Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Ética da Terra, Tutela Jurídca dos Animais e os Limites da Teoria dos Sentimentos Morais

2020; Volume: 23; Issue: 32 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5935/2448-0517.20200023

2448-0517

Daniel Braga Lourenço,

Brazilian Legal Issues

This article intends to address the connection between the foundations of the land ethic and the theory of moral sentiments.The land ethic, affiliated with ecocentrism, is based, upon the feeling of belonging to the biotic community that supposedly unites metaphysically the entire ecosystem.This feeling is explored under the dimension of philia, the feeling of love for nature and its elements.The problem consists in the tension that the theory of moral sentiments generates from the point of view of the capacity for formulating valid moral judgments, especially in the case of those related to the moral imperative of not causing unnecessary suffering to animals.Besides the essential conflict between a typically holistic position, such as held by the land ethic, and those positions related to moral individualism, through bibliographic research and analytical and descriptive methods, the present research shows the main difficulties that the theory of moral sentiments face.The conclusion is that its postulates