 The most pertinent motives for protecting living entities from unrestrained destruction are still derived from religious and philosophical animism, embracing not only humans, but also animals and often plants and other entities. As Edward Bernard Tyler has shown in 1871, animistic worldviews, that is the doctrine of spiritual beings with his special relation to the doctrine of the soul, can be found across all cultures and philosophies and are frequently associated with theories of rebirth and reincarnation, which can be assesized in one way or another. The observer's category, animism, has many shades of meaning. It was coined by the physician Georg Anstahl in 1707, who in his book, Theoria Medica Vera, Theoria Medica Vera, revived the ancient idea of the identity of the vital principle and the immaterial soul, which after Tyler became popular in 19th century anthropology and comparative religion. Its subsequent dismissal from the conceptual repertoire of comparative religion after severely being severely criticized by Livy Brühl, Baldwin and others, proved to be a premature reaction as indicated by its recent revival. Rather, a clear differentiation between the dimensions of the term animism is called for. Robert R. Merritt in 1912 introduced the term animatism, for instance, to differentiate the attribution of vitality to inanimate objects from the belief in the existence of spiritual beings or disembodied phantoms. Renewed significance of the term animism was suggested by Jean Piaget's influential work, The Child's Conception of the World, which controversially compared ontogenetic and phylogenetic dimensions of animism. Here understood as the tendency to regard objects as living and in doubt with will. Piaget based his theories on the evidence of numerous statements by children, such as Gilles, or Gilles, who replied to the question, a stone feels neither heat nor cold. Would it feel if it was dropped on the ground? Yes, why? Because it would break. Tyler had argued that the supposition of spiritual entities is a rationalization of such perceptions. For Piaget, it was an empirical question, whether animism in the case of the child depends on the existence of the notion of mind or on the contrary, on the absence of such a notion. However, the idea of spiritual entities historically originated most, but not all religious, philosophical, and psychological theories today, continue to postulate the existence of spiritual substances or processes, soul, self, consciousness, or mind. Many continue to regard these invisible forces also as the formless vital essence or essences of living entities. In contemporary Buddhism, obviously, may be an exception, but that is debatable. In contemporary academic discourse, however, only theories that extend such conceptions to non-human entities are called animism or animatistic. The assumption that human beings have a soul or self is rarely bracketed together with the so-called primitive animism, which already Tyler rejected, who posited an unbroken continuity into the midst of the high modern culture. The reasons for this scientific rejection of animism as a genuine world hypothesis, a term Stephen Pepper introduced, were criticized by E.A. Robinson in an article on animism as world hypothesis. To call any philosophy animism is to condemn it. The word usually refers to an early level of man's thinking about the word, the world, a level in which our distinction between animate and the inanimate had not yet been made. The artificial conceptual boundary drawn between scientific and animistic variants of the conception of spiritual substance or process, challenged but not replaced by a contemporary neuroscience, rests on the combination of two conceptual oppositions, body versus mind and nature versus humanity. These centuries old Western theological and philosophical distinctions still dominate global scientific discourse, though their inadequacy has frequently been pointed out. The distinction between nature and humanity is entirely paradoxical and renders the nature of the human animal itself obscure. Anthropocentric speciesism is a mode of this distinction, obviously. The rather arbitrary lines drawn by scientists, philosophers and theologians between entities that have a mind or soul and entities that do not is powerfully manifest in the case of non-human animals. Until recently, many evolutionary biologists, anthropologists and Marxists still posited the ability to use tools as a distinct quality of human beings, yet the evidence for such perceived radical differences between humans and non-human animals is getting thinner by the day. Fact is that the attribution of a spiritual essence to an entity establish it as a moral subject or in Tom Reagan's words, a subject of a life. And hence qualifies it for certain elementary individual rights. The degree of conceptual deanimation of nature in scientific and theological schemes based on more or less arbitrary conceptual distinctions determines the relative size of culturally demarcated domains of nature which are granted no protection by such intrinsic moral rights. The right to live, thus rendering them open for legitimate exploitation. The metaphysical issue whether spiritual substances exist or not is not relevant at all in this juridical theological context. One of the most comprehensive ethicized theories of animism ever conceived is the classical Jane Soul Body dualism. It postulates that not only humans, animals and plants but also the elements fire, water, air and earth are animated by individual life giving spiritual substances. Atman or Jiva, which are in doubt with consciousness and willpower. Souls or selves are conceived as immortal substances which trap themselves in their respective incarnation as a consequence of interacting with matter and remaining trapped by committing injury, hymsa to other sentient entities. Since it is assumed that violent acts rebound on the embodied soul in form of karmic particles which constitute physical bodies by attaching themselves to the soul like grains of dust, only nonviolent action and finally non-action will in the long term assure the purification and self-realization of the soul. In this version of animism which explains phenomenological pulsoism with reference to an ontological dualism, the soul-oriented desire for salvation is predicated on the protection of life. Classical Jainism is not interested in the preservation of the environment, that is living beings per se. Jain non-violence is motivated primarily by sociological self-interest. Even if stripped from some now implausible metaphysical and cosmological ballast which may seem outdated in the light of modern scientific discoveries, the question remains which elements of the Jain doctrine and historical experience represents globally important intellectual and cultural resources which are potentially universally acceptable and may serve as elements for future globalized environmental ethics. The remainder of this paper will revisit the dilemma of ethical pluralism in reinvestigating the question to what extent the Jain value of non-violence stripped from some of its specific indie cultural elements could serve as one of the better rocks for universal minimal ethic of the future that could remotivate human beings to pursue less destructive ways of life. In his introduction to the volume Globalization of Ethics, the Canadian philosopher Will Kimlicka, known like John Rawls, Charles Tyler and Michael Walzer, for his dual commitment to cultural rights for minority groups and certain core liberal principles, asked a key question which is applicable to the emerging global discourse in environmental ethics as well. I quote, how do some of the world's most influential ethical traditions think about the task of constructing moral conversations and moral norms at a global level? What intellectual resources are available within Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, liberalism, natural law, Confucianism and feminism when confronted with the need to engage in a globalized ethics? It is difficult to overstate the gravity and difficulty of this task. He continues, unfortunately the scope for convergence has too often been obscured by different modes of expression, historical grievances and resentments and the absence of appropriate forms for open dialogue across ethical traditions. Kimlicka considers three different responses to the challenge of globalizing ethics. One, to start with an existential and existing, sorry, moral tradition, to start with an existing moral tradition and to attempt to impose it as the single legitimate framework for global ethical discourse. We all become Jains. This approach he notes is both illegitimate and unrealistic and presupposes inequalities in power. Two, to try to define an entirely new ethical world vocabulary that is not drawn exclusively from one of the historical ethical traditions but rather is built specially for the purpose of engaging in cross-cultural debates. The principle example is in 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the UN, which however he remarks is a lightly disguised form of Western liberalism with its emphasis on the protection of the rights of the individual from society and the state. This conception is not rooted in any historical tradition. International human rights must therefore be supplemented by other ethical norms and principles he says, such as indigenous conceptions of the stewardship of the land, et cetera, or animistic conceptions, one may add, but there's no consensus. Last but not least, three, to think about global ethics as a two-level phenomenon. At one level we have a self-standing international discourse such as human rights that sets to define a minimum set of standards agreeable to all. At a secondary level, we have a multiplication or multiplicity of different ethical traditions, each of which has its own account of what more or less of what more or what else is needed above and beyond human rights. Any convergence at this second level will be the result of learning, mutual exchange and inspiration, which is likely to be a slow and uneven process. A crucial task of a globalized ethics therefore is to think about the conditions under which such interchange, dialogue, not coercion can take place without presupposing or imposing a single ethical perspective and without limiting ethical debate to the thin and minimal discourse of international human rights, end of quote. Kim Likert points out that two-level models of ethics is not an entirely modern invention. This is in response to sustained criticism of his earlier work on multiculturalism, which was labeled an ethics of assimilation to the liberal project. To some, the question is merely whether the animal rights agenda, like the modern ecology movement as a whole, can be subjected to a similar approach as a middle class fed that disregards the needs of economically suffering, if not starving majority of human beings, as in favor of the preservation of the lives of plants and non-human animals, that makes sense. It is now apparent that this simple contrast is not persuasive since the survival of even meat-eating human beings depends on the sustainable biosphere. The attribution of the universal rights to animals, plants or other beings, we heard it paper by Paul Waldor today, qua attribution of a moral status comparable to human beings, created paradoxes, which, if at all, can philosophically only be resolved by individually giving up the will to live in the manner of Schopenhauer's suggestion or Jane religious practice. Generally, the proposition leads to a casis tree of specifications and contextual exemptions from the rule. This becomes evident by comparing the differential treatment of the case of the lion and the deer across cultures. The scenario was controversially discussed both in the modern animal rights philosophy and in Jane philosophy. Tom Reagan, in his paper, Animal Rights and Environmental Ethics, which he planned to present at this conference, discusses predator-prey relations as follows, and I quote him at length. Suppose a tiger is stalking a small child. If we frighten the lion, we may be able to save the child. Since the lions are not moral agents in the sense into which I use the expression, subject of a life, no rights violation is in the offing. But the child almost certainly will be harmed if we do nothing. Should we try to prevent this outcome? Do we have a prima facie duty to intervene? It is hard to imagine how a negative answer could be defended. Sorry, I don't know how that moved on, but it doesn't do any harm. Where's this thing? Come back to that. It is hard to imagine how a negative answer could be defended. So let us assume what I take to be true, that we have a prima facie duty of assistance in this case. Next, suppose the same lion is stalking not a child, but a wild wildebeest, and suppose again that if we frighten the lion, we may be able to save the wildebeest. Since lions are not moral agents in the sense of which I use the expression, no rights violation is in the offing. But the wildebeest almost certainly will be harmed if we do nothing. Should we try to prevent this outcome? Do we have a prima facie duty to intervene? My answer has been and remains, no. It did not take long for critics to think that something had gone wrong. Jay Baird Calico, one of the true pioneers in environmental ethics, this is still Tom Braggen, is representative. As part of his critique of the rights view, he writes, if we ought to protect humans' rights, not to be preyed upon animal predators, then we ought to protect animals' rights, not to be preyed upon by animal predators. And not just a little. Calico insists that the rights view is committed to protecting prey animals a lot. In his words, Reagan's theory of animal rights implies a policy of human predator extermination. Since predators however innocently violate the rights of their victims. End of quote. Reagan defends his apparently contradictory response by arguing that there's no inconsistency because only moral agents are capable of violating rights and non-human animals are not moral agents. I can quote him. Instead of advocating a policy of massive intervention in the affairs of wildlife, what we ought in general to do is nothing. In my view, our ruling obligation with regard to wild animals is to let them be. An obligation grounded in the recognition of their general competence to get on with the business of living, the competence that we find among both members of predator and prey species. We do not find this same competence in young children. The plain fact is they cannot take care of themselves and have no realistic hope of surviving. In any circumstances in the wild or in the home if we do not help them. To let children be, therefore is not to honor their competence. There may be small animals as well, but this doesn't come into play here. Reagan concedes that the rights view which addresses individuals of all species alike fails to provide a credible basis for addressing our obligations to preserve endangered species. Quote, first we have an obligation, prima facie to be sure, to stop human moral agents, commercial developers, poachers and other interested third parties whose actions violate the rights of animals. Second, we have an obligation to hold the destruction of natural habitat that makes life for these animals sustainable. If we succeed in discharging these obligations my discussion implies we will succeed in discharging our duty to protect endangered species. It continues, the rights view can apply compensatory principles to animals, the East African black rhino for instance, et cetera. Whose numbers are in severe decline because of past human wrongs? For example, poaching of ancestors and destruction of habitat. Although the remaining rhinos have the same fundamental rights as do members of a more plentiful species, rabbits say, the duty of assistance owed to the former it arguably makes a greater claim on us than this same duty does when owed to the latter. Question mark. Like Singer, Reagan too draws an arbitrary line between forms of life that qualify as subjects of a life and forms of life too rudimentary to qualify as subjects of life which hence can be legitimately exploited. My last quote of him, what the rights view denies at least given its articulation to date is that plants and insects are subjects of a life and it denies as well that these forms of life have been shown to have any rights including a right to survival. Of course we may that is, there's nothing wrong in principle if we do make great efforts to preserve such life based on human aesthetic or sacramental interests for instance. But what we may be willing to do this stops well short of establishing that plants and insects have a valid claim against us to do so. End of quote. Hence the lion and the rhino are given individual rights to be which plants and insects are denied this, while plants and insects are denied this privilege because they are too rudimentary. If this argument fails to convince, Reagan himself turns against similar lack of convincing reasoning in the claim of some of his opponents that species have inherent value and so do ecosystems and the biosphere. The case of prey predator relations is also controversially discussed in Jane literature which privileges not a rights perspective but a Karman theoretical perspective of natural metaphysical justice. Basically two perspectives are contested. One, the view that the duty for the protection of life, Jiv Daya, is implied in the negatively formulated Jaina doctrine of non-violence whose positive correlate is compassion. And two, the view that from a sociological perspective non-intervention is required universally. Not only with regard to animals but also with regard to humans because karma will take its course and intervention will harm the agent because it attracts good karma and does not lead to the annihilation of karma. Only from a social perspective is protection of life both human and non-human are moral good. And the reasons for protection in the Jane case is precisely given in this, for instance in this quote from the Suyagada in the Shwetambara canon, i.e. all beings hate pains. And I could say more about all these matters but we're running out of time. The comparison between the modern animal rights discourse and the ancient Jaina doctrine and culture of non-violence to all living beings shows not only similarities as pointed out by Chris Chappell in his pioneering 1993 book, Non-Violence to Animals, Earth and Self in Asian Traditions but also differences. The animal rights discourse echoes the new international human rights agenda which focuses on the individual rather than the group or species and thereby bypasses or transcends the agenda of cultural or religious specific attitudes. Mark Bekoff focused on this contrast as well as this morning. It's probably not accidental that proponents of the secular animal rights theories such as Paul Peter Singer find greatest interest in Buddhism which is more widely known than Jainism in the West which dominates this field of inquiry and social activism because Buddhism and Jainism are sociological sects as Louis de Mont following Emil Durkheim's approach pointed out that is religions of the individual which cut across the group religion of caste which is constituted by Brahmin controlled life cycle rituals. As Chappell has emphasized already, Jainism seeks to achieve attitudinal change in terms of its own religious cultural agenda by way of transformation of the individual. This is traditionally achieved through the application of specific vows of renunciation which commit the individual to renounce or restrict violent practices such as attachment to possessions, exploitation of animals, travel or consumption for a certain period. It was the Terrapant Acharya Tulsi who in response to the unprecedented experience of violence at the time of the Second World War, the atomic bomb and the partition of British India. So the need to change this approach and to propagate not only world renunciation as in the orthodox Jaina parts of salvation but also world transformation to use Max Weber's terms. His proposition put forward in 1949 was to instigate universal morality through the propagation of the voluntary individual commitment to selected normative social rules of limited scope. I think I'll picture him. Skip things here. This approach was modeled on the traditional Jaina procedure of self-imposing vows. Though the name of this scheme, the Anuvata or small vow movement alludes to the identically labeled religious arrangement is what was explicitly stated that it is not especially religious, especially religious or Jain outlook but universal for the moral improvement of the entire nation and humanity. The content of the vows was simply changed from ancient religious to new secular moral commitments not to cheat in exams, to renounce sectarianism, not to pollute the environment, et cetera. I show you just some lists. We have no time for all this stuff today. We are here. It goes endlessly on very specific vows and I will believe in human unity, et cetera. Let's stop there rather arbitrarily. So this approach shows paradigmatically the conscious local attempt to extract particular religious concepts and processes out of their traditional context and to universalize this cultural knowledge through redefinitions. The old practice was not given up but a new practice acceptable to all added to it. Achaya Tulsi was uniquely talented and forward-looking modernizing religious leader shaped by his times and instigated a number of similar schemes based on distinction between religion and morality. I come now to the end. The question is how the Anurad movement fared over the last 60 years. Can it function as a paradigm for similar approaches in other cultures and religious context, for instance concerning the problems of environmental destruction? There are vows related to the environment like do not pollute the environment or something like that. I will not pollute the environment and some qualifiers. So are there similar, can it function as a paradigm? With hindsight, sadly, it has to be considered that the movement which has several hundred thousand followers amongst all Indian religious traditions but mainly amongst Jains and Hindus has not been able to expand. In the present generation, it even seems to lose impact despite politicians advocating their support in the media and great media campaigns. What does have an impact though is local action on specific environmental issues. For instance, drought relief, feeding animals in the desert of Rajasthan, traditional animal shelters, interestingly rejected by the Therapuntis for certain doctrinal reasons, et cetera. It seems the universalist discourse of global morality and ideologies of rights has less potential than ancient ritual and behavioral patterns which are followed routinely. The question remains therefore, do we need new rituals rather than new ideologies? That's what I have to say.