On The Innovation Of Theory Of Ecological Ethics

Eco-ethics is a newly established science in the early 20th century and it has been developing rapidly since then. The formulation and development of eco-ethics not only based on solid realistic foundation, which includes the more and more serious eco-crisis, the negative influence of industrial civilization and the persistent efforts of resolving the eco-crisis by various kinds of strength, but on rich theoretical foundation as well. The theoretical foundation includes the post-modern turning of modern western philosophy, the contemporary turning of modern ethics and the positive push of natural science such as ecology and systematic science, etc.Compared with traditional ethics, eco-ethics is obviously innovative, especially in the following five aspects: (1) it extends the moral subjects to non-human beings such as animals, living creatures and the ecosystem, etc. This idea breaks human beings' fixation to himself and offers theoretical recourses for sustainable development strategy; (2) It understands nature's external nature value from a new angle and proves the existence of nature's intrinsic value in terms of teleology and holism and this adds duties to human beings; (3) It replaces the machinery, one-sided traditional ethical thinking way by organic and holistic thinking way and overcomes the separation between fact and value, truth and good and beauty. This makes the relationship between man and nature movies from being opposed toeach other to being harmonious; (4) It Surmounts the traditional valuation standard, which confines to mankind's interests only, and regards the interest of non-human beings as the standard of moral valuation. This expands justice to the field of later generation and nature; (5) It promotes people's moral cultivation state from human beings' equal realm to animals' equal realm, to the equal realm of living beings, and to the equal realm of the whole ecological system, and makes it possible that people surmount the moral state of daily life and reaches a more meaningful living state.As a new discipline of science, however, eco-ethics unavoidably has some defects: having a great number of theoretical schools but lacking unified organic system; being full of ideals but lacking a feasible operation system. It is certain, however, that different ideas and ways of studying eco-ethics will move from differentiation to integration, that eco-ethics will be accepted by more and more people as long as the rules of eco-ethics is more concrete, the relationship between eco-ethics and law is closer and the education of eco-ethics is more popular.