158 Andrew Light
9.3 Restoration as a Source of Normative Ecological Relationships
There are no doubt many ways to describe the value of nature. We are natural beings our-
selves and so nature has value as an extension of the value that we recognize in ourselves.
The resources we extract from nature are valuable at least insofar as we value the things
that we construct out of those resources as well as their role in sustaining our lives. And
certainly there is something to the intuition that other natural entities and whole systems
are valuable in some kind of noninstrumental sense even if we can be skeptical that this
sort of value offers suffi cient resources to justify moral obligations for their protection. Is
there anything else?
Consider again Scheffl er’s argument about the value of relationships. When applied to
considerations of the environment this approach resonates somewhat with the focus in
environmental ethics on fi nding noninstrumental grounds for the value of nature. But rather
than locating these grounds in the natural objects themselves an extension of Scheffl er’s
views would fi nd this value in relationships we have with the natural environment either
(1) in terms of how places special to us have a particular kind of value for us, or (2) in
the ways that particular places can stand for normative relationships between persons. On
reason (1) certainly Scheffl er would have trouble justifying the value of such relationships
between humans and nonhumans, let alone humans and ecosystems, using his criteria, but
I think there is no a priori hurdle in doing this especially if we can separate Scheffl er’s
claim about the noninstrumental value of such relationships from the possible obligations
that follow from them. Focusing just on the value of these relationships we can imagine
having such substantive normative relationships with other animals whereby the value we
attach to such relationships is not purely instrumental. We do this all the time with our
relationships with pets. And why not further with nature, more broadly conceived, or more
specifi cally with a particular piece of land? Because the value of such relationships is not
purely instrumental reciprocity is not a condition of the normative status of such relation-
ships, but rather only a sense that one has noninstrumental reasons for holding a particular
place as important for oneself.
For some like Katz, the moral force behind such a suggestion would best be found in
a claim that nature is a moral subject in the same or a very similar way that we think of
humans as moral subjects. So just as we can conceive of being in relationships with other
humans as being morally important, we can conceive of being in relationships with any
other nonhuman subjects as important in the same way. Again, though, this claim rests on
a form of nonanthropocentrism that Scheffl er, and probably most other people, would fi nd
objectionable. And it would miss an important part of what I’m trying to argue for here:
it is not only the potential subjectivity of nature that makes it the possible participant in
a substantive normative relationship but it is the sense that nature, or particular parts of
nature, can be “presumptively decisive reasons for action.” Being attentive to such a rela-
tionship can be assessed as good or bad. If I have a special attachment to a place, say, the