ABSTRACT
Environmental protesters often talk about the need to protect future generations of people, or even to protect property. Egalitarian biocentrism may look a bit weird at first sight. It find out what the general structure of a Kantian ethical system is like. The objections in this chapter to Taylors biocentric ethic will clearly not have the same force when applied to an ethic for rational beings which is the one that Kant originally envisaged. The term teleological implies that at least the biological activities of each living thing are all goal oriented. Taylor maintains that the intrinsic value of wild living things generates a prima facie moral duty on our part to preserve or promote their goods as ends in themselves. Self-defence is an acceptable excuse when first of all people only use force in proportion to the threat, and when, second, what threatens us is itself unlawful or unethical.
