Earth and Other Ethics: The Case for Moral Pluralism

Readers with a bent for pondering complex questions of ethics and morality, especially those relating to environmental objects, will find this book a challenge. Stone, author of Should Trees Have Standing?Towards Legal Rights for Natural Objects, addresses the status, under law, of ""Nonpersons'' (rivers, forests, animals, androids) and searches for a fresh concept of morality and ethics that will include them. He reminds us that animals can do harm but not wrong, and that legal consideration of nonpersons or things does not give them legal rights. He examines unorthodox viewpoints on the subject, questions the ``Moral Monism'' of the Kantians and develops his own scheme, ``Moral Pluralism.'' Though he offers specific examples as illustration for his thesis, much of the narrative is too abstruse for readers untrained in law or philosophy. This is an extremely important subject that needs to be popularized. (August)