Does nature have value in itself? (Philosophy HL)

The big idea: A £20 note is valuable — but only for what you can swap it for. A friendship is valuable too — but not for what you can get out of it; it's just worth having.

Nature is caught between these. Is a rainforest like the £20 note (valuable for what it gives us), or like the friendship (valuable in itself)?

So the deep question of this micro is: does nature have intrinsic value, or only instrumental value?

One thinker built a whole outlook on the answer 'yes — nature has value in itself'.

Naess: deep ecology: The Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess argued for deep ecology. Every living thing — a whale, a beetle, a patch of moss — has its own worth, whether or not it's useful to humans. He called shallow environmentalism 'protect nature so we stay healthy' and contrasted it with the deep view: the living world matters for its own sake. From this he drew a radical idea — self-realisation — that a mature person comes to feel the living world as part of a wider self, so protecting it is not sacrifice but self-care.

Checkpoint — deep ecology: In one line: Naess says all living things have worth in themselves, so humans are part of the web, not its master. Hold that — the next thinker agrees nature matters but blames something different for the crisis.

A rival green thinker accepted that nature matters but located the crisis somewhere surprising.

Bookchin: social ecology: Murray Bookchin argued for social ecology. The environmental crisis, he said, isn't really about our attitude to beetles — it's about power between people. Societies built on some humans dominating others (rich over poor, boss over worker) naturally extend that habit of domination to the land. So you can't fix nature without fixing unjust human societies first: change how people treat each other, and how we treat nature will change with it.

Go further — higher-level insight: Notice the two diagnoses can combine. Maybe we harm nature both because we forgot it has intrinsic value (Naess) AND because our societies run on domination (Bookchin). A top-band answer weighs them rather than picking a team — and asks which fix comes first.

Checkpoint — social ecology: In one line: Bookchin says the root of the crisis is humans dominating humans — heal society and we'll heal our bond with nature.