Looking forward and looking back

As our next session is about the environment, I thought I'd be economical in my use of posts and combine my usual two posts -one looking back to the last session, one looking forward to the next- into one! (Well, the real reason is pressure of work -but it's a neat story anyway!)

Looking back to our last session on the international aspects of Catholic social teaching (on 12 November) I was struck by two competing views of the future that came up in the discussion: one which questioned whether a narrative about the universal basis for natural (and hence international) law would survive the growing influence of non-Western systems of thought (and hence might be described as pessimistic); and one which took comfort in the growing appropriation of existing standards of international law (say, in the fields of human rights) by new countries.

I suppose the proof of the pudding will be in the eating! As cropped up in the discussion, although Catholic teaching does make claim that there is a natural law, in principle open to human reason unaided by revelation (and thus might expect to take an optimistic view of the future), there is also enough reflection within that teaching on the difficulties of finite and sinful human beings in fact achieving that understanding of natural law to explain any existing or future problems in achieving agreement in fact. Mention in the discussion was made of the Catholic philosopher, Alasdair MacIntyre who has, particularly in his work since 1981, stressed the incoherence (and indeed impossibility) of thinking about ethics from outside particular intellectual traditions. (An article about MacIntyre can be found here.)

Looking forward to our next session (19 Nov) on the environment, I suppose one thing to note is that Pope Francis is due to release an Encyclical on this in the near future! (Perhaps we can come up with some suggestions!) One distinction that is sometimes made is between an environmental ethics based on the good for human beings (thus, global warming will harm human beings) and one based on damaging non-human entities in their own right (so even if no human were affected by (say) the loss of a particular species, that would (might?) still be a bad thing to happen.

A helpful article on existing Papal teaching on the environment is here.

An article on Eastern Orthodox perspectives on the environment is here.

An article on philosophical environmental theories is here.

And lastly, a famous 'thought experiment' you might like to reflect on!


At a conference in 1973, Richard Sylvan (then known as Richard Routley) proposed a science fiction thought experiment that helped to launch environmental ethics as a branch of academic philosophy... Routley’s thought experiment came to be known as the "Last Man" argument.

The thought experiment presents you with a situation something like this: You are the last human being. You shall soon die. When you are gone, the only life remaining will be plants, microbes, invertebrates. For some reason, the following thought runs through your head: Before I die, it sure would be nice to destroy the last remaining Redwood. Just for fun.

Sylvan’s audience was left to ponder. What, if anything, would be wrong with destroying that Redwood? Destroying it won’t hurt anyone, so what’s the problem? Environmental philosophers have been trying to answer that question ever since, and you will hear the question echoing through this book.

How would you answer it?

[From here.]