Rykhlytska O. Environmental ethics: traditions and modern tendencies.

The study looks at environmental ethics as humanitarian area of knowledge; explores taditional moral and religious aspects of its formation; discusses the foundations of environmental ethics and its compliance with modern conditions of society development. Based on the analysis of traditional approaches the main principles of environmental ethics were reviewed and the universal one was identified - the unity of human and nature. Modern approaches of environmental ethics to human activities were explored - giving the base to consider environmental ethics as the theory, which grounds and programmes moral development of humanity in construction of new society based on ecological imperatives. Bases and criteria of environmental ethics, as well as its necessity in formation of new ideology for humanity are identified and analysed.