ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to reflect upon the role of the ethical aspects of sustainable development. Although this is often immanent because of the normative basis of the concept, the ethical aspect is often largely overlooked. But ethics is a vision or a conception of the good life. We are united in our view of human nature as something that ought to continue as long as possible. ‘Without ethics the demand for sustainable development becomes an unfounded claim. And although there often are arguments for a sustainable development without mentioning ethics, it will stay as a tacit precondition, attracting meaning to the argumentation from the beginning to the end’ (our translation of Kemp 2000: 14).
