| Holmes. Rolston is one of the representatives of non-anthropocentric environmental ethics. The value of nature is the core of his environmental thoughts. Rolston argues that the duty of human beings to nature should be based on the objective value of nature itself. The heart of the value of nature is to prove the objective existence of nature's intrinsic value. Rolston provoked and analyzed the concept of systematic value, which forms the theoretical foundation for human beings to protect the individual life as well as the ecological community.Environmental Ethics is a new branch of applied ethics which was originated from the west. The research of it in China starts from 1980s. Although it has made great progress in the past 20 years, it is still at the beginning stage as an individual subject. Rolston, as one of the prominent philosophers in the area of environmental ethics, whose theory and thoughts were applied in both home and abroad, which are bound to have very significant inspiration to the budding research of environmental ethics in China.This paper studies the environmental theory and thoughts of Rolston, particularly with the value of nature as its heart. But it not only focuses on the simple introduction of the value of nature itself, but also spreads the research in a wider perspective of the whole process of modern environmental ethics development. It firstly introduces the social environment, scientific foundation and philosophical background of the birth of the value of nature in detail. Then it discusses the theory and its implication systematically by literature study and case analysis. By comparing the theory of the value of nature and other schools of modern environmental ethics, it demonstrates the thinking approaches of Rolston's environmental ethics and the distinguished characteristics of the value of nature. Finally, the paper reveals the essential outbreaks of Rolston's theory of the value of nature and its possible disadvantages by analysis and evaluation.
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