Holmes RolstonⅢ’s Natural Value Theory And Revelation

Engels had warned people, don’t be too intoxicated in human nature ofvictories, because for each such victory, nature will of revenge. Along with the rapiddevelopment of science and technology, human material civilization reaches anunprecedented prosperity, and meanwhile the survival of human ecological systemhave been more and more serious damage, the environmental crisis deepening dayby day. Difficulties appears when western tradition of ethics turns to environmentalethics, because the traditional ethics does not admit the value of things which outsideof human subject, and it builds a high wall between fact and value. Prof. HolmesRolstonⅢ, one of the most important scholars who is in ecological ethics field andgenerally regarded as “the Father of the Discipline of Environmental Ethics”, thinksthat ecological ethics require establishing the life-oriented values, and it shouldadvocate the proper respect for every single life. The nature axiology that heproposed is the core of his ecological ethics thoughts, and the key point of his natureaxiology is to prove the intrinsic value of an objective existence, that is, theobjectivity of value. Rolston’s nature axiology provides us a new angle of view toreexamine our relation with nature and our current way of life, and try to presentguidance from the angle of values and ethical beliefs just for the establishment of theright ecology.This paper studies the environmental theory and thoughts of Rolston,particularly with the nature axiology as its heart. It firstly introduces the socialbackground, academic background and culture tradition, philosophical basis ofnature axiology; and by the systematic carding of Rolston’s philosophical writingson ecology, it generalizes the main ideas of his theory; reveals the breakthrough ofRolston’s nature axiology-realized “Copernicus revolution” within the scope of thenature axiology. As Rolston’s nature axiology is accepted by academia and social increasingly, its theoretical contributions to human being on promote ecologicalcivilization; truly realized that man and nature in harmony plays an important role.