Forest ethics

Abstract

Forest ethics represents the cultural frame and the deepest expression of forestry, a discipline originated from the basic chapter of the relationship between man and nature, a cultural theme rather than a technical-scientific one. therefore this discipline has represented the origin of the culture of compatibility, that is the aim of the present age and the embodiment of environmental ethics. So forest ethics, which is based on the culture of reason and science, both evolutionary and ecological, is a «third way» between the two classical expressions of environmental ethics: the «biocentric» (or «physiocentric») one and the «anthropocentric» one, opposed as concerns their aim, but similar in their metaphysical absolute sense. In this sense the peculiarity of forest ethics consists in the possibility of reaching a complete compatibility between man and nature, between environmental law and a right to the environment, between economy and ecology. So the complete elaboration of forest ethics becomes the foundation of the recent achievements of forestry, as ratified in the third conference of silviculture, concerning the forest rights and the systemic sylviculture. finally and for this reason, forestry is culturally and socially legitimated in our contemporary age.