Environmental ethics studies how humans ought to relate to the natural world. Most environmental ethicists focus on rights of nonhumans or duties we have to the environment, usually generated by considerations of intrinsic value. They seek to answer two questions: What are our duties to natural entities, and Which entities have moral considerability. Authors often seek to prove that whatever humans possess that demands that we treat each other ethically—this is usually something the author believes the reader takes for granted as a basis for ethics (capacity to suffer, interests, etc.)—is also exhibited by nonhumans. Then, readers are forced by their own logic to treat nature in an ethical manner.

As opposed to ethics focused on moral considerability, virtue ethics responds to a different question; namely, what is the ideal human being? Virtue ethics has experienced a recent surge in popularity, but has not (until recently) been taken seriously by environmental ethicists. An ethic focused on an ideal for humans might seem out of place in environmental ethics, and in fact, environmental virtue ethics does not deal with determining our rights, duties, and obligations to nature the way traditional approaches to environmental ethics do. Instead, it attempts to discover what type of relations to nature—what character traits with regard to the environment—we, as humans, ought to have. This provides an alternative for philosophers and environmentalists who feel that issues of moral considerability, rights, and duties ought not to be the primary focus of environmental ethics.

Moreover, environmental virtue ethics has two advantages over traditional moral considerability approaches; it exhibits both an appreciation of complexity in the world and a simple metaethics which make it an ideal candidate for environmental ethics. Unlike utilitarian or Kantian ethical theories that rely on rules, virtue ethics does not try to boil down ethics to a simple univocal answer. One of the best qualities of virtue ethics is that it appreciates that ethical situations in the real world are complex. Environmental ethics is notoriously complex, often requiring sophisticated ecological and situational knowledge. The recent issue of logging in the Northwest, for example, could not be tackled without sufficient knowledge of the economics involved in logging as well as value-laden details about the loggers’ way of life, the relation of spotted owls to the trees being logged, the place of owls in the ecosystem, and so on. The best fit for this complexity is an ethic that gives proper weight to it. Virtue ethics demands attention to all the relevant details in order to make a judgment tailored to any given situation. The second benefit of virtue ethics is that it has little metaethical baggage. A lot of work done in environmental ethics is aimed at sorting out tricky metaethical issues such as the nature of intrinsic value and moral considerability. Virtue ethics can sidestep such questions. Despite such promise, however, major attempts at an environmental virtue ethic have critical problems which need attention before we can further assess their prospects.

In this paper, I first briefly describe current approaches to environmental virtue ethics. There are two different lineages of environmental virtue ethics; one championed by John O’ Neill and Paul W. Taylor, and the other founded by Thomas E. Hill. O’ Neill and Taylor craft a virtue ethics mixed with ideas from moral considerability theories. They argue that the flourishing of nature is a constituent part of human flourishing. However, they fail to prove what flourishing could be for nonhuman nature. Hill opts for a pure virtue ethics approach but ends up being anthropocentric. Hill and his followers have no way of arguing with people with differing opinions regarding what makes something a virtue. Ultimately, none of these authors can show that any treatment of nature is part of human flourishing.

One prominent author who combines virtue ethics with a moral considerability approach is John O’ Neill. He states the "best case for an environmental ethic" thus:

O’ Neill states his case in virtue ethical terms: he speaks not of best actions or best states of affairs, but the "best human life". In that sense O’ Neill is a virtue ethicist. However, he forgoes the advantage of metaethical simplicity by arguing for "strong" objective intrinsic values in nature. Even here, though, he incorporates virtue ethics. Objective intrinsic value, for O’ Neill, is the value an object has non-relationally (independently) of (human) valuers. By "strong" he means that "the non-relational properties of an object [value, in this case] are those that can be characterized without reference to other objects." In other words, he wants to say that nature has value in itself, regardless of humans. To get intrinsic values, O’ Neill looks to flourishing.

O’ Neill uses the virtue ethical notion of flourishing here to lay the foundation of his philosophy. Any entity which can flourish, literally or metaphorically, can be said to have a good of its own. O’ Neill seems to say that the good of a being is coincidental with its biological well-being. In his words, "A living thing can be said to flourish if it develops those characteristics which are normal to the species to which it belongs in the normal conditions for that species." In the above example, "the gardener knows what it is for greenfly to flourish [and] recognizes that they have their own good…"

Paul W. Taylor offers a similar approach in that it focuses on character traits and attitudes rather than actions and duties. According to Taylor, "character traits are morally good in virtue of their expressing or embodying a certain ultimate moral attitude, which I call respect for nature". Taylor explains his ethic in terms of a fundamental moral attitude, but his is a virtue ethic similar to O’ Neill’s. Like O’ Neill, Taylor stipulates that every living being has a "good-of-its-own." He differentiates between a being’s apparent good and its actual good: the apparent good is a subjective belief about what constitutes an entity’s actual good. Ethics that focus on preference satisfaction (e.g. utilitarianism) are interested in beings’ preferences or apparent goods. Taylor, like Aristotle, wants to reveal a gap between preference satisfaction and what is actually good for a being. Once an ethics turns from a being’s apparent good—and with it, talk of literal interests or desires—we can focus on what is actually good for a being, even if that entity does not have preferences or conscious interests. For Taylor, the good of nonhuman living beings is health.

Like O’ Neill, flourishing for a nonhuman is equated with biological growth and development typical for the specimen’s species-population.

To build an environmental philosophy these authors make three major moves. First, each employs the idea of ethical flourishing. Second, they claim that nonhumans (butterflies and greenfly) can have this flourishing. Finally, they argue that promoting the flourishing of things in nature is a constituent part of human flourishing.

In a sense these authors lay out a perfect combination of the traditional moral considerability approach and virtue ethics. But this approach suffers from some underlying problems. They fail to show that promoting the flourishing of nonhumans is part of human flourishing. O’ Neill recognizes this, and apologizes that he has offered only "a promissory note." Taylor says that his philosophy "cannot be proven to be true, either inductively or deductively;" the best justification he offers is that his overall "philosophical world view" is a "scientifically informed and well-ordered conception of nature and the place of humans in it." He allows the reader to take it or leave it.

The other problem is the move they make to apply the same idea of flourishing Aristotelians use for humans to nonhumans. In doing so they conflate moral norms with biological norms. Neither author feels the need to justify the claim that what is ethically good for humans is comparable to what is biologically good for other living things. They say that we "have no difficulty" speaking in such a way, and that it "makes perfect sense." Their claim might seem obvious, but when we turn to the human case we discover it is not. It seems unfitting to equate moral norms with biological norms. Growth and physical development in humans are not the same as virtue and attainment of character excellences. A tyrant might live a long, healthy life largely free of suffering, and he might father many children to carry on the genetic lineage. He might be a ‘good human’ biologically in the sense that he has two arms, a baseline temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, etc. Still, virtue ethics would want to say that such a vicious human fails to ‘flourish’. There is a difference between human goods, such as health, and what Taylor refers to as the ‘Human Good’. To ignore this difference is to equivocate with either ‘flourishing’ or ‘good’. Why, then, should we be any more disposed to make this inference with nonhumans?

According to O’ Neill and Taylor, a butterfly or greenfly flourishes when it follows the biological norm for its species. If these authors want to claim that there is a univocal sense in which humans and butterflies flourish, it must be in the biological sense. In the human case, biological and moral norms are clearly distinct; to claim they are the same for a butterfly would require extensive justification.

A separate but related problem also stems from what it means to be a biology-based norm versus a moral norm. To say that "mild winters are good for greenfly" (O’ Neill, 19) one must look to the average of the species-population to see what causes greenfly to flourish. If it becomes standard for humans to have three arms, it would be "good" for newborns to have three arms. Moral flourishing for human beings, however, is determined by character excellences. An ethical system such as virtue ethics exists not to describe what humans tend to do but instead prescribes an ideal for humans that most do not attain. In speaking biologically, norm is short for ‘normal’ in the sense of typical, but a moral norm is normative.

Both of these problems stem from the authors’ attempts to fuse virtue ethics with a moral considerability approach. They want to take something which commands ethical action in ourselves—the capacity for ‘flourishing’—and extend it to nonhumans. However, their attempted fusion neglects the advantages virtue ethics offers and ends up with the same types of problems as traditional approaches. They have traded talk of interests and desires for the more promising but ultimately problematic notion of flourishing. Thomas Hill is an example of how a more pure virtue ethics approach can avoid these problems.

Unlike Taylor or O’ Neill, Thomas Hill does not compromise between virtue ethics and moral considerability theories. In his 1983 work, "Ideals of Human Excellence and Preserving the Natural Environment," he attempts to justify the ideal that we ought to care for nature regardless of its instrumental uses to us. In his article, Hill probes the reason for making moral judgments. He says, "What is at issue is why we feel moral discomfort at the activities of those who admittedly value nature only for its utility." For those who have the same opinions as Hill, the answer is clear: such activities reveal undesirable character defects. Hill tries to show "that this ideal [caring for nature] is connected with other virtues, or human excellences, not in question." He concedes that environmentalism is not necessarily a virtue, but argues that indifference to nature indicates a lack in other areas requisite for excellence. As he says, "though indifference to nonsentient nature does not necessarily reflect the absence of virtues, it often signals the absence of certain traits which we want to encourage because they are, in most cases, a natural basis for the development of certain virtues." Hill calls on the common belief that

An anti-environmental attitude could reveal a deficient sense of humility. Other important deficiencies indifference to nature could indicate include an absence of aesthetic sensibilities and the ability to cherish what has enriched one’s life. This cherishing of that which brings us joy is connected to the virtue gratitude, which we want to encourage. People who use the environment to enrich their lives without caring for it show an inability to cherish, to show gratitude. People indifferent to or destructive of nature also often lack self-acceptance, which "has long been considered a human excellence, under various names."

What Hill has done is created a prototype of an environmental virtue ethic. Some traits are important for human excellence (e.g. humility towards people), and as such ought to be encouraged. Certain attitudes towards nature (e.g. cherishing) promote or reflect the presence of these traits. Therefore, we ought to encourage those attitudes towards nature. Hill’s approach sidesteps some of the problems that plague Taylor’s and O’ Neill’s approaches. Those authors claimed that nonhumans can flourish, and that this flourishing is part of our own well-being. Hill works with human flourishing in an Aristotelian sense just like Taylor and O’ Neill, but he moves straight to the argument that non-instrumental care for and valuing of nature is necessary for human flourishing. He is able to forego entirely the question of whether nonhumans can flourish, and in what senses.

However, Hill runs into trouble (by his own admission) as soon as he encounters "a sophisticated anti-environmentalist." For someone who disagrees, to say "[t]hat it is ideal to care for nonsentient nature beyond its possible use is just another way of expressing the general point" with which the critic disagrees. Hill’s response is to appeal to something with which an anthropocentric critic will agree, but the result is an anthropocentric ethic.

Followers of Hill have worked on fleshing out which character traits might best be named environmental virtues. Geoffrey Frasz suggests we look to paradigmatic environmentalists such as Aldo Leopold or Thoreau for examples of environmental virtues. However, he follows Hill in leaving ethics ultimately anthropocentric:

For Frasz, certain anthropocentric attitudes towards nature ought to be encouraged in order to attain true, anthropocentric virtues.

There is merit in the work of Hill and his followers, but there are two problems with their approach. The first is that Hill is anthropocentric. Traits we might want to call environmental virtues instead become attitudes necessary for true, anthropocentric virtues. The larger issue is that Hill cannot stand his ground against those who disagree with his sentiments about caring for nature. Hill’s claims of which traits are virtues rest on appeals to what is commonly thought or what has "long been considered a virtue." What he lacks is a solid philosophical foundation for what makes character trait X a virtue. He needs a philosophical foundation on which to build his environmental virtue ethics.

Environmental virtue ethicists like Taylor and O’ Neill, who keep some of the moral considerability approach, make three claims. The first is that we can meaningfully talk about ethical human flourishing. This is a good claim, and one which is at the core of virtue ethics. Their second claim is that nonhumans can be said to have the same type of flourishing. O’ Neill and Taylor justify this by saying that biological and ethical good are the same. That claim, which is clearly not true in the human case, needs justification and defense if we are to keep it. The final claim is that promoting the flourishing of nature is part of the flourishing of humans. This also needs further justification. By taking a pure virtue ethics approach the second claim can be dropped entirely, and so Hill focuses on defending the third claim. He needs only to show that care for nature is a constituent part of human flourishing. Unfortunately, this claim lacks a solid basis as it stands. An environmental virtue ethic shows promise; what is needed is a method to defend environmental virtues without appealing to their connection to specifically anthropocentric virtues.