A Wanted Environment – Alive or Dead

Béla MESTER
A Wanted Environment – Alive or Dead
Institution: 
Institute for Philosophical Research of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary
Author's email: 
mester@webmail.phil-inst.hu
Abstract: 

My paper offers a special approach of the environmental thought: an analysis of the possible parallels between the protection of our terrestrial and extraterrestrial environments. The first problem is the status of the objects of dead nature on Earth and in outer space, in three regards: (a) the dangers of the effects of a human activity for other humans; (b) our obligation to preserve an object for a research in the future; (c) preserving an object because of its inherent beauty. In this article I will interpret some elements of the reasoning of the environmentalist regarding the cosmic pollution as analogies of similar ideas about the protection of the biosphere. By my analysis the basis of this analogy has its roots in an element of the tradition of the western philosophy, the parallelism of the description of humans as parts of the macrocosm, mesocosmos, and as microcosms in the Stoical philosophy. Finally, I will reason for the impossibility of any value which is independent from human interests.

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