Foreign thinker
Holmes Rolston III
Holmes Rolston IIIEnvironmental philosophy, environmental ethics, philosophy of natureAmericanb. 1932
“Nature is not only a storehouse of resources for humans; it has value in itself.”
Life and Thought
Holmes Rolston III is an American philosopher and one of the important founders of contemporary environmental philosophy. By defending the intrinsic value of nature and criticizing anthropocentrism, he has played a major role in the development of environmental ethics and philosophical thinking about the relationship between humans and the natural world.
Holmes Rolston III was born in 1932 in the United States. He studied theology and philosophy and spent much of his academic career at Colorado State University, where he taught philosophy and became one of the leading figures in environmental philosophy.
Rolston was among the first philosophers to examine environmental issues within the frameworks of ethics and value theory. In his works, especially the book “Environmental Ethics: Duties to and Values in the Natural World” (1986), he argued that nature is valuable not merely because of its usefulness to humans but because it possesses intrinsic value.
A central theme in Rolston’s thought is the critique of anthropocentrism. He argued that ethics should not be limited to relationships among humans but should also include living beings, species, ecosystems, and natural processes. From his perspective, humans are part of the evolutionary history of nature and have an ethical responsibility to protect the diversity and vitality of the natural world.
Rolston has also written on the concept of value in nature, the relationship between science and philosophy, environmental preservation, and the ethical meaning of biological evolution. His ideas have had a significant influence on environmental philosophy, applied ethics, and intellectual movements concerned with the protection of nature.