Abstract
In this chapter, I discuss the meaning of the modern concept of sustainability. I argue that sustainability means more than just the ability to maintain or continue something. Rather, the core meaning of the modern concept of sustainability encompasses three aspects: continuance, orientation, and relationships. First, sustainability literally is about the continuance of something. Secondly, sustainability is an orientational concept, i.e. it has a normative and evaluative meaning: Sustainability usually is considered to be something positive, something we should strive for. Third, sustainability is a relational concept as it essentially addresses fundamental relations of the human being: the relation with other contemporaries, future generations, and nature. In other words, sustainability addresses our ability to recognize and realize ourselves as fundamentally relational beings, as beings embedded in the threefold relationship with others, future generations, and nature. It addresses the human being as a timely, socially, and naturally contingent being and the implications of this threefold contingence for human self-identity, life, and actions.
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Notes
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See, e.g., The Oxford English Dictionary (Simpson and Weiner 1989).
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Some definitions of sustainability are based on the aspect of continuance, e.g., the definition given in the Shorter Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Holland 2005).
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This has, for example, prominently been the case with Aldo Leopold (1887–1948), one of the most prominent precursors of environmentalism in the twentieth century. His arguments for a Land Ethic are based on insights of ecology in his times and result in this conclusion: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” (Leopold [1949/53]1966: 262).
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Becker, C.U. (2012). The Meaning of Sustainability. In: Sustainability Ethics and Sustainability Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2285-9_2
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