Naturalistic Virtue Ethics and the Relational Turn in Environmental and Animal Ethics: Recognizing an Independent Paradigm

Abstract Growing discontent with the dominant concepts in environmental and animal ethics—traditionally shaped by the universalist and impersonal logic of deontological and consequentialist frameworks—has fueled an increasing interest in relationality and relational values. For over a decade, thinkers such as Mark Coeckelbergh and David J. Gunkel have advocated a ‘relational turn’ in these fields. Naturalistic virtue ethics, particularly as developed by Rosalind Hursthouse, was an early voice in emphasizing the moral significance of particular relations, such as species membership. However, the orthodox (eudaimonistic) interpretation of this approach has lost momentum and has largely been displaced by a pluralistic ‘environmental virtue ethics’ within environmental and animal ethics that affirms agent-independent values that should be promoted even when this is not conducive to the flourishing of the moral agent. This article draws on insights from the philosophy of science concerning typical dynamics of paradigm shifts. In particular, the scientific revolutions in astronomy and physics are used as a heuristic device to reframe naturalistic virtue ethics as an independent paradigm that can be viewed as part of a broader relational turn but is distinct from environmental virtue ethics. Specifically, the article draws an analogy to Einstein’s theory of relativity, proposing that ethical concepts should be treated not as absolutes—rooted in a neutral, universal rationality concerned with independent properties—but as objectively relative to the life-form of a species, much as Einstein demonstrated that time is relative to inertial frames of reference.