Howe, Leslie A.2004-12-212013-01-042005-01-042013-01-042004-112004-11-01November 2http://hdl.handle.net/10388/etd-12212004-163822The argument advanced is this thesis is that the entities that make up the environment are those that do not owe their origin to any willful creative activity but have evolved through accidental natural processes. This fact of not being willfully created makes the environment ontologically independent and confers on it intrinsic value as opposed to instrumental value. This intrinsic value is one that all the entities that make up the environment share. It is further argued that this intrinsic value is aesthetic rather than moral. Only beings that are specially endowed with certain capacities, like reflection and understanding, could be said, in the context of this work, to have intrinsic moral value in the sense of being moral agents. But as moral agents, we need to give moral considerability to all the natural entities in the environment since they share the same natural right with us, based on our common origin. So, even though the nonhuman, natural entities in the environment do not have moral rights, they have natural rights. It is further argued that this natural right could be best safeguarded in a legal framework.en-USNatureethic of the environmentPlatonismthe ontological independence of the environmentthe pre-Socraticsthe intrinsic aesthetic value of the environmentthe Igbo traditional attitude to the environmentdualistic attitude regarding the environmentHinduismBuddhism and Christianity and their attitudes tothe dominance of Christian dogmatic attitude to tindependent and accidental natural processesconceptlessness of the aesthetic value of naturethe theory of creation ex nihilothe purposelessness of the environmentIntrinsic and instrumental valuesnatural objects and artifactstext