Holmes Rolston III (November 19, 1932 – February 12, 2025) was an American philosopher who was University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University. He is best known for his contributions to environmental ethics and the relationship between science and religion. Among other honors, Rolston won the 2003 Templeton Prize, awarded by Prince Philip in Buckingham Palace. He gave the Gifford Lectures, University of Edinburgh, 1997–1998. He also served on the Advisory Council of METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence).
The Darwinian model is used to define the main thematic concepts in Rolston's philosophy and, in greater depth, the general trend of his thinking.
Biography
Rolston was born on November 19, 1932, in Staunton, Virginia. His grandfather, Holmes Rolston, and his father, Holmes Rolston Jr. (who did not use the Jr.), were Presbyterian ministers. He was married on June 1, 1956, to Jane Irving Wilson, with whom he had a daughter and son. He held a B.S. in physics and mathematics from Presbyterian-affiliated Davidson College (1953) and a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Union Presbyterian Seminary (1956). He was ordained to the ministry of the Presbyterian Church (USA) also in 1956. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh in 1958; his advisor was Thomas F. Torrance.
Rolston was a Presbyterian minister in Rockbridge Baths, Virginia, before he was ousted by his congregation in 1965, amid conflict over his environmental interests.
In 1990, Rolston became the first president of the International Society for Environmental Ethics.
Rolston died at his home in Fort Collins, Colorado, on February 12, 2025, aged 92.
Views
Animal rights
Rolston accepted that humans have rights but criticized the idea of animal rights and extending rights to flora because there are no rights in the wild. Rolston argued that a rights approach to sentient life is ill-suited to ecosystems and when a moral agent is faced with suffering in an ecosystem there is no duty to intervene. In 1991, Rolston stated:
Rolston also argued that "environmental ethics accepts predation as good in wild nature", Rolston said that wild predation should be respected because it has great importance for larger ecosystem and evolutionary processes. For example, predators eliminate weak and unfit individuals from populations of prey organisms contributing to the overall integrity of those species and culling of unfit organisms by predators is vital to the evolutionary process of natural selection, which Rolston believes trends towards more complex and diverse life forms. He argued that if humans stop eating beef, cows from farms would have to be released into the wild where they would become an easy target from predators and may become extinct.