『샌드 카운티 연감』의 생태학적 비전 : 앨도 리어폴드의 대지윤리 재조명

Abstract

According to Aldo Leopold, the homopocentric approach to nature is limited and biased and therefore man's role should be changed from conqueror of the land community to a plain member and citizen of it. This is why we should need biocentric understanding of ecosystem and a new moral called 'land ethic' clearly demonstrated in his A Sand County Almanac . Land ethic assumes that the boundary of ethic has been extended from white men to non-white women and also has to get into non-human beings in the land community. A focus of the ethic is laid on the ecosystem network of the land community rather than its individual members. The ethic asserts that it is right to tend to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community while it is wrong to tend otherwise. Clearly, it is not the individual organism that attracts moral consideration, but the community as a whole. Too heavy stress on the wholeness of the community would lead to the risk of a totalitarian perspective or ecofascism. It is also argued that the integral, stable ecological wholeness can be found only in the theoretical models, not in the reality. We need to be reminded, however, that Leopold's A Sand County Almanac aims to inspire us with a new moral for our environment in danger rather than to present any scientific ecological theories or models. Furthermore, the book demonstrates that he has a deep affinity with other individual non-human beings. He pays a great respect to each member as well as the community as a whole. He is hard to be labelled as 'totalitarian' although he accepts as one of its working principles the food-chain mechanism in which one member is eaten and served as energy source of another member. It is also noteworthy he is one of the rare professional scientist among the nature writers and that his land ethic admits the benefits of modernity and the inevitability of human intervention. Using the scientific ecological discourses, he tires to provide a revolutionary ethic for environmental preservation. At the same time, he keeps his balance admitting the basic necessity of modern technology.