Dear Mr Figgis,
You are frankly kidding yourself if you think you can simply dispense
with 'value hierarchical thinking' in the way that you suggest.
Moreover, your assumption that this would even be a good thing is
open to question. Certainly it is true that man/woman and
human/nature have, as dualistic conceptual and (less ambiguously)
political systems, many important analogies. Indeed, there are
clearly many situations, in Third World countries in particular,
where exploitation of women and nature take place simultanteously anf
inextricably. I'm not challenging any such claims. What I'm pointing
out is that women - as human agents- make moral claims that no animal
or plant ever could. Humans of all kinds are moral subjects in unique
ways thanks to their unique capacities. If you doubt this
'seperation', ask yourself why there are women standing up for women,
but no animals standing up for animals. On the other hand, various
sorts of animals can have moral claims made on their behalf that are
dissimilar from most human claims. This is because every being has,
as Aristotle recognised, a 'good of its kind' that is not identical
to the good of some other kind. It is a mistake to replace the old,
crude, hierarchical dualism of human/nature with a new, crude,
allegedly non-hierarchical monism, especially if you conceive the
latter on the rather different model of gender equality. For example,
with few (mostly criminal) exceptions, issues of sexuality and
pornography don't arise in the caseof the human/nature dichotomy.
Nor do issues of
political or judicial representation, except at 'second hand' (claims
on behalf of, etc.). Recognising -difference-, whether of gender or
species, merely allows you to start to determine what is just with
respect to each different 'kind'. You can and must then start to
suggest provisional hierarchical valuations based (this is the
important bit) on differentiated, pluralised conceptual structures.
Replacing two crude lumps of beings with just one is not terribly
helpful.
Ecological problems are not finally about ontology or dichotomous
systems of thought - they are -problems- which require
discriminations to be made. Yes to hazel and birch here, no to
rhododendron and larch; yes to red squirrels, death to grey ones. In
an analogous way, it is often right to discriminate between men and
women in particular contexts, but always wrong to do so unfairly. It
isn't that we discriminate too much in our dualistic systems, but
rather too little, with either dualism or the monism you would prefer
to dump on us in its place !
By the way, it is insulting to say that someone is 'stupid' for
suggesting that the moral issue of flesh-eating ought to be put into
historical and geographical context. Rather it is narrow-minded
Westerners who imagine that their radical morality is universally
applicable - even to peoples with long histories of omnivorous diet
and pastoral existence - who best exemplify 'stupidity'.
Yours,
Greg Garrard
