Ecological crisis and faith in progress

The four contributors to this special issue of History of European Ideas have each focused on a different aspect of the evolution of European attitudes towards the natural environment. As their articles show, doubt about the ways in which western man has chosen to interact with his environment is not a product of the late twentieth century. On the contrary, at the moment of western Europe’s global expansion in the sixteenth century, scholars began to question whether exploitation, of natural resources and of other men, was too much a part of the European idea. For the past 400 years, the Europeans’ dialogue, among themselves and with the rest of the world, has been about the nature ofexpansion and exploitation, growth and progress. As Professor Ku discusses, in ‘The Concept of res communis in International Law’, the issues raised by Spain’s conquests in the New World led Charles V in 1540 to commission Francisco de Vitoria’s discourse, De Zndis. The Dominican scholar elaborated, from Christian teachings, principles which remained at the heart of international law live centuries later: the equality of states, their independence from outside interference, and their responsibility for events occurring within their territory. As Professor Ku notes, in Vitoria’s discussion, the relationship of the ‘aborigines’ to the land claimed by Spain, the nature of their ‘ownership and dominion’, was of crucial importance. As men who had, ‘according to their kind, the use of reason’, the inhabitants of the New World could, Vitoria concluded, possess territory; the fact that they were not Christian did not preclude ownership of property. In addition to his emphasis on human reason, two hundred years before the philosophers of the Enlightenment paved the way for the American and French Revolutions, Vitoria focused on a more traditional component of Christian teaching: natural bounty as a sign of God’s favor. The Indians of the New World were ‘not wanting in the supply of what is necessary in great measure for the race’, evidence that they too had been given overlordship of part of God’s creation. From Vitoria’s point of view, their responsibility was to see that the natural environment was equitably exploited, to theglory of God and the benefit of other men. Vitoria’s anthropocentrism was nothing new, but his grounding of it-in reason, not religion or race-was. As Professor Ku points out, his arguments ‘opened the door to the later secularisation of (western) law’ and paved the way for the flexibility that has been characteristic of the Westphalian

Ecological crisis · Environmental ethics · Faith · Political science · Sociology · Theology · Philosophy · Religion, Ecology, and Ethics · Religious studies

• The Politics of Pollution in a Comparative Perspective

  Open Access•John H Herz•Political Science Quarterly•1976

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• Consultation and Consensus in Nato

  Gerald Wright, Edwina S Campbell•International Journal Canada s…•1986

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• Environment and Development

  Open Access•Joao Augusto De Araujo Castro•International Organization•1972

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