New Developments in Environmental Thought at the Beginning of the 21^st Century and the Concept of Sustainability

Abstract

Mainstream studies of environmental thought in the 90's can be divided into globalist and localist perspectives. Whereas a defender of globalism such as Hisatake Kato insists on the opposition between bio-and environmental ethics, Shuichi Kito as an advocate of localism criticizes the concept of wilderness in order to assess human environmentalism. However, at the beginning of this century, Kato and Kito are coming closer to each other because both agree in their tendencies toward pragmatism in a broad sense. Another recent development in environmental thought to which we should pay attention is the publication of Callicott's The Insight of the Earth which has been translated into Japanese. In this book he asserts that postmodern philosophy of science should carry over into various kinds of native environmental ideas. This multiculturalism of Callicott's supports some arguments about landscape that I developed in my book, referring to Krebs's Naturethik, Seel's Eine Ästhetik der Natur. This idea and the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) found in recent business ethics together combine to illuminate the problematics of the concept of sustainability.