Liberal individualist extension fails to value ecosystems and species

Evidence

Yet Rodman sees some key problems with the practice. The first diffi- culty, he argues, is the perpetuation by many of an atomistic metaphysics … locating intrinsic value only or primarily in individual persons, animals, plants, etc., rather than in communities or ecosystems, since individuals are our paradigmatic entities for thinking, being conscious, and feeling pain. Yet it seems bizarre to try to account wholly for the value of a forest or a swamp by itemizing and adding up the values of all the individual members. (1983: 87) … In discussing Singer, Rodman (1977: 89) specifically points out that his animal rights approach would apply to woodrats, but not to cactus or sagebrush—and to individual woodrats rather than the species. This moral atomism, he argues, ‘does not seem well adapted to coping with ecological systems’ (Rodman 1977: 89). In other words, we cannot base an ecological ethic of justice solely on the singularity of the liberal model of human beings; such an ethic must address the larger breadth of the communities of the natural world. So the first major problem with the extension of liberal concepts based on shared traits is its association with moral atomism and liberal individualism; used in a limited way, it may preclude a more necessarily communalist or systems approach. — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 445

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the polyad’s need to see how recognition-centered ecological justice must scale beyond the individual to community and system level, per Schlosberg’s project.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how does Rodman’s systems critique of moral atomism interact with capability approaches that, per Nussbaum, start from individual animals?
• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source