Dialogue and Universalism

Volume 8, Issue 11/12, 1998

Selected Contributions to the Third World Congress of Universalism, Part II

The Ethics of Sustainability
What Should Be Preserved

I argue that irreducible multiple conceptions of moral obligation may be found in efforts to define "sustainability." Individualistic ethics currently dominate and will probably continue to shape discussions of natural resource depletion. Non-individualistic, organic ethics (such as defended by Edmund Burke), which focus on entire generations of humans, are useful for overcoming problems of intergenerational identification. Finally, however, an expansion of the purview of ethics to the entire biotic community, as suggested by Aldo Leopold, represents a third scale of concern and obligation. By means of an articulated, scalar bequest package, incorporating each of these disparate foci, I outline a hierarchical ethic of sustainability.