In the framework of the globalization of tourism, this chapter discusses the concepts of modern ethics and morality, on a critical perspective to the dominant standpoint that set the morale in the order of the rules and social conventions and leave the ethics on the field of personal experience. The critical essay postulates three fundamental theses: 1. The environmental philosophy builds a new ontology created by the critique of anthropocentrism; 2. But, only their articulation with a new epistemology, founded in the critique of ethnocentrism, could lead to a new ethics universal theory; 3. However, the applied ethics of environmental philosophy needs a new global political ethics shaped on the critique against political alienation. Consequently, the global code of ethics for tourism must be refunded on the light of environmental philosophy and takes an imperative character.
TopIntroduction
This chapter analyzes the contribution of the environmental philosophy from the twentieth century philosophy renovation and, in this context, the particular contribution from the Portuguese philosophers: the historical contribution from Bento (Baruch) de Espinosa (born in a Jewish Portuguese family); Antero de Quental, Portuguese philosopher from XIX century, that build their Philosophy of Nature on a critical perspective of the thought of Ernest Haëckel; and Jorge de Sena philosophical poet and writer from the XX century, teacher and world citizen in Brazil and USA.
He follows a research line trying to discover the complex and dialectical connection between ethics and moral, from Aristotle's Ethics and Aristotle’s Politics to the contemporary Environmental Philosophy and Environmental Ethics and their influence in the Global Code of Ethics for Tourism.
Their analytic perspective is that the fundamental push of environmental philosophy is the ethical issue and the moral problems.
Contrasting with the history of philosophy, that the core problems are the human condition, the environmental philosophy drive their thought to the “reasons d 'être”, the sense of the existence of the world and their phenomenology, without becoming a philosophy against the Human being, because the nature of the Human being, the nature of all entities and beings from the universe, is that they were generated by the same “star dust”.
Modern “Environmental Reason” emerged, with a new categorical imperative to the men’s action, beyond the Kantian principle conforming individual acts with a universal law, configuring the human conduct within the limits that safeguard the continuity of life and its diversity, a new ethical framework built by Environmental Philosophy and applied to the tourism global activities.
Ethics and Morals
The Wittgenstein's distinction between ethics and moral are common to most contemporary philosophical thought, moral is placed in the order of the rules and social conventions and the ethics is situated in the field of personal experience.
However, if ethics emerges from the subjectivity of each individual person, as says Cristina Beckert, does not have universal value (Beckert, 2012, p. 90).
But why not inquire this principle and, at the same time, in terms of morals and ethics, their common nature of a social product, how singular, autonomous and original it seems the philosophical thought that supports them, without depreciating the specific speech from philosophy? Why oppose so irreducibly subjectivity and universal value? The question is: the existence of universal moral values may or may not be recognized by the subjectivity of each and every human being, like happen with the international law? The environmental values could create a new ethical paradigm, with various ethical practices and new moral conventions subordinated to a global bioethics?
Inquiring those queries leads us to revisit the history of philosophy, not in a chronological logic but in dilemmatic logic, before return to the tourism issues.
The compromise “of practical wisdom” of Ricoeur is a real possibility not just because it emanates from two models of action – the theological Aristotelian and the deontological Kantian – only formally separated, but because these models share a common culture and society.
Our perspective is not to replace the philosophical discourse by a sociological analysis or an anthropology study. Philosophical discourse has a specific identity that is distinct from the literary speech or the psychological analysis. But, that doesn’t mean philosophical discourse cannot coexist or cross other speeches, as the arts and politics, and by this way, we arrive at the issue of political philosophy…and tourism globalization.