Abstract

Because the land ethic is erected on scientific foundations it falls afoul of the Is/Ought Dichotomy devolving from a single paragraph in Hume’s _Treatise_ and elevated to the status of a “law” of ethics in 20 th -century moral philosophy. “Hume’s Law” is based on a misunderstanding of Hume’s intentions and Kant regarded ought-from-is “problematic hypothetical imperatives of skill” to be analytic—which should give deployers of “Hume’s Guillotine” pause. While the land ethic is grounded in the biotic-community paradigm in ecology, one also finds Leopold invoking the ecosystem paradigm (though not by name), the superorganism paradigm, and mechanistic metaphors. This mix of paradigms and metaphors does not bespeak confusion; rather, Leopold anticipates hierarchy theory expressly developed in late-20th-century ecology. The land ethic can be adapted to the currently prevailing neo-Gleasonian “flux-of-nature” paradigm in ecology, requiring a reformulation of its summary moral maxim in terms of directionless succession and disturbance regimes.