On the Search for a Worldwide Ecological Ethos

Sa？etak The move of the ecological discourse from the economic and technological towards the ethical aspects resembles a new theoretical and practical challenge. The ecological ethos are based in cultures and religions. In those it is ethos which “firmly” organize life and regulate the basic ecological relation: that between man and nature. The author criticizes the sociocultural context of the demand for a “worldwide ecological ethos” and shows some of the approaches to the defining of the worldwide ecological ethos: “abstract universalism” (minimal consensus), “normative / cultural relativism” and “provincialist anthropocentrism”. However, the author pleads for a concept of a “pluralistic ecological ethos” – the universal being reflected in the relative – pointing at the need of survival of versatile cultures on the Earth. The demand for a worldwide ecological ethos comes up in a developed industrial society as the result of (a) globalization and (b) limitations of its economic ethos in terms of sustainable development and ecological stability. This is an argument for the demands for a “worldwide ecological ethos”, but only under specified conditions. The worldwide ecological ethos presents a need to search for ethic potentials in suppressed cultures and religions