In my previous posts on philosophy, I opined that academic philosophers were missing in action from Canadian environmental issues, and offered a “Reader’s Digest” tour through some contemporary philosophical voices.
In that last post, we met angry philosophers, libertarians, and finally rational philosophy, where beliefs and intuitions are supposed to be internally and logically consistent. In this post, I will introduce you to the philosophy of the great Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess (1912 – 2009).
Naess’s philosophy – Ecosophy-T – is also the environmental philosophy to which I subscribe. Could Ecosophy-T could be adopted by humanity, or would it imposes unrealistic standards of behaviour and morality? You decide!
Although a whole book has been written about Ecosophy-T (Naess 1989), its core precepts are simply stated:
- the flourishing of human and non-human life on earth has intrinsic value. The value of non-human life forms is independent of the usefulness these may have for narrow human purposes.
- Richness and diversity of life are values in themselves, and contribute to the flourishing of human and non-human life on Earth.
- Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs.
- Present human interference with the non-human world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.
- The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of non-human life requires such a decrease.
- Significant change of life condition for the better requires change in policies. These affect basic economic, technological, and ideological structures.
- The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of intrinsic value), rather than adhering to a high standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great.
- Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to participate in the attempt to implement the necessary changes.
(Naess, 1989, p. 29)
Of the eight premises, 1, 2, 3, and 8 are moral premises or moral injunctions, while the remainder are empirical statements meant to bolster the philosophical argument.
The key point, of course, is that non-human life has inherent worth. Naess makes no distinction between sentient and non-sentient organisms – at the level of moral valuation, everything is equal.
Naess was not the first to articulate this view. Albert Schweizer gave it even more eloquent expression in 1923: “True philosophy must start from the most immediate and comprehensive fact of consciousness: ‘I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live’ ” (quoted in Jamieson 2008, p. 145).
This is an extraordinary powerful statement that melds philosophy with core ecological principles. We accept that life’s deepest imperative is perpetuation through reproduction, and the statement “in the midst of life that wants to live” captures the web of ecological relationships in which all organisms are enmeshed, whether we realize it or not!
Another salient feature of Naess’s philosophy is that the flourishing of humanity would be promoted by its adoption. Premises 1, 2, and 7 make that clear. The idea that by helping Nature we would help ourselves goes beyond the ecological fact that this would be true. According to Canadian philosopher Alan Drengson, It is centred on Naess’s beliefs in:
“Self realization!–for all beings. The Self to be realized for humans is not the ego self (small s), but the larger ecological Self (cap S). This self/Self distinction has affinities with Mahayana Buddhism…..It is deeply influenced by Norwegian friluftsliv (a movement to experience living in the outdoors), Gandhian nonviolence, Mahayana Buddhism and Spinozan pantheism.”
OK, so it’s complicated! But flippancy aside, it is clear that Naess’s vision has precedents and that it resulted from a long period of deep thought and deep cultural knowledge.
It hardly needs stating (but here I go, doing it anyway!) that humanity is pretty far from realizing Naess’s ideal. The grumpy professor is no exception. I travel less, but I still travel by air; I am trying to eat less meat, but I probably still eat too much, what I do eat is not always organic or free range, and I have very non-Ghandaian thoughts when I think about certain politicians!
Etc and so forth – the list of my hypocrisies goes on and mocks my beliefs on a daily basis. But this raises the question, can anyone rise to this standard of behaviour?
My view is that perfection a-le-Naess may not be possible, but that it is important for people to at least move in the right direction. Considering the broader environmental movement, I think we could ask whether the missions statements or actions of our contemporary environmental groups embody any of Naess’s ideals. For example, the nascent movement towards putting an economic value on Nature has gotten some environmentalists in hot water with some commentators. I’ll be writing more about this in my next post, but at the least, economic valuation seems to fly in the face of the idea that life has inherent value.
And to put a Canadian spin on things, our discussions of stream crossings, caribou and aboriginal rights would give the current hearings into the Northern Gateway Pipeline a new dimension if the inherent worth of those affected had to be considered. Kairos, the Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiative, has attempted to do just that from a religious perspective.
Finally, it’s only fair to mention that not all environmental philosophers agree with Naess[1]. Philosophy is a divided and contentious discipline. By opening up environmental issues to philosophical debate, environmentalists may be entering a world of pain and seemingly endless debate. But as I implied in my first post on this subject, unless environmentalists engage in the debate, we run the danger of forgetting what exactly it is we are fighting for.
Literature Cited
Jamieson, D. 2008. Ethics and the Environment: An introduction. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Naess, A. 1989. Ecology, community and lifestyle. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
[1] For example, Murray Bookchin, founder of “social ecology” claimed the philosophy “came mainly from white, male academics and their students, and that its concerns were akin to New Age occultism, with undertones of paganism, and redolent of quasi-fascist Aryan movements”.
My limited understanding of Naess is that he did not advocate a “perfection a-le-Naess”, but instead more asked individuals to begin to transform and form their own worldviews.
This is very well explained, clearly so. I’m excited to see your next post!
One of the greatest ecological philosophers of our time, for my money, was Alan Watts. Unfortunately, he’s long since passed away. Fortunately, much of his work is available in the written word and, even more conveniently, on the YouTubes. Here are a few of my favorite, which deal directly with an ecological philosophy, and also how we can “get with” our ecology to realize that we are indeed deeply integrated and interconnected with “the whole thing”:
Organism-Environment, The Transactional Nature (short clip)
Man in Nature (full lecture)
Our Image of the World (full lecture)
The Myopic View of the World (full lecture)
If you like Jack Turner (as intimated in your last blog), you’ll love Alan Watts. Here’s just a few select quotes I was able to find with only a few minutes shuffling through my notes:
“We confuse the marvelous facility for description with what is actually going on – the world as labeled as classified with the world as it is. It is an urgent necessity to distinguish between the map and the territory.”
“The heart of the matter is that we are living in a culture which has been hypnotized with symbols – words, numbers, measures, quantities, and images – and that we mistake them for, and prefer them to, physical reality.”
“In a world of symbols and abstractions – understood in terms of separate and disjointed words – the human person is an isolated thing among other things. Oneself is therefore experienced as a lonely center of consciousness and action living inside an envelope of skin. This envelope is an abrupt boundary between oneself and an alien universe, and the main task of life is to join forces with other lonely ones for the ‘conquest of nature.’ That is, for the violent subjugation of an enemy universe to our wills. Hence, also, our talk of ‘the conquest of space.’ But as a result of this feeling we are destroying our environment and fouling our own nest.”
“Civilized human beings are alarmingly ignorant of the fact that they are continuous with their natural surroundings. It is as necessary to have air, water, plants, insects, birds, fish, and mammals as it is to have brains, hearts, lungs, and stomachs. The former are our external organs in the same way that the latter are our internal organs. If then, we can no more live without the things outside than without those inside, the plain inference is that the words ‘I’ and ‘myself’ must include both sides. The sun, the earth, and the forests are just as much features of your own body as your brain.”
“We need to become vividly aware of our ecology, of our interdependence and virtual identity with all other forms of life which the divisive and emboxing methods of our current way of thought prevent us from experiencing.”
(all quotes taken from two essays contained within Watts’s book “Does it Matter?”)
I also recommend looking into the recently released book “Darwin’s Pharmacy” by Pennsylvania State professor Richard M. Doyle. He details the feeling of the (experiential) sudden apprehension of being inseparable with the entire world around us. Or, as he calls it, the “ecodelic” insight.
Hey there, drakalok (if that’s your real name – tee hee) a big thanks for your long post wiht the vids of the late Alan Watts’s work. It will take me aquite some time to go through the material, but I will do so over the next few weeks.