Environmental Ethics

Volume 25, Issue 1, Spring 2003

Toward a Systemic Ethic

There are many different meanings of sustainability and precaution and no evident connection between the new normative concepts and the traditional moral theories. We seek an ethical basis for sustainability and precaution—a common framework that can serve as a means of resolving the conceptual ambiguities of the new normative concepts and the conflicts between new and traditional moral concepts and theories. We employ a systemic approach to analyze the past and possible future extension of ethics and establish an inclusive framework of ethical extension. This framework forms the basis for what we call a systemic ethic.