Varner, Gary E.
"The Schopenhauerian Challenge in Environmental Ethics," Environmental Ethics 7 (1985):
pp. 209-30.
Environmental holism and environmental individualism are based on
incompatible notions of moral considerability, and yield incompatible
results. For Schopenhauer, every intelligible character--every
irreducible instance of formative nature--defines a distinct moral
patient, and for him both holistic entities and the individual members
of higher species have distinguishable intelligible characters.
Schopenhauer's neglected metaethics thus can be used to generate an
environmental ethics which is "complete" in the sense of synthesizing
holism and individualism while simultaneously meeting Tom Regan's
(implicit) demand that an environmental ethics make moral patients of
natural objects.