Callicott shows the internal development and logic of Leopold’s argument (which is often misunderstood) as being based on: a Darwinian natural history of ethical development, a kinship theory of ethical ties among living things, and an ecological model of biological communities, “all overlaid on a Humean-Smithian moral psychology”. Callicott resolves problems of the holism of Leopold’s ethic–in particular, the charges that ecological holism is a kind of “ecofascism,” and that the land ethic is just a form of enlightened species-wide human self-interest. The land ethic does not “cancel human morality”. It supplements it. And the land ethic is not prudential-consequentialist; it is a deontological system of ethics based on love and respect for the community of the land.
