One such problem is the question of how, at the level of theoretical reflection, one may grasp and interpret the relationship of human to nature as a whole and to non-human beings, principally animals, which together also enter into the composition of nature. But it is also impossible to avoid the problem of our relationship to plants and even the inorganic substances which are in origin linked to organic substances. Examples of thinkers who have posed such questions without being primarily oriented towards ecology might include G. Patzig, J. Habermas and E. Tugendhat.1 Particularly in German philosophical literature, there have been surprising attempts to update and adapt various traditional philosophical motifs and the intellectual legacy of the past. The Kantian tradition, particularly, is being used anew to serve the needs of philosophical reflection on ecological themes. Thus, for example, G. Patzig2 speaks about a "practical philosophy within the bounds of pure reason." He discusses, in a way similar to such thinkers as Habermas3 and Tugendhat,4 the philosophical interpretation of our relation to non-human beings on the basis of Kant’s definition of the ethically relevant. Another example of the adaptation of Kant’s and Habermas’s motifs is Otto’s5 "plaidoyer" for a soberly conceived and cultivated anthropocentrism, which is the basic position of this author as well, taking account of the longer term interests of man. Like T. Hayward,6 it tries to interpret moral relations to non-human beings on the basis of a deepened understanding of what is characteristically human. V. Hösle likewise brings Hegel’s objective idealism up to date in a surprising way as the central philosophical support for an adequate grasp of the human relationship to nature.

Czech thinkers, too, have made similar attempts. Examples include Kohák’s adaptation (inter alia) of Husserl’s motifs,8 Šmajs’s attempt to use Hartmann’s conception of the layeredness of being (Seinsgeschichteheit),9 and also the philosophizing reflections of practical ecologists, among whom we should mention J. VavrouÑek, who — inspired by Albert Schweitzer and more recently by Al Gore — has been seeking stimuli for changes in human value orientations towards spiritual values compatible with the idea of long-term sustainable life in the Judaeo-Christian tradition.10

An earlier study "On the Significance of the Relationship between Morality and Legality" mentioned the dispute between the anthropocentric and biocentric approaches. In this context I wish only to indicate the pregnant summary of this problematic made by R. KoláÍ. On the basis of an assessment of the abundant philosophical literature devoted to this theme, he emphasized the organic linkage of both approaches. An adequately conceived biocentrism must include both approaches: an adequately conceived biocentrism must include awareness of the necessary anthropocentric starting position of humankind; and, conversely, any seriously considered anthropocentrism must integrate the broader biocentric perspective.11

A cultivated anthropocentricism which in accord with H. Jonas12 takes into account the long-term perspective of human needs and interests seems better justified on the theoretic level and more easily applied on the practical level. A one-sidedly manipulative and thoughtless conception of human interests threatens nature itself,13 which from the ethical point of view represents an historically new situation. The new imperative, which Jonas here (with reference to Kant) puts forward, is then: "Act in such a way that the effects of your action should be compatible with the continuance of truly human life on earth."14 Our interest in the continuance of nature is in this way motivated anthropocentrically as an unavoidable starting point, i.e., a perspective which allows us to pose such questions at all. The "subject matter" which appears within this perspective, however, includes the whole realm of nature. In other words, it is necessary to realize that we cannot disengage ourselves from our relationship to nature. In this context the Austrian proponent of evolutionary ethics, F. Wuketits, suggests that our relationship to animals and plants cannot be entirely disinterested and unrelated to matters of utility, whether in terms of aesthetic or scientific interests.15

The ecological crisis itself is obviously another, and very pressing, factor which sharpens our perceptions of nature and its importance. In this way nature emerges for us as a universal value and source. Our relationship to it, and to the creatures which inhabit and compose it with us, is then a philosophical theme sui generis and a stimulus to a present day reconsideration of the meaning of the value-oriented ethics which we find in classical forms in the works of M. Scheler, N. Hartmann and H. Reinner.16 Here it is possible to go further along the abandoned path which recently has been gradually rediscovered (see e.g., E. Havel Cadwallader17), necessarily leaving aside in the meantime the question of the role that could be played in this context by ecological motivation.

Essentially the same idea was expressed by the writer Ludvík Vaculík in his proposal, entitled "We Want Another Constitution!" addressed to the Federal Parliament in 1990. There he writes: "The earth with all that it has is a unique being, as part of universal being: a being older, bigger and stronger than we are."18

The key theoretical problem in this context is that of the possibility of extending the sphere of intersubjectivity. That is, to extend the sphere of moral action to animals in an area where — in contrast to that of relations between people as mature responsible individuals — there is no full reciprocity, since animals do not have obligations to us analogous to those we have to them. In Anglo-Saxon philosophy this relationship often is defined as a relation "between moral agents and other (non-rational) beings,"19 or "moral patients". This has also attracted the attention of philosophers who are not especially ecologically oriented, such as G. Patzig and J. Habermas. Patzig speaks of the "morally analogical character" (moral — analoge natur) of our relationship to animals,20 basing his approach on the extension of moral obligations. Habermas tends toward a stronger definition based on our moral intuition21 and theoretically on a definition of the interaction between people and animals which includes even "non-verbal gestures" (nicht-sprachliche Gesten)22 and which therefore retains an intersubjectivist basis of theoretical justification.23 K. Ott relies on Habermas in what is essentially an application of the starting point of discursive ethics to the ecological field. The extension of moral action — on the basis of the extension of the referential level of moral judgements to include "moral patients" (i.e., creatures which cannot behave to us reciprocally in the moral sense) — is considered by Ott to be "methodological anthropocentrism."

The anthropocentric approach does not, of course, exclude the philosophical legitimacy of the biocentric viewpoint. It is, for example, possible to share P. Taylor’s view of animals as "teleological centers of life" which have "inherent worth" or "intrinsic value".24 But I would then ask whether this transcendence of the conditionality of his own species of which man is capable in his view of other animals, and this recognition of the independent value of animals, is not made possible only by the "privilege" of the anthropocentric starting point of our perspective? This reality is evidently also more concretely conditioned biologically. If it is an essential attribute of each organism to act on its surroundings by its own "self-presentation,"25 does not the character of human self-presentation imply, inter alia, a privileged capacity to take a "global view"?

Here it is possible to return to Ott, who has correctly pointed out that our relationship to animals as the creatures nearest to us is partly conditioned by our understanding of them as exemplars of a species.26 In any case, we cannot detach ourselves from our "practical interest" in nature.27 The essential anthropocentric dimension of our relationship to animals and nature in general is manifest in other respects too. For example, by brutal behavior towards nature and its creatures we offend the moral convictions of those for whom nature as such is a value in itself.28 Or, as Kant would put it, we dishonor our own humanity.

Another important dimension of the human relation to nature is the aesthetic. Beauty as a "symbol of morality" is already the great theme of the Critique of Judgement. According to Kant the aesthetic by its very nature points beyond itself towards the ethical. These questions are also analyzed by K. Ott who interprets them as testimony to the relevance of human interest in nature.29 With reference to F. Kambartel, K. Ott30 asserts that the defence of nature is thus understood as the defence of the human world. Just as this aesthetic relation, which can again be further interpreted in various ways, is inseparable from the "anthropocentric" starting point, the same is true of man’s whole evaluative approach to nature, when nature is assigned an inner, objective value. It is always man who aesthetically perceives values, judges and such like. And man, as stressed above, is always already existing in the world and is a being anchored in nature. On the margin we should note that in describing the character of the human relationship K. Ott, like the present author, uses the expression als ob, which undoubtedly derives from a common Kantian inspiration.31

The collapse of totalitarian socialism in Central and Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s was caused not only by it inefficiency, but also by the inner bankruptcy of values of its self-justifying ideology. For this reason, and especially for the first period after the democratic revolution, Czechoslovakia was characterized by a heightened sensitivity in relation to moral-ethical questions. This was significantly expressed, for example, in the resonance of the moral accent in politics that is typical of Václav Havel and in the broad acceptance of his viewpoint with its tendency to "non-political politics", an idea reaching back to Masaryk. With the building of a standard pluralist political democracy, the accent on the moral dimension has now tended to decline in attractiveness and sometimes it has been exploited to the benefit of particular political interests. It has been accompanied also by a certain undervaluation of the independent legal dimension in the building of a democratic state based on law, as I argued in detail in the preceding chapter. This process is inevitable and there is no point in sentimentally regretting the disappearance of the mood of society in the first period after the democratic revolution. It also became rapidly apparent that the majority in society — if not very "consciously", and to some extent under the influence of the regime — decided for a standard "capitalist" development. With this choice society essentially identified itself with what Th. Nagel has called "libertarianism."32

This trend, especially associated with V. Klaus, became attractive by holding out the prospect of the prosperity of a market economy "without qualifying adjectives". Moral accents to a considerable extent "migrated" from the sphere of the shared political life of civic society into the individual sphere as questions of individual choice from different variants of value orientations. In principle, the state maintained "value neutrality" in relation to particular schemes and projects for the optimal arrangement of interpersonal relations. In opposition to this "value-cool" definition of the role of the state and as a result of dissatisfaction with the prevailing orientation of a society accepting this liberal definition, often characterized as a "consumer orientation" or "consumerism," there has been a range of attempts to formulate alternative projects, both in the theoretical area of philosophical thought and in the more practical medium of political concepts. It is not possible to describe these attempts in detail here, but I should like just to draw attention to the inspiration deriving from T.G. Masaryk, both its somewhat metaphysical side and his emphasis on the social dimension of politics. His dispute with liberalism is perceived as attractive in both these aspects of his legacy. This view sees liberalism as a morally indifferent world view emptied of values, which cannot provide support for those seeking an orientation in life.33

The idea (gradually developing into a more elaborate conception) of long-term sustainable life crystallized in the Czech Republic in the first half of the 1990s in a certain degree of isolation from the criticisms developed in direct relation to particular world views. In the Czech Republic, this idea is motivated: 1. ecologically in the precise sense of the terms, and 2. in connection with the philosophical interpretation of value orientations and preferences. These two aspects are closely inter-related and create a broader framework for the whole concept. We could perhaps say that while the ecological motivation arises out of the worldwide context of consideration of the real and immediate situation of ecological crisis, the general value-philosophical motivation is crucially linked to the Czech tradition. There are dangers in attributing to them some supposedly necessary inner logic (e.g., Hus, Comenius, Masaryk, Pato…ka, and perhaps Palacky or Havlí…ek). However, emphasis on the relevance of the moral viewpoint in criticism of social reality, linked in the modern age with a critique of liberalism in its morally neutral aspect, plays a central role in Czech thought; at the very least it can be identified in Masaryk and Pato…ka.

As far as the mainly ecological motivation is concerned, we are dealing with a many-sided and complex phenomenon. Attention should be drawn to the analyses and hypotheses of the "Club of Rome,"34 to the formulation of long-term sustainable life by the General Meeting of the UN of 1992 on the environment and development, in which J. Vavrousek actively participated,35 and to the ideas of the American Vice President, Al Gore, whose book, Earth in the Balance, was published in Czech as stimuli to the concept of long-term sustainable growth, regarding the pressing reality of the ecological crisis itself, including the "prospects" that it offers.

The core of this concept, in it most general sense, is the idea of conscious humility, which is contrasted not only with the consumer-market model, but also with the one-sided exclusivity of an anthropocentric relationship to the world. J. Vavrousek in the outline of his ideas below, significantly entitled "Searching for Human Values Compatible with Long-term Sustainable Life,"37 looks for alternatives to the prevailing attitudes of European-American civilization towards key aspects of human life: the relationship of man to nature and of the individual to society, the flow of time and the meaning of history, men and women’s relationship to the meaning of their own lives, freedom and responsibility, the level of our knowledge, future generations, different views and different civilizations and, finally, our relationship to the things we all have in common.38 Vavroušek sees the general starting point of his conception in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, in which he sees the embodiment of the idea of conscious humility with an emphasis on the renunciation of "inessential things". The conception of long-term sustainable life, which had an impact not only through its intellectual appeal but also through the personal, practical commitment of its author, alas now dead, has thus gained an almost eschatological dimension.

This present search for inspiration in the values of the past, driven by attempts to reverse or at least to moderate the flow of the future, naturally brings with it a whole series of question marks. The general idea of long-term sustainable life has come to a crossroads. Either it must be conceived radically, as an appeal to an overall system of value orientations and preferences, and so as an appeal aimed at the inner transformation of people, or it must be defined soberly, "technologically" as an appeal for the application of ecological approaches as regulative factors compatible with the prevailing orientation of society and influencing its gradual cultural development.39 While the radical conception may be personally sympathetic, the second conception has the better society-wide prospects. The appeal to an internal transformation of values is weakened within the second conception as the idea of long-term sustainable life "comes to terms" with the reality of our basically market-consumer world.

The question of biocentrism and anthropocentrism has practical dimensions, as well as the theoretical aspects already considered. The biocentric motivation of value orientations, with its radical demand for a change of perspective, is evidently too dramatically at variance with the direction of the large majority in society. This is strengthened by the fact that a post-communist society is only now laboriously trying to reach the living standard of developed countries. Thus the biocentric perspective has no real chance of having a serious impact in social and political contexts.40 By contrast, the position of cultivated anthropocentrism which focuses on human interest in "the continuation of life and nature" has a chance of having at least a partial impact. The creation of legislative instruments regulating human relationships to nature can assist in the moral refinement of the legal sphere.

Those who are trying to secure a "reorientation" of people’s value orientations and preferences have a tendency to see this task as an appeal to humanity or society as a whole. Another conception is, however, available here, and that is the encouragement of value orientations that are not in tune with the prevailing market-consumer trend, and the "gaining of space" for "minority" value orientations and life styles. A major feature typical for the moral field in general is orientation toward the defence of the weak.41 In our case this means the defence of those who are ever more "marginalized" by the aggressive model of our existence, and whose space for self-realization and development of their own life style grows ever more narrow, such as pedestrians, hikers and other "quiet beings". The non-aggressive lifestyle of these people, most of whom are more perceptive about the reality of the ecological crisis, is also beneficial "as if" from the viewpoint of nature, and from the viewpoint of its preservation. This likewise is the general condition for, and framework of, human life. "The ecologically traumatized" can scarcely force a change in the value orientations of their fellow-citizens, but they ought to make stronger efforts, within the framework of a consciously achieved solidarity, to struggle to defend a minority living space in a world basically formed by the market-consumer orientations of the majority.

In conclusion, striving for a moral formation of interhuman and natural reality is an essential aspect of humanity as such. We human beings are not, of course, only "spiritually free" entities, but are conditioned both sociologically and biologically.42 In this sense, despite the frequent assertions of moral philosophers, we are not entirely in control of ourselves. Awareness of the fact that our capacity "morally to impregnate" reality is limited does not, naturally, mean a plea for moral indifference and the levelling down of all values. It is simply a sober rejection of unrealizable illusions.

8. E. Kohák, „lov�k, dobro a zlo (Praha, 1993). (Man, God and Evil)

9. J. Šmajs, Ohroñená kultura (Brno, 1995). (Endangered Culture)

10. J. Vavroušek, Hledání lidských hodnot slu…itelných s trvale

18. L. Vaculík, "Jinou ústavu!", Závod s …asem, Texty z morální ekologie, trans. and eds. by E. Kohák, R. Kolárský and I. Michal (Praha, 1996), pp. 191-194. ("We Want Another Constitution!" in Race against Time, Texts of Moral Ecology).

33. See Spor o smysl …eských d�jin 1895-1938, ed. M. Havelka (Praha, 1995), (The Dispute on the Meaning of Czech History).

36. Al Gore, Zem� na misce vah, Ekologie a lidský duch, trans. J. Jarab (Praha, 1994). (Earth in the Balance, Ecology and the Human Spirit).

39. For a defence of the biocentric standpoint see E. Koháh, "„lov�k, dobro a zlo", in Závod s …asem, s. 153-188. On this problem see also: Sociální souvislosti ekologické krize a jejího prekonávání (Praha, 1994). (Social Aspects of the Ecological Crisis and Its Solution). For the defence of the anthropocentric standpoint see especially P. Jemelka, K n�kterým otázkám vztahu civilizace a prírody, pp. 21-33. (On Certain Questions of the Relationship between Civilization and Nature). See also J. Keller, "Výzva konven…nímy myšlení," Listy 25, n. 5, pp. 12-16. (Challenge to Conventional Thinking).