Lesson · 4 min Stretch
The Last Person on Earth
In one line Routley asked if the last person alive would do wrong by destroying a forest, testing nature’s value beyond use.
Most moral thinking has treated nature as valuable for what it does for people: food, clean air, beauty to enjoy. Philosophers call this instrumental value. Environmental ethics asks whether nature also has intrinsic value, worth in itself.
In 1973 the Australian philosopher Richard Routley, later Sylvan, offered a test. Imagine the last person on Earth, knowing they will soon die, sets out to destroy every remaining tree and species. No human will ever be harmed. Many people still feel the act is wrong. If so, Routley argued, value in nature cannot depend only on human use.
Critics ask whose feelings these are, and whether value can exist with no one to value it. Defenders reply that many things matter without being useful to us, and the test only asks us to notice that.
Go deeper
Holmes Rolston III argued that value exists in nature whether or not anyone values it. Living things pursue their own good, and ecosystems have what he called systemic value, since they produce new forms of life. J. Baird Callicott replied that value always needs a valuer, but that people can value nature for its own sake, not only for its use.
The old wetland
A town plans to drain a wetland for a car park. A study shows the wetland provides little flood protection or tourism income.
Supporters say that settles it: the land is worth more paved. Opponents ask a different question: does the wetland, with its birds and reeds, have worth even if no one profits from it? The study answered only one kind of question about value.
Try this today Name a place in nature you value. Ask whether it would still matter if no one ever saw or used it again.
Cite or share this lesson
A plain reference you can paste into notes or an essay:
Quest2Reason. “The Last Person on Earth.” https://quest2reason.com/learn/lesson/the-last-person. Accessed 13 November 2026.
Sources
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Environmental Ethics” — Covers Routley’s last man argument and intrinsic value in nature.
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Value” — Explains the difference between value in itself and value as a means.
- Richard Routley, “Is There a Need for a New, an Environmental, Ethic?” (1973) — The paper that sets out the last-person case.
- Holmes Rolston III, Environmental Ethics (1988) — Value in nature without a valuer, and the systemic value of ecosystems.
- J. Baird Callicott, Beyond the Land Ethic (1999), chapters 11 and 12 — His reply to Rolston: value needs a valuer, but nature can be valued for its own sake.