Herman Melville's Moby-Dick offers a diversity of human conducts on the Pequod towards nature. This essay probes into the ethical motives behind the respective conducts of the main characters, namely, captain Ahab, the chief mate Starbuck and the sailor Ishmael. Ahab abandons human reason and deals with the conflict between Moby-Dick and himself according to the law of the jungle, or the natural ethic. Starbuck emphasizes the economic value of the whales and his conduct is driven by the anthropocentric economic ethic. Ishmael develops an ecolog...