Integrity and Uses of Nature

Abstract

I contrast the integrity of nature understood as a community with the integrity of nature understood as an organism. Whereas the latter is typified by nature in its pristine condition and precludes almost all human uses of nature and so excludes the human from the natural, I argue that the integrity of nature (ecological integrity) allows for human uses of nature to sustain human life when nature is understood as a community, which includes humans among its members. Cultural landscapes, understood in a narrow sense, are manifestations of such uses and of man's being in nature on nature's terms. An example of a literary expression of this view is Knut Hamsun's Growth of the Soil. As an ethical value, ecological integrity imposes certain moral constraints on our uses of nature, on the manner in which humans live and co-exist.