A Consideration of The Value of Wildness

Hettinger and Throop claim to support the belief that wildness is something that is to be valued intrinsically; however, I do not find that they adequately support this view. In attempting to support their assertions, they appear to defend instrumental, rather than inherent value. They argue that the value of wildness depends upon the historical context and the situation, and that wildness was not always valuable. If something is inherently valuable, however, value exists in the entity simply by virtue of its being that entity—the value is an inseparable part of the whole. If wildness was intrinsically valuable, there should be neither a time nor a place when it loses its value, for instance, when it happened to be bountiful and thriving in early periods of human history. It appears as though what Hettinger and Throop are really saying is that wildness is now valuable because it is rare, and when it was not rare, it was not valuable. It seems to me that a portion of their argument actually lies on the basis that wildness is worth something because there is not a great deal of it; I do not see that they back up this claim, and I might suspect that it was not their intention to make it. They hold that education about the humanization of earth will lead people to value wildness, yet I do not see how such education would lead people to the conclusion that wildness is valuable for any reason other than that it is endangered and rare. Individuals might even learn to value wildness, not only because it is rare, but because it is of use to humans, who take pleasure in it and value it instrumentally. One concern regarding the wildness view is that it appears as though the value of wildness is instrumental, in that it brings people pleasure—of course Hettinger and Throop dismiss this claim. They argue that “valuing nature for its wildness is not valuing wild nature for the pleasure it brings us” (p. 193). I would argue, however, that they have not given us sufficient reason to value wildness intrinsically, simply because it is wild, when in fact they even contradict themselves on this point, although they have provided reason to value it because we derive pleasure from it.