Hermeneutics and Field Environmental Philosophy: Integrating Ecological Sciences and Ethics into Earth Stewardship - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 234

new narrative that encompasses the many minority cultural traditions that oppose
the reifying meaning of nature promoted by liberal economy, early modern science,
and a distorted interpretation of the Bible? The Australian philosopher Arran Gare
( 1998 ) has proposed to erect narratives that go beyond a narrow economic sense
into a new tradition, but this enterprise requires a theoretical framework and method,
as proposed by FEP.

15.2.2 Theoretical Foundation of FEP

FEP's theoretical foundation has two premises: (1) the link among Habitats, Habits
and co-in-Habitants (the “3Hs” of the biocultural ethic), and (2) the integration of
social components into an ecosocial justice, and biocultural conservation and
education programs (Rozzi 2013 ).

15.2.2.1 The Links Among Habitats, Habits and co-in-Habitants

In the beginning, the Greek word ethos did not mean ethics, but a den: the place
where an animal lives (Scott and Liddell 1996 ). This idea broadened to include
human practices and it came to mean the abodes of humans. With an ecological
hermeneutic, Rozzi ( 2008a , p. 116) describes how ethos can be understood as a
habitat, and how ethos was used later as a verb: to inhabit. When a form of inhab-
iting becomes recurrent it forms a habit. With the framework of biocultural eth-
ics, Rozzi ( 2013 , pp. 20-22) emphasizes that to address current socio-environmental
problems it is essential to better understand the relationships among the human
habits, the communities of co-inhabitants, and the habitats, where they inhabit.
For this endeavor, interdisciplinary teamwork among ecologists and philoso-
phers who integrate research on the habits and the habitats of specifi c communi-
ties of co-inhabitants, enable a recovery of the archaic meaning of ethos and add
novel insights from ecological-evolutionary sciences to the understanding of
contemporary ethics.
It is important to note that any habitat infl uences and, in turn, is infl uenced by the
ways in which it is inhabited. When those ways of inhabiting are established regu-
larly, then they produce habits (Rozzi et al. 2008a , p. 116). The habits become cus-
toms, thereby shaping the ethos of behavior. In this way, habitats and habits are the
original basis of the ethics which guide behavior on a regular basis; i.e., they regu-
late the character of the beings that inhabit them (the co-inhabitants).
In addition, we should not forget that habits infl uence habitats and that this
action should be called intentional behavior. On the other hand, the infl uence of
habitats on habits could be called conditioned conduct. Consequently, the per-
sonality of the beings that live and interact in habitats arises as a hybrid of inten-
tional behavior and conditioned conduct. It is important to note that unlike the