Égards ajustés
The ethical stance Baptiste Morizot opposes to the worn-out alternative between exploiting and sanctifying the living. Rather than granting all beings the same predetermined moral status, it involves extending to each the *regards* appropriate to its form of life—and continually adjusting them based on how it responds. The right word is *"adjusted,"* not *"just":* there is no good relationship established once and for all, only an ongoing *co-adjustment* to be revisited.
Les égards à inventer sont “ajustés”, et non pas “justes”, précisément parce que les êtres en présence sont des êtres en vérité inconnus dans leurs puissances : on ne dispose pas de leur statut moral définitif (personne, dignité, fin en soi, moyen, pure matière) ; il faut constamment ajuster et réajuster les égards aux réponses qu’ils nous font, à leurs manières de réagir, de plier notre action pour nous la renvoyer autrement.
The term arises from a refusal. Faced with an environment or an animal, modernity offers only two responses: put it to work (exploit it) or put it under glass (sanctuarize it). Morizot sees the two as two sides of the same coin, twin legacies of the same dualism that separates humans from the rest. Égard ajusté opens a third way: neither squeezing dry nor leaving untouched, but responding to what this particular form of life demands, here and now.
The shift in thought lies in moving from “just” to “adjusted.” The just assumes there exists a proper relationship, one that need only be discovered to settle the matter. Yet living beings are “beings whose powers remain unknown in truth”: their status is not predetermined—it is learned through their responses. Pollinators “respond” to pesticides by deserting; the forest responds to logging. The adjuster is a craftsperson, Morizot says—a tailor always ready to re-tailor, never a legislator who sets a rule and moves on. This is why it belongs less to law, which must stabilize statuses, than to the daily practice of farmers, foresters, and conservationists.
Égards ajustés are thus not “equal rights” extended uniformly to all life: a wolf, a river, and soil do not call for the same considerations. Nor are they sanctuarization, which suspends all relation in the name of protection. Where one erects a status, they weave a diplomacy; where one decrees once and for all, they endlessly readjust.