On Birnbacher's Thoughts Of Environmental Ethics

Birnbacher is professor of Duesseldorf in Germany. He mainly works on environmental ethics and modern medical ethics research and he is a representative of utilitarianism. The thoughts of ecological ethics are the focus field of study during Bimbacher's early period and he has a unique perspective to the relationship between man and nature. Unfortunately, the number of people who study his thoughts is very few in domestic. Thus, the paper attempts to introduce systematically the thoughts of Birnbacher's ecological ethics. It elaborates his thoughts on rights of animals, substitution of natural objects, traditional environmental values and new foundation for environmental ethics. Finally, it sorts out and gives an analysis to Birnbacher's thoughts and finally refines the theoretical contributions and limitations of his thoughts.Having analyzed deeply to the thoughts of Birnbacher, we would easily to find his thoughts has characteristic of utilitarianism. Firstly, on rights of animals, from the perspective of preference utilitarianism, he maintains non-sentient animals should not be included in the area of moral concern. Secondly, on substitution problem, Birnbacher maintains in a natural system, provided that the over-all value or external value can be guaranteed, substitution between two animals or two plants is allowed. This reflects utilitarian principle that maximizes the benefits. Finally, in building a new system of environmental ethics, he proposes want-regarding norms is more superior than ideal-regarding norms and we should give priority to want-regarding environmental norms in practice, which reflects the utilitarian focuses on practical feature. Therefore, these thoughts are mostly from the consideration of utilitarianism and based on human interest. Thus, his thoughts are manifestation of action-utilitarianism, his basic attitude is in any sense to pursue good results for human beings or every sentient beings. As a result, the thoughts of Birnbacher are still an interpretation to classical utilitarianism and do not go beyond the perspective of utilitarianism. Nevertheless, Birnbacher, after all, includes sentient animals into the scope of moral concern and provides theoretical foundation for building new system of environmental ethics, which is worthy of recognition. In a word, Birnbacher's thoughts of environmental ethics still contain much creative thinking and provide new views for solving the problems of environmental ethics.