THEORY
have fallen back onto hierarchies of value which always concede priority
tohuman interests in all critical inter-species conflicts.^21 Although ‘state of
being’ ecocentrics have resisted the path of issuing ethical injunctions, the
centrality in their work of the individual self also fails to avoid the trap
of anthropocentrism, and they too concede priority to humans in conflicts
of interest. Indeed, an ecocentric position that denied the existence of a
clear and morally relevant dividing line between humankind and the rest
of nature is, arguably, untenable. Certainly, any principle along the lines of
biocentric egalitarianism would be impossible to implement. Taking it to the
extreme, how could a human justify killing any animal or fish, or consum-
ing a vegetable, bean or berry? All involve some restraint on another entity’s
capacity to live and to flourish. Humans must place themselves above other
species and entities ‘simply to live’ (Luke 1988 :521). No ecocentric denies that
humans have the right to live and to flourish, but to do so inevitably involves
thedenial of other entities that same right. If it is accepted that a pure non-
anthropocentric position is impossible or, at least that every deep ecologist
employs some form of anthropocentric argument, then it is a nonsense to
talk about an ecocentric–anthropocentric dichotomy in such stark terms.
Amore fruitful approach regards these philosophical debates as ‘between
relative positions concerning the moral weight we should give to the nat-
ural environment in relation to human interests’ (Taylor 1991 : 580). It is
helpful also to distinguish between ‘strong anthropocentrism’, which retains
the Sole Value Assumption, and ‘weak anthropocentrism’, which concedes
that nature may have some non-instrumental value.^22 Thus weak anthropo-
centrism means that the human–nature relationship need not always be
reduced to purely human interests (Barry1999a). Rather than define differ-
ent perspectives according to which side of the ecocentric/anthropocentric
divide they lie, they can be located along acontinuum, which moves from
ecocentrism through various gradations of anthropocentrism to ‘strong
anthropocentrism’.
If the ecocentric/anthropocentric divide is redundant, where should the
boundary of ecologism lie? Which perspectives fall within ecologism, and
which fall outside? One obvious division would include within ecologism all
weak anthropocentric or intermediate perspectives that reject the Sole Value
Assumption. This delineation encompasses all those perspectives that make
thequalitatively significant step of conceding some intrinsic or inherent
value to the non-human world. Thus a crucial defining feature of ecolo-
gism might be that it includes all perspectives which concedehumans will
always be the distributors of value, but they are not necessarily the only bearers of
value.
It is not always clear what practical implications might flow from the attri-
bution of value to non-human entities. Do animals or (parts of) nature have
interests and/or rights? If so, what does that mean in practical terms? What
duties do we owe towards nature? This chapter has shown the difficulties