Search results for "Natural value"

When Ethics and Aesthetics Are One and the Same: A Wittgensteinian Perspective on Natural Value

2015

Many environmental philosophers have held naturalness to be a primary source of nature’s value. Seen this way, the nature that is most valuable is wild nature, and ‘wild’ is that which is unmodiled by human activity. However, accounts of our attributions of value to the wild often have an aura of elusiveness to them, as if what really matters about nature being wild could not ultimately be captured by words. In an attempt to account for what really matters, I relate our fascination with wild nature to a famous Wittgensteinian quote—‘Ethics and Aesthetics are one and the same’ (Tractatus 2006a: 28, §6.421)—and inspect the ways in which important dimensions of our attributions of value to wil…