ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 24, 2017
Dependent Origination,
Emptiness, and the Value of Nature
David Cummiskey and Alex Hamilton
Bates College
This article explains the importance of the Buddhist
doctrine of dependent origination to contemporary environmental ethics and
also develops a Buddhist account of the relational, non-instrumental, and
impersonal value of nature. The article’s methodology is “comparative” or
“fusion” philosophy. In particular, dependent origination and Nāgārjuna’s
doctrine of emptiness are developed in contrast to Aldo Leopold and J.
Baird Callicott’s conception of deep ecology, and the Buddhist conception
of value is developed using Christine Korsgaard’s Kantian analysis of the
distinction between intrinsic/extrinsic value and means/ends value.
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