The link between neoliberal rationality and false individualism seems clear, but what follows from this individualism is precisely the anti-political attitude for which virtue ethics has been criticized. The neoliberal subject is completely responsible for his own well-being, and only for that. One cannot change the world, but one can change oneself. Again, several sociological studies show how this can be a powerful idea in different social domains like working life (Mäkinen 2014) and medicine and healthcare (Baum and Fisher 2014). The virtue of responsibility, if neoliberalized, becomes almost the opposite of responsibility as an environmental virtue. A neoliberal subject is not only detached from relations but also views other beings purely instrumentally, as sources of utility. It would be blind to the non-instrumental goodness of nature and to the effects of its actions on temporally and spatially distant others. In other words, the neoliberal subject (as an ideal type) is incapable of both respect for nature and mindfulness in Jamieson’s terms. It will not respect nature either in its goodness or its destructiveness. It is also incapable of radical hope (see below), since having human beings intentionally cause radical changes in the structures of the social world is inconceivable to him.
species-being, or to use the more familiar (and controversial) term, “human nature.” For Marx, humans are in essence potentially free and social beings who can plan things in advance and produce not only their products but also their own nature (and dispositions) by shaping their environment. Since in capitalism the whole production of society is minimally regulated, and while there are many planning activities in firms, these are carried out by specialists, in accordance with the division of labor more generally into mental and manual labor and thence into more and more specified tasks and skills. Thus, in an alienated society, humans cannot make any plans as to how large parts of societies develop, and most people cannot even take part in the planning of the work they themselves do. Humans are also historical creatures; they are shaped by history and can make history, but not as they please, only under “inherited circumstances” (Marx [1852] 1974, 146).
Humans inherit the knowledge of all the previous generations via texts, technologies, and infrastructures, but again, because of the division of labor and the commodification of knowledge, most people have no real access to this inheritance, an inheritance they would need in order to shape their own societies.
Mindfulness as an environmental virtue would mean understanding and regulating the effects of our actions in a manner that is mindful of their distant consequences.
Since activities that have far-reaching consequences are social in nature, being mindful of them would require overcoming social alienation. A non-alienated society would not mean that humans could have a non-mediated, straightforward relation to their products, themselves, or one another, but rather that they would be able to shape these mediations together in moral and ethical ways.
Lastly, human beings are alienated from nature. Marx argues that:
[t]he life of the species, both in man and in animals, consists physically in the fact that man (like the animal) lives on organic nature; and the more universal man (or the animal) is, the more universal is the sphere of inorganic31 nature on which he lives. Just as plants, animals, stones, air, light, etc., constitute theoretically a part of human consciousness, partly as objects of natural science, partly as objects of art – his spiritual inorganic nature, spiritual nourishment which he must first prepare to make palatable and digestible – so also in the realm of practice they constitute a part of human life and human activity. Physically man lives only on these
31 “Inorganic” here does not mean “not alive,” but rather those aspects of nature that can be used by humans but are not parts of the human body.
products of nature, whether they appear in the form of food, heating, clothes, a dwelling, etc. The universality of man appears in practice precisely in the universality which makes all nature his inorganic body – both inasmuch as nature is (1) his direct means of life, and (2) the material, the object, and the instrument of his life activity. Nature is man’s inorganic body – nature, that is, insofar as it is not itself human body.
Man lives on nature – means that nature is his body, with which he must remain in continuous interchange if he is not to die. That man’s physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature. (Marx [1844] 1975b, 275–76)
The relationship with nature is an integral part of human existence both in producing the necessities of life and in creating art or doing scientific research.
This is why the relationship to nature should be one of respect, but in capitalism most people are barred from taking a full and active part in this relationship, from their “inorganic body.” Rather, they can only take part in nature as consumers of food and drink and in a mediated and impoverished way by being consumers of art and entertainment or being connected to the use of science and laws of nature by taking part in a technologized labor process. For Jamieson, one way to learn to respect nature is to experience it in its grandeur, say by climbing a mountain or camping in a desert (Jamieson 2013). This may well be true, but it should be qualified by saying that to be able to experience nature on one’s own terms requires money and free time, and these experiences, even if everyone had enough resources to enjoy them occasionally, will not in themselves do anything to change the social structures that produce environmental calamities. They are practices that depend on a separation of alienated work time, when one cannot decide how one relates to nature, and free time, when one can form one’s own individualized relationship to nature. Experiences of natural beauty may influence our character to some extent; they may be one possible starting point for a more thorough transformation for some people, and they may motivate social and political action, but while being appreciative of these experiences, we should be aware of the countervailing tendencies in our societies.
With respect to Jamieson’s new virtues, to mindfulness, and to respect for nature, Marx’s discussion of alienation is relevant by pointing out why these virtues are needed and why they are difficult to acquire. They are needed because societies and their productive activities are structured in ways that are not in accordance with an attitude of respect for nature and that are not mindful of the distant effects
of actions. They are difficult to acquire because people form dispositions in the social relations in which they live, work, consume, enjoy free time, are educated, and so on. The more these relations are alienated, the less likely they are to produce mindful individuals who respect nature. The question then is whether being able to change social relations requires people who have certain virtues, perhaps precisely those virtues are the ones that the same social relations make difficult to acquire.
The false ontologies of the human and its connection to capitalism has been analyzed and criticized extensively in critical theory since Hegel and Marx. The idea of human capital is only the latest manifestation. It is important to note the way in which neoliberal rationality is rooted in the structures of capitalism. Michael J.
Thompson writes:
The pathological effects of private property are here [in young Marx’ Paris Manuscripts (1844)] seen to be the product of the fact that it undermines the crucial social essence of human collective and individual life. Marx here argues that we can understand the negative effects of private property only by comprehending that it is an institutionalization of a false understanding of human being – one that rests on the liberal conception of human agency and independence that both Hegel and Marx saw as only partial in its conception of human essence. Once this independence is posited as the essence of man, relations become dependent rather than interdependent; the kinds of goods that this kind of
community will pursue will not be common relational goods, but particularistic goods; equality and interdependent forms of social-relationality are displaced by power, alienation, reification and human degradation. (Thompson 2017, 36)
The gist of the criticisms exemplified by Thompson is that the false ontology has roots in social reality, institutions of private property, the market, and the modes and relations of production. It cannot be done away with just by philosophizing, by “the arms of criticism” (which does not mean that philosophical criticism is not important to any progressive project). A virtue ethical approach to what human beings are like would not in itself transfer to practice. Rather, to put it bluntly, if virtue ethics centers on the moral self-development of the individual, it
risks being co-opted by neoliberalism.32 Instead, it should attend to how subjects are socially formed and how they can influence this formation. Just like retrospective and prospective aspects of responsibility, understanding environmental responsibility as a virtue also requires understanding social structures. Since virtues are dispositional and embodied, those social theorists and philosophers who theorize the body and its dispositions as socially formed will be good, if difficult, partners in dialogue for environmental virtue ethicists.