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NICOLAI HARTMANN AND ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS IN DEBATE

Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to present an interpretation of Nicolai Hartmann’s thought in light of contemporary environmental ethics, with particular reference to the discussion on the value of nature. Although Hartmann does not belong to the tradition of environmental philosophy, the non-anthropocentric ontology and the anthropology he developed after distancing himself from Neo-Kantianism suggest a conception of the relation between man and nature that may offer sufficient ground to justify a broadening of the scope of morality to include the non-human natural world, which is why the expression “potential environmental ethics” can be legitimized. As the philosopher affirms in the work Das Problem des geistigen Seins, the openness to the value of the whole world is a fundamental trait of human essence. This perspective, which rests on the assumption that the totality of nature has an “intrinsic” and “objective” value, overlaps with the basic theses of some central positions within the environmental ethics debate, such as the position advanced in the last decades by Holmes Rolston III. Without forcing Hartmann’s philosophy towards goals that the author did not intend to reach, the paper aims at showing that the phenomenological observation of the real sphere brought him to discover problems and ecological dependencies, the centrality of which became evident only in the years following the beginning of the environmental crisis. Hence, although Hartmann’s thought belongs neither to the tradition of environmental ethics nor to its precursors, it is also undoubtedly different from all the ways of conceiving nature that have directly or indirectly led to the present condition.

Keywords
Nicolai Hartmann, nature, values, non-anthropocentrism, environmental ethics, ontology, anthropology, ecology.

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