
wood describes.22 It is not my aim here to belittle or even deny this tremendum
dimension of natural experience or to use dialectics to categorize it into the
positive. I prefer to concede that the eudemonic values of nature cover only
one side of natural experience and that they always run the risk of portraying
human-nature relationships as idyllic. Thus the natural-ethical reconstruction
of Naturgenuss must endure a few provisos and caveats. The methodological
guideline of phenomenology could naturally also be used to describe this
tremendum dimension of natural experiences. The dimension of Naturgenuss
can, however, bring about a sort of fundamental trust in nature, which puts one
in a position to recognize the fear-inducing, repulsive, and terrifying aspects of
nature as such, and to expose oneself to them. This, in turn, forms dialectic pic-
ture puzzles and riddles around encounters with nature in which the fascinosum
and the tremendum meet. Phenomenology of nature does not shy away from the
harsh side of nature and is not concerned with artificially enhancing nature, as

21. Wild, Fische, Kognition, Bewusstsein, Schmerz.

22. Plumwood, “Being Prey.”

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are certain branches of posthumanism. Phenomenology means unconstrained

exposure to all kinds of nature.
A phenomenology of Naturgenuss and our sketchy understanding of the
good life contradict neither a communicative pragmatics nor a discursive the-
ory of practical reason: one must assume that our concept of experience
assumes not only that experiences must be lived but also that it is valuable to
share our experiences with others. The actuality of experience is not to be
understood here as actively intentional; we live experiences when they befall us
or when we stumble on them, as it were. Precisely because we encounter mean-
ingful experiences unexpectedly, we should not wish to keep them to ourselves;
in my experience, they are neither private nor secret. If human life is, in accor-
dance with its form, a life in the mode of each other, that is, a largely intersub-
jective life, and if experiences are distinctive and meaningful (“extravagant”)
items in the stream of experience of individuals living in communities, then
experiences command that we communicate them and their precise contents
with one another in order to share them in accordance with their general form.
We can approach the question of whether we as human beings share certain
forms of natural experiences with one another only if we verbalize the individ-
ual experiences with nature (as explained above), that is to say, if we articulate
them.23 The expression articulation, introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in
1829,24 implies the culturally bound ability to express and the universal dialogic
structure of speech (“lebendige Wechselrede”). In this sense, the expression
“articulation of Naturgenuss” conceptually builds bridges between the brothers
Wilhelm and Alexander Humboldt, who are both representatives of post-
Enlightenment German humanism. As young men, the Humboldt brothers vis-
ited Goethe and Friedrich Schiller in Weimar and gained an intimate familiar-
ity with intellectual movements in Germany, such as Kantianism, idealism, and
Romanticism.25 In their different careers, Alexander focused on nature and
Wilhelm on language, but they always exchanged ideas about their various
research enterprises. The idea of unconstrained and dialogic articulation of
eudemonic values in nature thus is in a very concrete sense “Humboldtian.”
To repeat it in a nutshell: in the interest of a deep anthropocentric envi-
ronmental ethics, we should articulate our experiences of Naturgenuss with
respect to the eudemonic values they entail. This idea, or moral imperative,

23. Ott, Umweltethik zur Einführung, esp. chap. 3.

24. Humboldt, “Ueber die Verschiedenheiten des menschlichen Sprachbaus.”
25. Alexander von Humboldt was deeply influenced by Goethe’s concepts and speculations on
nature. For an overview of Goethe, see Schmidt, Goethes herrlich leuchtende Natur.

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116  Eudemonic Arguments

was alive in Goethe, in both Humboldts, and in the Romantic movement. It is

alive in contemporary environmentalism as well. Seen from this angle, poetry
and literature are as important for conservationism as biological and ecologi-
cal sciences.
On this basis, we can now turn our attention to the eudemonic values of
nature with their respective peculiarities. Eudemonic values, first of all, can be
gathered and listed. This list has a diachronic and a synchronic aspect. The
diachronic aspect refers hermeneutically to eudemonic justifications in the
intellectual history of conservationism. The synchronic aspect refers to con-
temporary validity claims in environmental-ethical discourse. This list con-
tains the following patterns of argumentation:

•  natural aesthetics
•  human recreation and leisure within nature
•  bodily exercise within nature
•  differences between natural surroundings and industrial and urban settings
•  territorial ties (Heimat, “homeland,” ethics of place)
•  spiritual-religious encounters with nature
•  temperamental transformation of natural experience with respect to virtues
•  fundamentally biophilic disposition of Homo sapiens

In environmental ethics, these patterns of argumentation are concrete in a lit-

eral sense, deriving from the Latin concrescere, meaning “growing together”:
they connect, in different ways, experiences of Naturgenuss with values and,
ultimately, with obligations and commitments to preserve, conserve, and
restore more natural places and landscapes as loci of value. For decades, envi-
ronmental ethicists have contributed to these arguments. Meanwhile, peda-
gogic efforts are made to shape attitudes and mentalities according to more
cognitive ethical arguments. I would like to expound, on the basis of a selected
pattern of argumentation, more specifically on how eudemonic arguments can
be developed with a moral purpose. Martin Seel delivers an example for such
a development of eudemonic arguments in Aesthetics of Nature. The following
section presents this paradigmatic example in some detail and shows how
eudemonic values can be articulated ethically and how the gap to moral phi-
losophy can be bridged.

The Paradigmatic Example of Natural Aesthetics

In a first step, Seel takes a phenomenological approach to his finely tuned
analysis of the internal structure of an aesthetic experience of nature, divided

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Konrad Ott  117

into three central concepts: contemplation, correspondence, and imagination.

Nature, molded as it is to varying degrees in Europe and elsewhere to reflect
human needs and desires, offers many places of an aesthetic contemplation of
nature where we can experience the many-faceted gestalt character of natural
formations. Contemplation as a sustained concentration on a single natural
entity can be found in many cultures across the globe. In Buddhist cultures, for
example, focusing on certain cultural praxes (such as poetry, calligraphy, and
painting on natural entities such as moss on cliffs, the form of a waterfall, the
swarming of dragonflies in warm forest light, the grain of tree bark, etc.) is
designed to preempt cultural constructions of nature by letting these natural
entities be. Contemplation exists in opposition to the “touristic” attitude of
wishing to visit as many examples of natural beauty (from mere overlooks) as
possible in the shortest amount of time. Through the contemplation of nature,
we can gain a critical distance from our many cultural constructions of mean-
ing. Contemplation presupposes leisure and can generally raise the value that
we recognize in leisure. The time of contemplation differs from the time we
spend in our busy daily lives. While we normally assume that time is as scarce
as money, aesthetic contemplation is oblivious of time. Conventionally, we
wish to press many activities into units of time and wish to “save time.” In
aesthetic contemplation, time does not go by but is replaced by eternal
moments. Moments can be “precious” beyond scarcity. Here we face another
marked difference from posthumanism. While posthumanism is about coping
with acceleration of life and economic competition, aesthetic contemplation is
about moments of bountiful time—the nunc stans in the mystic tradition.
Imagination transmits experiences of natural beauty via artistic beauty.
Modern art no longer mimetically depicts nature or idealizes Arcadian land-
scapes; rather, it processes natural experiences into works of art and thus inter-
cedes with natural experiences. From the category of the imagination, an
argument can be made as to why individuals sensitive to natural aesthetics
should experience exposure to modern and avant-garde art.26 Poetry, music,
and sculptures, for example, can make us more sensitive and open-minded to
nature. As Seel explains this imaginative relationship: if one is familiar with
how Olivier Messiaen transformed songs of birds into works of musical art,
one (sometimes) hears the real songs of birds as if they were art. In the imagi-
nation, landscapes show themselves as if they were painted, and great land-

26. From the extensive literature on this topic, see Böhme, Für eine ökologische Naturästhetik;
and Brady, “Imagination and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature,” which draws on Friedrich Schil-
ler’s “Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen” from 1801.

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scape paintings open our eyes to the sceneries we experience. The Baltic Sea
appears differently throughout the seasons if one is familiar with the expres-
sionist paintings of Max Pechstein and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff.
Correspondence, the third of Seel’s key terms, refers to the relationships
between landscapes and an individual’s conception of the good life. It refers to
connections to the beloved and familiar, to the foreign and exotic, and to land-
scapes whose (unique) experience one would never, later in life, wish to have
missed. Correspondence with nature refers to security and Heimat just as much
as to wanderlust and the thirst for adventure; thus it refers to “ideal selves.” For
example, the projection of the good life according to someone who hikes fre-
quently and widely through deep forest environments would differ greatly from
individuals who prefer nice urban parks: the former would feel “at home” in
far-flung and lonely forests, though not in the suburban greenbelts of the latter.
In other conceptualizations of the good life, sailing, mountain climbing, skiing,
gardening, sunbathing on the beach, fishing, hunting, and so forth play a role.
Many modern lifestyles integrate archaic moments of human life, and their
proponents would perceive their lives as poorer in the absence of these
moments. The modern plurality of conceptions of a good life and ideal virtual
selves, admittedly even at the borders of morality, should not only be tolerated
but be celebrated and promoted with respect to the more naturalist approaches
that are critical against comfort and entertainments of urban life.27 This is also
the case for ideal selves, as defined in terms of virtues, and conceptions related
to nature that are unjustly marginalized and discredited by modernity. Those
proponents of naturalistic lifestyles of voluntary frugality who, in Henry David
Thoreau’s spirit, strip away the comforts of civilization to become open to
experiences with “the wild” should not be registered as outsiders but as innova-
tors. Besides his ecological observations, Thoreau’s approach was phenomeno-
logical when he described, for example, the smell and taste of wild fruits. “Nat-
uralizing oneself” means to become highly sensitive for close encounters with
nature. Thoreau even spoke of “joyful intercourse” with nature.28
These forms of experience—contemplation, imagination, and corre-
spondence taken individually and in their concrete interrelationships—are but
moments of happiness that can gain high levels of intensity.29 Furthermore,

27. It seems somewhat strange that philosophers have celebrated the plurality of almost all life-
styles while often ridiculing those celebrating human life in nature.
28. “I certainly come nearer, to say the least, to an actual and joyful intercourse with her [nature]”
(Thoreau, Journal, November 3, 1858).
29. If one were to distinguish, as Seel does, between individual moments of happiness and overall
satisfaction with the experience of life—that is, between the ecstatic and the continual dimension of
the good life—then natural aesthetic experiences count toward both dimensions.

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Seel asserts that the experience of natural beauty is itself a constitutive fea-
ture of a good human life and is therefore not tied to contingent lifestyles
and Western culture. Seel’s strong claim is clearly open for both confirma-
tion and refutation by studies in cultural anthropology, but it should be taken
seriously. The many variants of natural aesthetics in different cultures may
be founded in an underlying human inclination to perceive natural sceneries
as being beautiful. In this sense, we can hardly imagine a human life for
which the experience of natural beauty might be entirely foreign, even if
such an individual can be conceived of in philosophical seminars without
logical contradictions. With the exception of such academic exercises, the
experience of natural beauty is to be counted among the genuine abilities of
human beings. The historical changeability of natural beauty demonstrates
what nature can bring about in aesthetic enjoyment. One could possibly even
hypothetically assume “batches” of natural-aesthetic experience in moder-
nity that can be understood as long-term learning processes. This pertains to
the experience of “dangerous” forms of nature, such as that of the highlands,
the desert, the tropical rain forest, and the bogs and peatlands, all of which
can have a fascinating aesthetic effect as long as the person, to quote the
famous Kantian proviso, is in safety. The meaning of aesthetic Naturgenuss
for a eudemonic ethics of nature and its implications for conservation and
preservation is considerable and should be acknowledged adequately, even
though no specific conservation objectives can be logically derived from
aesthetic experiences.

Building the Bridge from Beauty to Duty

How do we get from the eudemonic to the moral dimension of environmental
ethics? The distinction between moral questions and questions about the good
life is not to be circumvented, but it requires differentiation. First, a distinction
must be drawn between sociocultural lifestyles and a good life tied to an
anthropological perspective, and the precariousness of the human being as a
life form, which is thus dependent on the protection by morality. In this funda-
mental sense, valid moral norms should be equally good for all, irrespective of
cultural lifestyles.30 Second, this distinction brings into play borderline cases
that are by no means trivial: is vegetarianism morally obligatory or only an
expression of a way of life? Third, judgments in practical philosophy must be
able to make recourse to both eudemonic and moral arguments. Judgments are
thus always complex. Environmental ethics assumes this distinction and
brings the two realms into contact for practical reasons.

30. Habermas, “Moralität und Sittlichkeit.”

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120  Eudemonic Arguments

Among the list of human capabilities that Martha Nussbaum suggests is

the capability to live in a relationship marked by empathy and concern with
plants, animals, and the natural world.31 The capacity for such concern and
emphatic coexistence with natural beings can be understood as the capacity
for a noninstrumental relationship to nature. This ability becomes manifest
and actual in many eudemonic and preservationist attitudes and virtues. All
capabilities from Nussbaum’s list fundamentally imply moral claims to be
able to “realize” them up to a certain threshold. Thus all people have a basic
right to develop and implement their (“biophilic”) capacity for a noninstru-
mental approach to nature.32
For Bryan Norton, nature has morally transformative effects on human
beings, not only in the sense that existing preferences for Naturgenuss are
satisfied.33 Through Naturgenuss, patterns of preferences and dislikes, as well
as the attitudes of the people in question, are also changed for the morally bet-
ter. This argument draws from experiences in which Naturgenuss shows a
positive effect on the temperament. Thus, for example, experiencing the math-
ematical or dynamic sublime in nature (the desert, high mountains, or oceans),
but also consciously perceiving the cycle of the seasons, sitting by moving
water, or viewing cloud formations, can have the effect that one sees through
one’s own moral shortcomings (pettiness, irascibility, vengefulness, conceit,
avarice, happiness at the misfortune of others, jealousy, etc.) and wishes to
overcome them. In the mirror of nature, we see our own dark side more clearly.
Therein lies a moralizing effect of natural experiences in the sense of self-
perfection. This enables us to reflect on attitudes and patterns of behavior that
are functional to a successful career based on competition but may distract us
from moral self-perfection and concern for others.
For Kant, one’s own internal perfection and external happiness are “ends
that are also duties” (Zwecke, die zugleich Pflichten sind).34 The promotion of
the happiness of others is an imperfect duty that implies at least consideration
of, and, if possible, also a promotion of, the eudemonic values of other people,
inasmuch as these are compatible with morality. There is an imperfect com-
mitment to promote the actualization of eudemonic values of nature within

31. See Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities.

32. It is, of course, unclear how much and which aspects of nature should be protected in the
interest of the “true” training of this capacity. This lack of clarity is related to the principal difficulty
of correlating abilities and the endowment with goods with respect to heterogeneity of individuals
and circumstances with one another.
33. Norton, Why Preserve Natural Variety?
34. Kant, Metaphysik der Sitten, 520–24; Metaphysics of Morals, 154.

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Konrad Ott  121

oneself and others. Indeed, Kant adds that “it is impossible to assign determi-
nate limits to the extent” of this commitment.35 From a purely ethical stand-
point, the magnitude of this duty cannot be determined. It must be determined
in political debates about nature conservation. Seel bridges the gap between
the question of the good life and morality with the concept of moral consider-
ation. For Seel, conservation of nature is a demand of modern morality, since
considering the realization of a fundamental characteristic of the good life is
necessary. A lack of consideration is suspect from a moral standpoint, even if
the boundary between legitimate pursuit of interests and lack of consideration
is not always easy to pinpoint. If, however, many people sincerely articulate
their eudemonic values oriented toward nature and reclaim the corresponding
locations as presumptive places of conservation, then the (vague) imperative
of consideration—together with a corresponding burden of proof—arises as a
subcategory of the imperfect moral duty to promote happiness. Thus, a prima
facie obligation for collective action seems highly plausible: we, as collectives
of citizens, should stop destroying the many instances, locations, and sites of
Naturgenuss. Thus there is no conflict between Jürgen Habermas’s delibera-
tive democracy in political philosophy and deep anthropocentrism in environ-
mental ethics.
The state would misunderstand its responsibility to neutrality with
respect to lifestyles if it were not to understand itself as a protective instance of
the values of many of its citizens. Strict neutrality of the state is required with
respect to religious beliefs and sexual orientation. But each system of laws,
each welfare state’s regulation, each policy on taxation, education, subsidies,
and city planning favor or disfavor specific lifestyles. Quite often, alleged neu-
trality favors male, middle-class, consumptive lifestyles. If some lifestyles are
morally decent, rely on esteemed traditions, and embody general objectives
such as environmental protection and nature conservation, the liberal state is
entitled to give support to such lifestyles.
Additionally, environmental economics assumes that in wealthy north-
ern polities, the demand for nature is higher than the current supply, making
investments in conservation sensible from a political-economic standpoint.36
While the marginal value of additional commodities decreases in wealthy
countries, the marginal value of additional units of unspoiled nature increases.
In economic parlance, deep anthropocentrism emphasizes the categories of
existence value and cultural ecosystem services. Thus there is also no direct

35. Kant, Metaphysik der Sitten, 524; Metaphysics of Morals, 156.

36. Geisendorf, Gronemann, and Hampicke, Die Bedeutung des Naturvermögens, 301.

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122  Eudemonic Arguments

conflict between ecological economics and deep anthropocentrism, although

eudemonic values are difficult to monetize. Since (1) economists have to
respect the preferences, values, and convictions of all economic agents and are
not entitled to impose specific values on them, and since (2) preferences are
subject to cultural change, a shift to eudemonic values of nature would have
economic repercussions in both theory and practice. If one takes economic
principles as scarcity, thinking at the margins, and liberty of preferences seri-
ously, eudemonic values of nature could be a critical tool against exploitative
consumerism. Thus deep anthropocentrism is in accordance with economic
theory in a way that may subvert assumptions of certain variants of capitalism.
Even Kantians can endorse deep anthropocentrism and eudemonic val-
ues. For Kant, one’s own perfection is conceptualized as “cultivating one’s
faculties.”37 Kant believed that feelings and moods of sensuality could be con-
ducive to the disposition for morality. He says that “compassionate natural
(aesthetic) feelings” should be cultivated.38 Kant uses the term aesthetic at this
point to clarify that these feelings are a posteriori. Sympathy grows only out of
the experience of the obvious suffering of other beings. All sensory experi-
ences are a posteriori. Thus these feelings remain outside a priori conceptions
of moral duty. Kant speaks of these sensory feelings in the Metaphysics of
Morality where he refers to natural entities.39 Natural feelings are opposed to
the spiritus destructionis with respect to the beauties of the plant kingdom and
to cruelty to animals. In the cultivation of such feelings, according to Kant, we
move through the “impure” surroundings of pure practical reason (reine prak-
tische Vernunft) yet nevertheless are still within the dimension of validity of
the morally right. If one discards the Kantian idea of pure practical reason,
then empathy, compassion, and mercy would fall directly into the jurisdiction
of morality. I feel sympathetic with this solution because morals are never
strictly a priori.
Kant also famously asserted that when a person displays a sense of natu-
ral beauty, one has reason to believe that this person also possesses the capac-

37. Kant, Metaphysik der Sitten, 516; Metaphysics of Morals, 150: “When it is said that it is in
itself a duty for a human being to make his end the perfection belonging to a human being as such
(properly speaking, to humanity), this perfection must be put in what can result from his deeds, not in
mere gifts for which he must be indebted to nature; for otherwise it would not be a duty. This duty can
therefore consist only in cultivating one’s faculties (or natural predispositions), the highest of which is
understanding, the faculty of concepts and so too of those concepts that have to do with duty. At the
same time this duty includes the cultivation of one’s will (moral cast of mind), so as to satisfy all the
requirements of duty.”
38. Kant, Metaphysik der Sitten, 595; Metaphysics of Morals, 205.
39. Kant, Metaphysik der Sitten, 577–79; Metaphysics of Morals, 192–93.

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Konrad Ott  123

ity for a morally good disposition.40 This belief would be plausible if Naturge-
nuss were closely related to these sensory feelings that make conceptions of
duty receptive. Such a relationship would be the object of moral psychology or
of phenomenological description, and not conceptual.41 Emotions as such have
no place in Kant’s rigid concept of pure practical reason, but ethicists can and
should be more liberal in this respect.
Beyond environmentalism, a contemporary humanism can learn a lot
from how the core of Kant’s ethics—namely, the categorical imperative as a
supreme principle of all morals—can be enriched by a metaphysics of morals,
as Kant himself did. Such enrichment has its grounding in the categorical
imperative as such, which entails the concept of humanity within personhood
(Menschheit in der Person), whose meaning cannot be determined by pure
practical reason alone. This was a crucial point for Johann Gottfried Herder,
whose concept of “Humanität” is about such a determination that has to occur
within the course of human history.42 In this very sense, deep anthropocen-
trism, phenomenology of nature, and eudemonic values may contribute to a
contemporary humanism.

Conclusion
The above discussion allows me to formulate the following conclusion: a deep
understanding of eudemonic arguments in environmental ethics has been
reached when it concretely conceptualizes phenomenological portrayals of
Naturgenuss with the morally relevant components of

•  the aptitude to exist in a deliberately noninstrumental manner in and with

concerns for the natural world (Nussbaum);
•  the promotion of happiness in view of nature (Kant) and a corresponding
consideration (Seel);
•  moral perfection through transformative natural experiences (Norton);
•  moods and feelings conducive to morality as they are awakened by nature
(Kant);
•  a close relation between deep anthropocentrism and Kant’s notion of human-
ity within personhood

40. Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, 233–35.

41. Why do I shy away from stepping on a snail? Why do I feel compelled to shoo a hornet out of
my home to save its life? Why does the enjoyment of a walk in the woods not come hand in hand with
the impulse to set fire to the woods afterward?
42. Herder, Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität.

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124  Eudemonic Arguments

This fundamental argumentative structure (phenomenological analysis,

unconstrained articulation of eudemonic values, building bridges to concepts
of morality and humanism), which has been developed with reference to natu-
ral aesthetics, should also be principally transferrable to all other eudemonic
arguments. It would, for example, invite a close phenomenological look at cul-
tural practices of recreation and convalescence in predominantly natural sur-
roundings, of creating Heimat and of place making (such as gardening), of
transformative experiences and related virtues, of moods and atmospheres in
particular, sometimes auratic locations, and related matters. Ultimately, a phe-
nomenology of eudemonic values in nature touches anthropological grounds:
Do humans, perhaps, have a disposition toward “biophilic” modes of existence
that has been oppressed in the age of industrialization? How should we inter-
pret current variants of transhumanism and posthumanism if one answers this
question in the affirmative?43
Deep ecology and physiocentrism could also profit from a more
nuanced understanding of eudemonic arguments, since people who have
subscribed to deep eudemonic anthropocentrism will be open-minded to the
moral concerns of physiocentrism and to the philosophical questioning pro-
posed by deep ecology. We must consider deeply the moral concepts of dig-
nity, rights, inherent moral value, respect, and the like. The pressing problem
of inclusion of natural beings in the moral community (“demarcation prob-
lem”) can be brought closer to a satisfactory solution through this openness
to morally relevant characteristics of natural entities, influenced by experi-
ences of value in nature. Eudemonic values can be catalysts for moral con-
sideration: “Can this natural being be harmed? Can we wrong this entity?,”
whatever the answers may be with respect to species of animals and plants,
or to bacteria, or to genes. Ultimately, deep anthropocentrism may “decon-
struct” its own “centrism.”
Translated by Elizabeth Gordon

43. Such a project within the domain of environmental ethics would, as a side effect, make
explicit the many divides between a deep anthropocentric environmental ethics and contemporary
mainstream posthumanism. While technocratic forms of posthumanism wish to prolong the human
life span, deep anthropocentrism wishes to intensify experiences within nature. While posthuman-
ism wishes to explore outer space, deep anthropocentrism wishes to explore the bounty of the Earth.
While posthumanism strives for technical enhancement of capabilities, deep anthropocentrism
wishes to sharpen our sensory awareness. While posthumanism seeks liberation and escape from
natural boundaries, deep anthropocentrism enjoys human embeddedness in nature. Deep anthropo-
centrism intensifies the flesh, while posthumanism wishes to overcome it. It is open to debate which
approach can better make the Anthropocene an epoch with a truly human face.

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Konrad Ott  125

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