Western causes, Western cures

Antony Flew

Moues Responsibility for Nature J. A. Passmore (Duckworth £5.95)

Like almost everyone else who writes about conservation and the environment John Passmore writes "out of a sense of alarm." But his is "an alarm which is double-edged." nvinced "that men cannot go on living as IneY have been living, as predators on the biosphere . . . I find no less alarming the

suggestio . n . . that the West can solve its

Problems only by forgetting what it has so gradually learnt . . ." Being a philosopher, Passmore makes no attempt "to compete with the many distinguished scientists who have drawn attention to the physical and biological consequences of . . . technological rashness." Instead he takes that for granted: "What I have tried to do, rather, is to bring out the fundamental moral, metaphysical and political assumptions which so often underlie their arguments." What Passmore has succeeded in doing is to produce a valuable and a most unusual book.

iI the first of three Parts he considers 'The

Traditions.' It is often said that the West has learnt from Genesis "to be wholly despotic, Icitally irresponsible, in its attitudes to na

!-ure." But this, as the historian of ideas shows, Is far too simple a picture of Western tradi

tiPns. And getting the picture right is of

Practical importance: "Not merely in order to understand why men behave as they do but also in order to estimate what the prospects Ire that they can be persuaded to act ,uifferently, we have to take account . . of the traditions they have inherited."

Certainly it is no "accident that technology nourished in a West for which nature was not

sacred." But if "one can speak of 'Christian

„arrogance' in supposing that all things are wade for men, it must be with the proviso at it is not Hebraic-Christian but Graeco hristian 'arrogance.' . . . It is one thing to aaY, following Genesis, that man has dominion ,c)ver nature in the sense that he has the right `,(), Make use of it: quite another to say, owing the Stoics, that nature exists only in order to serve his interests." For the authors of_ the Psalms nature's God was concerned for tul creatures, and not man alone: "The high °ills are a refuge for the wild goats; and the ht.(3cks for the conies. . . . Thou makest darke"ess and it is night; wherein all the beasts do eel) forth. The young lions roar after their '4eY, arid seek their meat from God." °n the other hand the idea of the sacred Ss of nature, and even a cult of its con.71rIPlation, provides little protection. Pass:nore has made the most of the opportunities travel provided by the Australian National ;rliversity, and in the present book he keeps .7113ealing to what he has seen for himself: hinnYone who cares to wander through the s around Kyoto may still meet with rocks Lqicitrees draped with sacred aprons. . . or he "1,2Y at Nikko observe some elderly member of toaonditioned bus tour break away . . . of Pray to a mighty tree"; and yet "The power le,,[1e Western outlook, with no Genesis to th'tki it support, is nowhere more manifest n in Osaka and Nagoya."

is in the second and main Part on Lological Problems' that the philosopher, as

opposed to the historian of ideas, begins to make his contribution: "To speak of a phenomenon as a 'social problem' is not to suggest merely, or perhaps at all, that we do not understand how it comes about; it is labelled a problem not because, like a scientific problem, it presents an obstacle to our understanding . . . but rather because — consider alcoholism, crime, deaths on the road — we believe that our society Would be better off without it." However, as the argument proceeds, it becomes clear that this first formulation is inadequate. It is not only that the use of this description suggests "that our society would be better off without it." It is also that it assumes that 'the problem' could be got rid of at some acceptable price. If you believe that such and such a level of unemployment is the price of price stability, and if your heart is set on price stability, then that level of unemployment is for you not a problem but a cost: "A utopian . . finds any cost intolerable. A conservative, in contrast, is too ready to dismiss problems as costs." Passmore picks rus always careful, always sane, often sharp, middle way between these extremes. Again and again the issues have to be seen as questions of how much, and when, and at what price: "It is not inhumanly complacent to be content with a 'tolerable level' of pollution; to demand that the Thames or the Rhine be drinkable without filtration would be . . • totally absurd." Yet it is precisely because it is so often a matter of judging what price is worth paying, and for what, that we cannot blindfold leave it to the experts: "Unless we know what they have counted in and what they have left out, and how they have calculated costs and benefits, we cannot accept their assurances that all is well." Passmore deals very faithfully with fashionable suggestions that the problems demand Eastern mysticism rather than Western rationality: in fact they have been created, are continually discovered, and are and will be solved only with the aid of science and technology. He is equally firm against the equally fashionable suggestions that they constitute arguments for totalitarian socialism as opposed to liberal democracy. (These two entirely different West/East contrasts are, by the way, sometimes, although not by Passmore, confounded.) Curiously his global travels seem not to have compassed either the private profitless steelmill smoke of Nowa Huta corroding the old city of Cracow, or the planned and socialist pollution of Lake Baikal, or that Soviet fishing fleet which with the archcapitalists of Japan is exterminating the last of the whales. • Passmore's third Part, 'The Traditions Reconsidered,' consists in one chapter. This is substantially the article 'Removing the Rubbish,' which appears in the April Encounter. Characteristically it dismisses in very short order "contemporary cant" which "condemns as 'racialist' . . . the description of any form of society as 'higher' or 'more advanced' or 'better' than any other." This dismissal comes especially well from one who can speak with such catholic, civilised, and humane passion of "a world without love, without science, without philosophy, with no Venice, no Nara, no Salzburg." My final souvenir for sharing comes from Passmore's discussion of the treatment of animals. The wrongness of hurting has at last become obvious. For one of the disciples of St. Francis, taken ill, told another that he craved pig's trotters: "'In great fervour of spirit' Jonathan cut the trotters off a living pig. Francis rebuked him, but with no reference whatsoever to his callousness. He urged him, only, to apologise to the owner of the pig for having damaged his property."

Antony Flew is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading