Egalitarianism From Chauvinism

Sartre’s ethics is perhaps one of the most egalitarian systems of ethics we have studied in class thus far. In a system in which all human kind is a freedom (or are freedoms, rather) and are condemned to be responsible for each choice they make, all humans are equally responsible for one another. As a result each person is equally accountable to all others everywhere at every time – as a human being. Therefore, there is never a moment in which one can escape their responsibility (one is even responsible for attempts to flee responsibility).  Unable to escape the weight of our responsibility to others and having it such that others are unable to be divorced from their responsibility toward us, everyone is equally free and equally responsible at all times.

However, the equal treatment of all humans does come at a price; the value of humanity is placed above that all of other substances – organic or inorganic (i.e. animals and plants in the former, and things such as the soil and oceans in the latter). This anthropocentric viewpoint is the main issue I take with existential ethics. It is true that all humans have the ability to set for themselves the project of placing value on non-human entities, however, by denying value for these entities in of themselves and treating them only as a means our attitudes them are entirely self-satisfying only. Additionally, there is no condition of our freedom that requires our projects to place value in these entities – we can hope that we will do so out of desire to protect our environment and our way of life but this is not necessitated by our freedom. Beyond this, when conflicts of interest arise between two or more projects – say that we want a road to be built through a forested region to ease travel but we also feel an obligation to protect the natural habitats created by the forest – then we have no value system to aid us in our decision making process though many would want to argue that value should be placed in one particular project over another for reasons external to people. Here a proponent of Existentialism may argue that it is up to us to create value for one or the other, but this does not aid in the process of resolving which project is most suitable to pursue.

My want here is not to dismiss Existential Ethics but rather to argue for an amendment to create a holistic approach which will not only grant freedom but allow for an integration of environmental ethical theories whose approach is to consider not only humans but all components of a given ecosystem as valuable – though humans are the still only ones with freedom in the meaning which Sartre adopts.