Here in the West, we have exorcised the spirits and cut ourselves loose from the living web of the world…we are strangers in the world; we no longer belong. Because it is separated from us, we can act on it, abstract from it, use it, take it apart; we can wreck it, because it is another, it is alien. We may feel despair, grief and guilt about the damage we cause—but we seem unable to change the way we live. How has this happened?..
-David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance
In “Everything is Sacred: Iktomi Lessons in Ethics without Value and Value without Anthropocentrism” (EIS), professor, Brian Burkhart, argues for a non-hierarchical environmental ethics that views all things as sacred. In this essay, Burkhart challenges his audience to conceptualize the interconnectedness of living and non-living things in a way that aligns with the Indigenous perspective and the Native American folklore that inspires it. As sacred learners we are invited to use our imagination (in the most sophisticated sense) to understand wise, old, Spider Grandmother and her web of kinship that delicately symbolizes the coherency between all of nature’s relations (Burhart 194). Burkhart explains how this web empowers non-living things with aliveness that is gained simply through their relational partnership with living things, challenging the traditional Western definition of “life” and what it means to be a living organism. He says the “life is fundamentally the capacity for kinship” (194) within this worldview, and that Western philosophy’s insistence on foundationalism has “delocalized” the world in such a way that even inherently related things cannot remain connected in any meaningful way (Burkhart 195). Burkhart argues that, alternatively, a “localized” perspective is helpful in honouring the movement and changeability of everything we experience in nature and that this variation, diversity, and natural “unfolding” ought to be reflected in our philosophy which has often depicted a much more static view of the world (196). He takes special issue with what he refers to as “the intrinsic/instrumental value problem” (200) within Western moral theory and the discord taking place between this problem and Indigenous conception of sacredness (Burkhart 201). Burkhart stresses that, unlike Western thought, “there are no levels of value” (200) within this notion of sacredness and that “Everything has all the value there is. Everything is sacred…There is no such thing as significance in the sense that something has more value than something else” (201). Initially, this notion may seem threatening to Western theory that depends upon the concept of “value”, the passive acceptance of this concept, and the hierarchical structures that give higher worth to some things over others. However, upon closer examination, we (Western thinkers) may find that the Indigenous conception of sacredness is not as incompatible with our theory as it first seems, and that our foundational principles need not rob “lower” things of their deserved sacredness. But before I help to show my fellow thinkers why this is, I would like to make it clear that the purpose of my post is neither to dispute the authenticity of the Indigenous approach to conceptualizing sacredness nor is to disregard the metaphorical web of interconnectedness shared by Burkhart in his essay, as I strongly believe that Indigenous perspectives continue to (and ought to) lead the way in environmental ethics. Rather, my purpose is to show the ways in which this non-anthropocentric web is, in fact, consistent with foundationalism and how these two seemingly opposing views may coexist in harmony with each other. In this post I will argue that teleological ethics does not require different levels of value and that a non-anthropocentric view is compatible with foundationalism and a teleological moral framework. My arguments are meant to honour the conception of the world summarized by Burkhart whilst ensuring that our natural rights do not get lost in its web of multiplicity and interconnectedness.
Firstly, foundationalism does not, at its core, run counter to Native American folklore that shows the profound interconnectedness of all things. From an epistemic standpoint, to say that “everything is sacred” is, after all, a foundational claim. The main difference is that the claim that “everything is sacred” is the only foundational claim within the Indigenous conception of knowledge and morality insofar as it solely justifies and supports the web of coherence it adheres to — it does not depend on other beliefs for its justification. In “EIS”, Burkart argues that there is a concerning presupposition in Western philosophy which assumes that “things can only become concrete enough for grounding knowledge or being that around which value and life can be framed when they are not truly things in their multiplicity in locality, from the land. Knowledge through abstracted and delocalized things seem to create something permanent or static only by being abstracted from locality where things and knowledge float free from the land” (196). What Burkhart means by this, is that the principles which form the basis of Western moral theory find legitimacy specifically by being detached from everything else. That is, they hover, often “objectively”, in a stratosphere high above the land, and it is this disconnection from the land which Burkhart finds to be most concerning. He argues that morality ought to be found in “locality” (which is a term that he associates with the Indigenous perspective), and that morality should reflect our relations with the land (Burkhart 197). Interestingly, Burkhart adds that there may even be a “fundamental premise” behind the view of universal sacrality, however, it is not so much a premise as it is a conscious encounter with reality, namely, “experience”. He says, that from an Indigenous perspective, “everything that humans experience has value and instruction” (197), which means that everything we experience is, necessarily sacred, and if a thing were to have so-called “value”, it would be equal to that of everything else (Burkhart 197).
By assuming that the Western thinker "in thinking teleologically is also thinking anthropocentrically” (207), Burkhart’s impression of Western teleological thought would fall into the category of what Dr. Leon Kass refers to as one of “the cruder views of teleology” (253) in his book, Toward a More Natural Science. In this book Kass explains that,
Many of these cruder views take their bearings from the fact that plants and animals live not only by and for themselves, but also and always in relation to other plants and animals. One animal’s substance is another animal’s food. Men are food for worms, worms are food for ducks, ducks are food for men. Mutual service rather than predation is sometimes the dominant relation: Bumblebees are the indispensable fertilizers of clover, and the nectar of clover becomes food for the bees. Plants fix and use carbon dioxide released by animal respiration and, in turn, give off oxygen consumed by animals… (253)
Kass says that it is these relations between organisms and the salient structures in nature which give a sort of permission for organisms to utilize one another in the way that they do. As a result, nature is seen as “one grand system, an organic whole, in which and for which every living thing plays its proper and necessary part. Each animal and plant has a worldly purpose, outside of itself, relative to and for others” (253). Kass refers to this as an “external” or “relative” teleology and that, if interpreted anthropocentrically, “all of nature is seen as being for the use and benefit of man” (253). Presumably, this is the kind of teleology that Burkhart is wary of and rightfully so. However, ancient Aristotelean teleology does not, in fact, endorse this cruder view and may even share a similar purpose with the perspective of locality. Although, Burkhart is correct that Aristotle’s teleological virtue ethics sees happiness as “the end to which our actions are directed” (Aristotle 15), Aristotle makes clear in Nicomachean Ethics, that a distinct account of what he means by “happiness” in this context is imperative, and would likely be disappointed at the thought of his ethics providing a foundational basis for 18th century hedonism. Aristotle believed that a thing’s purpose can be found through grasping its distinct function, and since humans are born with the capacity to develop rationality as well as a soul that acts in accordance with this rational principle, human purpose must be intertwined with performing this function well (15-16). Within this theory, everything has a unique purpose, and “all creatures are drawn towards the perfection of their own nature” (Aristotle 301). Thus, Aristotle concludes that happiness is “an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue” (16) and that “happiness demands complete goodness” (21). Furthermore, Aristotle does, in fact, honour the “aliveness” of everything through his belief that “all things existing by nature have in themselves a principle of motion [or “change”; kinesis] and coming to rest…” (Kass 275). Like the perspective of locality, Aristotle’s theory acknowledges a self-moving property in all things including earth, fire, air, and water, which seems to reflect a deep understanding that all of nature is alive and connected. This is not an anthropocentric view of the world, but rather, a view that gives a purposeful account of nature that is in accordance with natural law (which I will explain later). Finally, like Burkhart’s perspective of locality, Aristotle’s teleological virtue ethics does not require different levels of value since Aristotle did not share the utilitarian notion of value and its intrinsic/instrumental distinctions.
My final argument deals with the concept of universal sacrality, specifically its moral implications, since I take no issue with this concept from a strictly environmental perspective. However, in “EIS”, Burkhart expresses his hope that the concept of universal sacrality will lay the groundwork for morality in locality which is a hope that I cannot share. Morality cannot safely rest on this foundation because its conditions accommodate moral relativism. But before I explain why the perspective of locality (as it is illustrated by Burkhart) allows for this, I will first explain “moral relativism” itself. In Moral Relativism: A Short Introduction, author, Neil Levy gives a clear definition of what “relativism” is and says that, “To say that something is relative is to say that what it is is, in some way dependent upon — relative to — something else…The truth of [a given] judgement depends upon the context in which it is made” (15). Because of this comparative quality, relativism can have serious implications when our moral judgments take on this characteristic. Levy warns that when morality is perceived as being relative, moral judgements are only true and false relative to something else which means that there is no justifiable standard by which relative claims can be measured (14). Hence, moral relativism occurs under conditions that do not acknowledge objective moral values or foundational beliefs that do not require further justification. Worryingly, the perspective of locality fits this description insofar as it rejects (or simply does not accommodate) “delocalized” foundational principles. Burkhart says that to understand morality in the context of locality one must see that “everything is sacred. Everything has the same value” (203). In “EIS”, he explains that within the perspective of locality,
Everything that is alive is sacred and everything that is sacred is alive since both of these propositions reference being in kinship relations. Further, since every single thing, every grain of sand is sacred, there are no levels of value. Everything has all the value there is. Everything is sacred. Something may affect the things around it to a degree that we as Western thinkers might see as significant, but this is to miss the Native point about sacredness. There is no such thing as significance in the sense that something has more value than something else. (Burkhart 201)
While this may be an ethical way to experience the world from an environmental point of view, it does not give us any moral guidance as to how we ought to act toward our relations (either living or non-living), or in general. Presumably, the reason for this is revealed in Burkhart’s statement that “placing values on our relations in advance (through delocality) is misguided…Because of the subtly of our relations and because of the interconnectedness of our being-in-relationship, it is really not possible to know in advance how we ought to act toward our relations. To attempt to construct right action in advance or external to our relationship, just as with constructing value in the abstract, is an attempt to construct these from outside of kinship, from delocality” (202). This quote suggests that universal sacrality cannot provide a foundation for right and wrong action nor does it hope to, which begs the question: How do we avoid moral relativism if everything is equally sacred? What sort of morality arises from locality if it does not acknowledge right and wrong action? Again, I must stress that Burkhart’s main concern is anthropocentrism in environmental ethics. However, he does extend his argument further but offering his readers an idea of what a non-anthropocentric moral theory might look like and imagines it as a theory where “relational values” ground our decisions about what the right and wrong course of action is (Burkhart 220-221). But suppose we find a foundation for moral theory from the perspective of locality. Can foundational principles (if they naturally originate in locality) harmonize with the Indigenous web of interconnectedness? What if, when we came to the fork in the path, there was a third choice, a pathway between “locality” and “delocality” that was a merging of the two perspectives rather than a splitting of them?
The reason why the perspective of locality needs foundational principles is because it is an otherwise relative theory insofar as relationships between two or more things in the web of interconnectedness are understood comparatively which leaves infinite room for cultural and/or historical disagreement about moral standards. And while this may seem, to some, like a tolerant and respectful framework from which to honour cultural diversity, Levy reminds us of why a relative approach to morality is not in our best interest, warning that “moral relativism leaves us unable to make necessary criticisms of human rights abuses, of the systematic oppression of women, indeed, of the very destruction wreaked by the colonial powers on their colonies. Judging other cultures is not the first step down a road that leads to genocide; it is the necessary preliminary to coming to the aid of victims of injustice” (56). Luckily, teleology is one way we can counter these effects because it operates in accordance with natural law which provides standards that are independent from human-made laws, and more importantly, cannot be removed because they reside within nature. Nature reveals this law. Given that everything has equal intrinsic value within the Indigenous perspective of locality, teleological principles may have hope of surviving within it. For example, if everything is sacred, can we assume that all these sacred things have a purpose (or end goal)? If this is the case, then each thing necessarily requires certain conditions to achieve their “end” or purpose, and once we discover what the form in question’s purpose is exactly, we can determine what conditions are necessary for it to achieve its “end”. Anything that interferes with the form’s ability to achieve its end is unjust basically. As I have illustrated, this application of (uncrude) teleology does not require either value distinctions or a hierarchy of value. If the perspective of locality were willing to accept this as part of its foundational principle that “everything is sacred”, then Indigenous and Western perspectives can both be honoured within one, unifying, moral theory.
Again, my arguments are not meant to obscure Indigenous locality and even agree with Burkhart that contemporary philosophers ought to “inject some locality into their thinking” (220). However, in closing, I will postulate that the West’s obsession with foundational knowledge is not entirely unwarranted. Our natural rights depend upon the existence of objective values being acknowledged and a teleological moral framework achieves this end without the need for value distinctions. If we hope to move and experience the world in a cohesive, non-anthropocentric, web-like manner, there must be a merging of tradition and thought. We must see the ways in which our ethics align as opposed to focusing on the differences.
Sincerely,
Heather
Works Consulted
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by J. Thomson. Penguin Books, 2004.
Burkhart, Brian. “Everything is Sacred: Iktomi Lessons in Ethics without Value and Value
without Anthropocentrism.” Course pack for PHIL 443: Moral Theory, compiled
by Warren Heiti, Fall 2024, Vancouver Island University.
Crumbley, Jack S. An Introduction to Epistemology. 2nd ed. Peterborough, Broadview Press,
2009.
Kass, Leon. Toward a More Natural Science. The Free Press, 1985.
Levy, Neil. Moral Relativism: A Short Introduction. Oneworld Publications, 2002.
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