생명 중심주의 환경철학에서 자유의 의미

Abstract

The biocentric outlook on nature presented by Biocentric Environmental Philosophy affirms our fellowship with other living creatures and portrays human beings as members of the Earth's community who have equal moral standing with other living members of the community. According to it, not only human life but the life of other creatures has to do with the idea of freedom. Of course, with respect to free will, autonomy, and social freedom, we are different from animal and plants. But there is an another sense of freedom. This meaning of freedom, unlike the others, applies equally to nonhuman living things. It is a concept of freedom that is of central importance for every creature which has a good of its own it is striving to realize. For being free in this sense is being in a position to be able to preserve one's existence and further one's good, and being unfree in this sense is being unable to do these things. The sense of freedom concerned here makes it equivalent to absence of constraints. There are four types of constraints, as follows : External positive, Internal positive, External negative, Internal negative. I conclude that in one important sense of the word, "freedom" applies to animal and plants as much as it does to humans. Freedom in the sense of absence of constraints is an instrumental good for all living things. It is valuable to nonhuman for the same reason it is valuable to humans. Recognition of this kind of freedom and of its great value for every living thing is one of the major links between human and nonhuman.