Original scientific paper
ON THE SEARCH FOR A WORLDWIDE ECOLOGICAL ETHOS
Ivan Cifrić
; Faculty of Philosophy, Zagreb
Abstract
The move of the ecological discourse from the economic and technological towards the ethical aspects resembles a new theoretical and practical challenge. The ecological ethos are based in cultures and religions. In those it is ethos which "firmly" organize life and regulate the basic ecological relation: that between man and nature.
The author criticizes the sociocultural context of the demand for a "worldwide ecological ethos" and shows some of the approaches to the defining of the worldwide ecological ethos: "abstract universalism" (minimal consensus), "normative / cultural relativism" and "provincialist anthropocentrism". However, the author pleads for a concept of a "pluralistic ecological ethos" — the universal being reflected in the relative — pointing at the need of survival of versatile cultures on the Earth.
The demand for a worldwide ecological ethos comes up in a developed industrial society as the result of (a) globalization and (b) limitations of its economic ethos in terms of a sustainable development and ecological stability. This is an argument for the demands for a "worldwide ecological ethos", but only under specified conditions. The worldwide ecological ethos presents a need to search for ethic potentials in suppressed cultures and religions.
Keywords
cultural pluralism; industrial society; modernization; religion; worldwide ecological ethos
Hrčak ID:
141504
URI
Publication date:
15.1.1997.
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