Climate Change and Natural Beauty: Kant’s Aesthetic Moderate Ecocentrism

People often perceive the green transition as over-demanding. Some find the associated economic burdens both very high and unfairly shared. Some find unacceptable the use of coercion to prohibit certain unsustainable lifestyles. Using a familiar Rawlsian terminology, this paper articulates the problem into two main questions, one about justice and one about stability. These are, respectively, 1) when do people have sound reasons to say that their scope of freedom is being illegitimately restricted for the sake of green goals, and 2) what reasons do we have to believe that citizens will have a positive attitude towards green values, at least as a default position? In the first two sections, the paper analyzes and assesses some trends of Kant scholarship devoted to these questions. It then suggests (§§ 3 and 4) to look at Kantian themes so far insufficiently mobilized. It concludes by rejecting the common view according to which Kant is helplessly bound to an anthropocentric view of value and by construing his position as a form of moderate ecocentrism (of a special kind). This is achieved through the exploitation of Kant’s account of natural beauty, properly reinterpreted as revealing a universal sense of closeness to nature and “being at home” in it. While probably insufficient to answer fully the question of stability, this form of moderate aesthetic ecocentrism is likely to be the best one can find in Kant.