Belonging to a community, sympathize with another - without leaving out all the rest. Land ethic perspective on the death of animals

The main aim of this paper is to make some remarks about how Aldo Leopold and John Baird Callicott’s land ethic handles the intentional killing of nonhuman animals by humans. I argue that the land ethic provides a more appropriate, less inconsistent, and more achievable ethical framework than the most of animal ethics to drive ethical decision concerning the possible killing of nonhuman situations. The paper has the following structure. In section 1, I explicate the genesis and the key concepts of the Aldo Leopold’s land ethic. In section 2, I show how John Baird Callicott has recently tried to track the philosophical foundations of the land ethic, defending the validity of the theory. Lastly, in section 3, I provide suggestions to use the land ethic arguments against the killing of nonhuman animals.