Eve According to Reasonableness

Abstract

Abstract: The environmental crisis besieges the lives of people in affluent and in underdeveloped countries. Both massive phenomena such as climate change and local problems such as waste disposal locations show the human unbalance with nature. I claim in this paper that anthropocentric responses such as techno-optimism, sustainable development, and future generations are unable to tackle the deep roots of the crisis. We need an approach that looks inside human character and promotes an ethics in balance with the environment that overcomes the limits of moral and political theories. EVE (environmental virtue ethics) is on good track in proposing virtues that focus the human character on nature. However, single virtues are not enough. We need a coherent and all-round account of human character founded on ‘reasonableness’ as the contemporary heir of Aristotelian phronesis. I claim that reasonableness, once it endorses a biocentric outlook, can guide human choices toward a re-balancing with nature.