Abstract
The causes of the environmental crisis are many and diverse, and so are the possible ways to handle and eventually resolve this crisis. This essay advances one of such possible ways which results from relating the following two considerations. On the one hand, a fundamental kind of cause attributed to this crisis, on a theoretical level, concerns the perspectives used to determine or weigh the value of nature for humans. The analysis of these perspectives is the primary task of environmental ethics. On the other hand, on a practical level, the usual causes of the environmental damages of great magnitude are the business acts of corporations. Corporations, for instance, are the ones extracting enormous resources from nature and likewise the ones dumping wastes into it on a large scale. These considerations give rise to the question of which theory in environmental ethics will appropriately serve as a moral guide for corporations in their dealings with the natural environment. In accordance with the type of ethical standing that can be attributed to corporations, this essay endorses a rationalist ethical perspective in the Kantian form to address the said question.
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