ABSTRACT
J. Baird Callicott’s environmental ethic is a cornerstone of contemporary environmental philosophy. Inspired by Aldo Leopold’s land ethic and grounded in the works of Leopold, Charles Darwin, and David Hume, it has distinctively metaethical and normative theoretical components. Ecological communitarianism excludes in advance entities that would obviously qualify for moral standing, and scuttles itself in the process. Kinship is stretched to include evolutionary kin, and community is broadened to allow even ecosystems to count as genuine moral communities. The chapter discusses the normative component of Callicott's theory and the two criteria for moral standing that it employs. It summarizes Callicott's overall environmental ethic and assesses communitarianism as a normative theory. As normative criteria, kinship and community suffer an unacceptable shortcoming: they exclude in advance entities that obviously qualify for moral standing, namely, terrestrial and extraterrestrial aliens.
