Extreme weather events such as droughts, floods, and heat waves caused by climate change are no longer mere warnings, nor are they special or temporary phenomena; they are becoming a common part of our daily lives.
Moreover, there is a point that even after we become aware of the current climate change problem, we are destroying the Earth more than before we were unaware of the problem.
Given this situation, many people have been making efforts to find solutions in various fields, including politics, economy, society, religion, and technology.
However, more than anything, people think that environmental issues are related to highly technical problems, and so they pay special attention to efforts to purify or improve the destroyed or polluted environment through science and technology.
However, it has been pointed out that science and technology have a double-sided nature and can inevitably create as many problems as they solve.
Therefore, in order to fundamentally solve the problem, the need for a philosophical or educational approach is emphasized by viewing the problem as a human problem caused by humans or a problem of polluted human consciousness rather than simply a problem of the environment.
This book is one of the fruits of in-depth research conducted by experts in various fields over a long period of time since the philosophical discussion on environmental issues began in earnest among Korean scholars in the 1980s.

We pride ourselves on being rational animals and live our lives flaunting that ability, but we must not deny that we are beings with tremendous limitations in many areas, including scientific and ethical abilities.
In reality, we seem to be enjoying enormous benefits from industrial civilization, advanced technology civilization, and capitalist consumer culture, which are all the results of these abilities. However, on the other hand, we are addicted to this culture and are fully suffering the side effects and harms it provides.
But what's even more problematic is that although we created these technological civilizations and cultures, such as these advanced technology systems, they have already become so deeply ingrained that we have become accustomed to them, and furthermore, the interests of many people are already intertwined, creating inertia.
That is why it is difficult for them to disappear, and they even seem to dominate humans, defying our control.
--- p.51

The various problems raised today in relation to environmental destruction arise primarily from the unconscionable actions of humans pursuing their unbridled desire for self-preservation.
Whether it's an individual, a company, or a specific community, actions without moral conscience, such as unauthorized discharge of sewage, unauthorized disposal of waste, excessive development, and indiscriminate deforestation, will not disappear even if strong positive laws are enacted.
Sometimes when a violation of the law is discovered, the defense is like this:
"It was an inevitable choice for survival." We question "moral insensitivity" in statements like these and invoke the concept of conscience.
However, if there is no violation of the law, the situation is different.
The reason is that people are asserting their legally recognized 'rights' rather than their 'conscience'.
Today, our misunderstood concept of 'conscience' is being misused as a means of moral justification for human-centered self-preservation.
--- p.84

The mechanistic view of nature, which forms the core of the modern mechanistic worldview, regards all of nature as a machine that operates according to mathematical principles. After being theoretically refined by Descartes and Newton, it was later reinforced through challenges such as thermodynamics, relativity, and quantum mechanics, becoming the center of the Western view of nature.
However, if we can understand the principles of nature through the principles or methodology of mathematics, the way opens up for us to use nature according to our will or needs, and even to dominate and manage it.
In this way, the mechanistic view of nature gave birth to a 'science and technology utopia' that enabled the liberation and infinite development of humanity and a prosperous life, and gave birth to an industrial civilization based on this.
However, the ecological crisis of today, including global climate change and environmental destruction that threaten to wipe out humanity, demands an accurate understanding and critical reflection on the essential characteristics of modern science and technology and the industrialization based on them.
--- p.96

Humanity is making various discussions and efforts to overcome the environmental crisis that is the problem it is facing.
Theoretical discussions and practical actions are being carried out in various ways.
Although many theorists, especially practitioners, publicly advocate anthropocentrism and non-anthropocentrism, or post-anthropocentrism, there are also theoretical discussions that point out the inevitability of anthropocentrism.
The concept of anthropocentrism can be interpreted in many flexible ways, beyond just extreme understandings.
Those who still adhere to anthropocentrism in environmental philosophy today do not appear to ignore environmental issues or to be apathetic about the environmental crisis.
Rather, it is the opposite.
Also, it is not impossible to respond to environmental problems by adopting anthropocentrism.
Whether we advocate anthropocentrism or non-anthropocentrism in environmental philosophy, isn't our goal the same? To overcome the anticipated environmental crisis without further exacerbating environmental problems.
--- p.138

The principle of equal consideration of interests requires that identical interests be considered equally, regardless of the species of being whose interests are being considered.
Therefore, the interests of animals should be calculated in the same way as the interests of humans.
Singer criticizes the refusal to apply the principle of equal consideration of interests to non-human animals as "speciesism."
This does not mean, however, that he denies the differences between humans and non-human animals.
Humans and non-human animals are clearly not equal in many respects.
However, he applied the principle of equal consideration of interests based on these differences.
It is emphasized that preventing it is unfair discrimination.
Just as factual differences between humans should not prevent equal consideration of their interests, differences between humans and non-human animals should not prevent equal consideration of the interests of non-human animals.
It is clearly unjust discrimination to give priority to the interests of the human species over the interests of non-human animals simply because humans and non-human animals differ within their species, or based on some factual difference between humans and non-human animals, and the prejudice that considers such discrimination justifiable is speciesism.
Speciesism prioritizes only human interests and only considers the interests of humans equally (Singer, 2013: 103).
This human chauvinism, like racism and sexism, is nothing but unjust prejudice and discrimination.
All three types of discrimination violate the principle of equal consideration of interests.
That's why they are all immoral.
--- p.149

Utilitarians can address the issue of vegetarianism based on the self-interest and utility of the parties involved in animal farming.
They can justify vegetarianism by considering the harm done to the owners of Animal Farms, and even to the animals on factory farms.
They may promote meat-eating through killing that does not cause suffering to the animals, or through 'secret killing' in which the animals are unaware of their own death (Regan, 2004: 251).
However, deontologists defend vegetarianism based on the principle of respect for the subject of life as possessing intrinsic value and moral rights, not on any interest or utility.
In particular, Regan's perspective on animal rights focuses on the intrinsic value of individual animals and respect for them as subjects of life possessing moral rights.
According to him, we should reject meat consumption and become vegetarian because raising and eating mammals for food is an act that does not respect their intrinsic value and is harmful to them (Regan, 2004: 394).
--- p.207

Since Aristotle presented humans as political animals, several exclusive human attributes have been proposed that are considered morally significant.
Such exclusive attributes would include beings capable of autonomous judgment and action, self-conscious beings who are aware of themselves existing across the past and future, beings capable of communicating using language, and beings capable of reflectively thinking about their own thoughts and actions.
A being with this ability would certainly be considered more capable than one that can only feel pleasure and pain.
But the serious problem is that there are beings among humans who do not have these characteristics.
Infants, toddlers, people in vegetative states, and people with brain damage who do not have the intellectual level of an average adult are neither rational, self-conscious, nor autonomous, and cannot use language.
These types of people are called 'edge humans' because they are on the border of the human category.
If the reason humans deserve to be treated morally more specially than other animals is because of the exclusive characteristics they possess, then marginal humans who do not possess those characteristics should be treated as having the same moral status as animals.
--- p.219

The principle of love is what complements and connects equality and difference.
For Schweitzer, love includes suffering (mitleiden), rejoicing (mitfreuden), and striving (mitstreben) together (see KE 332).
For Schweitzer, ethics is about making sacrifices for life, and here sacrifices must be motivated by a reverence for life.
Isn't it Schweitzer's love that makes such sacrifices possible? Isn't it love that connects the awe for the will to life within me with the universal will to life? If the destruction of life is inevitable, isn't it love that makes me feel that inevitability as a moral responsibility? And isn't it love that prevents the unnecessary and reckless destruction of life? Furthermore, isn't it the principle of love that ultimately compensates for the negative problems (such as discrimination or inequality between lives) brought about by the hierarchy of life based on the principle of difference? Schweitzer poetically expressed this principle of love: "Even a farmer who has grazed countless acres of grass in his fields to make hay for his cattle should not, on his way home, thoughtlessly pluck the flowers that bloom by the roadside.
For by plucking the flower he has wronged life without being under the violence of necessity (KE 340).” This principle of love serves as a recognition of the equality of other beings for the principle of equality, and as a prerequisite for sacrifice for the principle of difference.
Respect for life is something that humans must have for all life, including themselves.
Regarding sacrifice, Schweitzer believes that only those who have experienced inner freedom from external phenomena by sacrificing their own will to live can make deep and consistent sacrifices to other lives (see KE 336).
The third principle, expressed as sacrifice and humanity, resolves the dilemma between equality and difference.
--- p.259

Taylor addresses many philosophical issues that are omitted or overlooked in the bioreverential ethics of Schweitzer, another thinker on the line of biocentric ethics (Desjardins, 2017: 295).
He, who is also the author of "Elementary Principles of Ethics," seems to have given much thought to the problems of moving directly from the question of whether living things have their own good to the question of the value of respecting the natural good of each living thing as precious.
In fact, after Taylor explicitly limits the issue of the inherent goodness of living organisms to a matter of biological fact, he further discusses the biocentric viewpoint, which any rational and fact-informed person should adopt, as a matter of belief.
Taylor's logic is that only when we go one step further from the level of facts and beliefs and combine it with the level of attitude of respect for nature can we move to the level of norms that respect the inherent value of living things (Jeonggyeol, 2021a: 243-244).
Of course, it is difficult to say that Taylor's argument succeeds in completely filling the logical gap between facts and values, but his efforts to provide at least a minimal logical bridge to bridge the gap between the two deserve positive evaluation.
--- p.288

Leopold points out that ethics has expanded from dealing with relationships between individuals to dealing with relationships between individuals and society, but has not yet developed into land ethics, which deals with the relationship between humans and the earth and the plants and animals that live on it (Leopold, 1949: 202-203).
Because the earth is still considered property, like Odysseus's slave girls, we act as if we have a privileged right to use and manipulate it from an economic perspective without accepting any obligations towards it.
However, Leopold asserts that it is evolutionarily possible and ecologically inevitable for ethics to expand to cover the relationship between humans and the earth and the plants and animals that live on it (Leopold, 1949: 203).
Here, 'evolutionary possibility' means that if ethics evolve, then land ethics, which deals with the relationship between humans, the earth, and the plants and animals living on it, can be universally accepted in the future, and 'ecological necessity' means that if we acquire ecological knowledge that all beings in nature are interdependently intertwined, then we cannot help but include the earth, including soil, water, plants, and animals, in the direct subject of moral consideration (Kim Il-bang, 2003: 50-51; Song Myeong-gyu, 2012: 297-298).
--- p.297

It is questionable whether bio-egalitarianism can be established without contradiction with eco-centrism.
For example, in order to preserve the integrity and stability of a tropical island facing an ecological crisis, it may be necessary to control the population of a specific species among various species.
In this case, we cannot avoid assigning a ranking to the species to be sacrificed, and in this case, the principle of life equality is inevitably abandoned.
Ultimately, the theory of bio-equality has a strong public character that ignores the realistic relationship between humans and nature, and is therefore inappropriate as a theoretical premise for environmental ethics.
The 'theory of self-actualization' plays an important role in realizing Ness's egalitarianism.
Self-actualization is the identification and identification of ourselves with others, and Ness includes all living beings, ecosystems, and nature in the scope of others.
Ness calls this expanded self the 'ecological self', and believes that bio-equality can also be realized when we identify with all life on Earth.
According to Ness, identification means intense sympathy or empathy.
For example, when we see a flea, a tiny creature, dying painfully, we feel empathy and sympathy for the flea, feeling its pain as if it were our own.
To borrow Ness's expression, it is 'finding yourself among the fleas'.
--- p.351

Until now, humanity has chosen the direction of civilization that grows based on mass production and division of labor by increasing the population to increase economic efficiency, thereby increasing the convenience enjoyed by each person.
However, as the population approached its limits, humanity began to recognize the crisis of civilization and economic growth.
The hope that a solution can be found in ecology seems to define this crisis as an ecological crisis.
However, without any purpose or ideal, humanity understands the ecology of nature differently according to ideology or concept.
Environmental philosophy must now choose for the future whether to pursue human intelligence, which seeks an emotional escape from the pursuit of a more stable existence than what has been achieved to date, before reflecting on the past, or to guide human intelligence, which looks back on the excessive actions of humanity in the past and seeks to reduce the environmental burden on the biotic community or inanimate nature, so that humanity can continue to coexist with the biotic community.
Humanity has now faced an ecological crisis due to its indulgent ignorance (Jeong Min-geol, 2017: 80) of using all the resources it could mobilize to achieve rapid economic growth and satisfy its infinite greed.
Environmental philosophy should provide humanity with a milestone that can help it escape the excessive ignorance that human civilization has pursued so far.
Environmental philosophy can establish this milestone by understanding the ecology of nature, which maintains the stability of the inanimate environment through the wisdom of insufficiency and the coexistence of the other and the indifferent.

--- p.375