ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on two much more limited issues related to holistic ethics, exploring these through Callicotts version of Leopolds land ethic, and Arne Naesss philosophy of deep ecology. Metaphysical speculations about whether a house is more or less real than the bricks of which it is made might seem a long way removed from environmental philosophy. Ethics based on an individualistic approach regards the human individual as the most important item in the moral universe. Holistic views of nature were reinforced by the Gaia theory originally proposed by James Lovelock. Cal-licotts later theory is based on a kind of ethical sentimentalism. Other writers in environmental ethics have also tried to change the metaphysical orientation that underlies much of Western ethical theory. Not surprisingly, this kind of extreme holism was criticized as misanthropic and eco-fascist because it always subordinates the welfare of individual animals and living things to the good of the larger community.
