How to Construe Nature

In this article, King attempts to answer the question, “does Nature have moral value?” To start this search of the moral value of Nature, King begins by referencing the fact that there has to be an understanding of what “Nature” actually means, and we as humans can not create a definition without conceptualizing Nature into human terms. However, this definition changes based on the matrices that each individual person is a part of. Three examples of this are illustrated in the Puritans, which viewed Nature as the “grim and forbidding domain of Satan,” the Romantics, which created an aesthetic value of Nature, and contemporary society, where the moral value of Nature must compete with its economic value. Our diagnosis of the moral value that Nature possesses is strongly influenced by the human environment that we are subjected to. Furthermore, through examples King shows that each natural object’s moral value depends on the properties it possesses.

Next, King shifts from discussing where the definition of Nature comes from to how these views may lend support and sustainability to the environment as a whole. King discusses examples that, although they may be controversial, they recognize a cause and effect of our environmental degradation. Many people view Nature as a scientific aspect, as “nature as the site of merely physical relations and forces.” Viewing Nature this way justifies using it for our economic gains. Shifting this view to a view of Nature as “containing spirits, needs, interests, or rights” may turn Nature away from just raw materials to be used, but this is highly unlikely. Is there a happy medium that could be more feasible for people to understand yet gives Nature the moral value it deserves?

Nature is seen by many as external from the human-made environment, which feeds into Nature as raw material to be used for economic gain. Furthermore, only the aspects of Nature that are pleasing and have economic incentives attached are selected in our version of what we want Nature to be. How each individual sees Nature is manipulated by what others, like food producers, oil industries, government officials say it is. Is there hope that this can be changed for the future? Since there are so many different inputs of what Nature “is,” how can we even begin to determine the true meaning and value of Nature? King offers a few solutions to facilitate the movement of this environmental dilemma down the right path. By shifting the dominant mode of thinking away from Nature as a resource for economic sustainability to Nature as a healthy and sustainable environmental entity that can better human society, the environmental dilemmas we see in our present culture may begin to dissipate. Rather than humans dominating and dictating how Nature is used, Nature and humans may co-exist to better each other. We need to look deeper than “living in harmony with nature” to the underlying strategies that can achieve that.