Environmental Antinomianism

Abstract

In rejecting the ethical authority of those social institutions that attempt to define and impose norms of belief and behavior, radical environmentalism has many parallels with past antinomian protests. It is characterized by a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ directed towards the establishment in all its forms and extending to all its attempts to ‘lay down the law.’ Those nomothetic models which represent environmentalists as, (a) seeking to extend current legal/bureaucratic frameworks to ‘nature,’ or (b) drawing moral conclusions from ‘natural laws’ are guilty of ignoring radical environmentalism's antinomian ethos.