Valor e expansão da comunidade moral: do bem-estarismo senciocêntrico ao holismo biocêntrico

Abstract

The conception of value, as a non-instrumental, amoral, and potential foundation for normative moral theories, has different responses throughout the history of moral philosophy. Among these, the hedonistic theory of value developed by Jeremy Bentham and later by John Stuart Mill is characterized by its focus on the well-being of individuals capable of experiencing pleasure and pain. Thus, hedonism paves the way for a morality oriented towards well-being, such as Mill's consequentialist moral theory known as "classical utilitarianism." Adding to this new paradigm some theoretical reforms, authors like Peter Singer adopt the preferentialist theory of value, characterized by defining well-being as the satisfaction of preferences. Based on the preferentialist theory, Peter Singer expands the moral community to include all sentient beings, becoming one of the main proponents of the non-anthropocentric moral paradigm. However, the boundaries of the moral community have proven to be increasingly flexible, allowing the emergence of new theories of value with greater potential for expanding the moral community compared to well-being-based theories. In this context, Holmes Rolston III develops a theory of value characterized, among other things, by decentralizing the conception of non-instrumental good from the capacity to experience well-being. For Rolston, the minimal condition for the existence of value is the mere presence of life in the biological sense, and the enabling condition for the existence of life is the environmentally relational character of living organisms and their environment, a character he names "holism." Building on the foundation provided by biocentric holism, Rolston proposes that the moral community should consist not only of humans or sentient beings but of all holistic entities (biosphere, ecosystems, biomes, species) and the organisms that compose them. As Rolston is the leading figure in environmental ethics, one can say that the field of environmental ethics is a late result of the debate about the boundaries of the moral community, which had its origins in the theoretical contributions of Bentham, Mill, and especially Peter Singer.