Diotima: The Marist Undergraduate Philosophy Journal
name for what it means to be an advocate for the environment, because in doing so one should be helping the environment, not continuing to make it all worse.
IV. What Could be Next? Even though I am adamantly opposed to the use of ecosabotage as a moral action to save the not action, but rather a shift in the mentality of how we think about ourselves in relation to others, whether that be other human beings, or the environment. Carol Gilligan, in A Different Voice , focuses on the impact of Roe v. Wade and how that specific Supreme Court decision revealed the psychological inner workings of how women act in relation to themselves and others. Gilligan surmises her findings as, “One framework for thinking about human life and relationships which has long been associated with development and progress can give way to a new way of thinking that begins with the premise that we live not in separation but in relationship.” 8 This philosophy is ground-breaking as it proposes for humans, no matter how they identify, to view their actions in relation to everyone else’s. For so long we have lived in a world defined by sub-divisions that have created massive impacts on the way in which humans see, define, and act around each other. Gilligan is asking every person to regress, in a sense, to a more basic definition of personhood in that we are all human which is a thought that had to be true before we started dividing ourselves. Now, you may be wondering where the connection is between this “big-shift” I emphasized, and the ethics of care, but it is quite clear. This should be reframing the way we think about climate change to be based in an ethic of care, rather than committing harmful acts of ecosabotage and hoping for the same outcome. Deane Curtin proposes a unique correlation between the environmental movement and the Ethics of Care that clears up this perspective a bit. He writes, “Whether or not nonhuman animals have rights, we certainly can and do care for them. This includes cases where we regularly experience care in return… as well as cases
8 Carol Gilligan, “Letter to the Readers,“ in A Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Harvard University Press, 2016): XXVI.
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