The Rise of Radical Ecologism: Towards a Reconceptualization of the Man- Nature Dialectic (original) (raw)
Related papers
Inquiry Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: ABSTRACT What sets Naess's deep ecology apart from most inquiries into environmental philosophy is that it does not seek a radical shift in fundamental values. Naess offered a utopian, life-affirming grand narrative, a new Weltanschauung that shifted the focus of inquiry to coupling values, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom to behavior. The core of Naess's approach is that sustainability hinges on developing more thoroughly reasoned and consistent views, policies, and actions, which are tied back to wide-identifying ultimate norms and a rich, well-informed understanding of the state of the planet. But humans can have multiple ultimate norms and these norms sometimes conflict; our neurobiology may not be well-structured for accommodating consequences that are spatially and temporally separated and uncertain; we are governed by bounded rationality; much of human learning results from the passive mod-eling of unsustainable activities; and our cultures can be maladaptive, creating hurdles and perverse incentives/disincentives that likely demand more than consistent reasoning from wide-identifying ultimate premises. After keenly demonstrating how problem characterization and formulation shape both solution strategies and outcomes, Naess may conceptualize the process of change too narrowly. In the end, deep ecology helps us to shine a brighter searchlight on the gap between our attitudes and our generally unsus-tainable actions and policies. In doing so it expands the frontier of the unknown, opening more questions. This is its allure, frustration, and promise.
Denial of Human Superiority Over Nature as the Denial of the Value of Nature
Studia Ecologiae et Bioethicae
Ecology as a science today, mainly rejects anthropocentrism in favour of nonhuman-centred ethics. Such rejection is propagated as a proper valuing of nature, while the human-centred eco-theories are considered to be the theoretic basis for the exploitation and destruction of nature by humans. The main purpose of some nonhuman-centred ecologic theories is to reduce the growth of the human’s population because the people’s existence, totally, is seen as a cause of ecological disasters, and even social problems. The aim of the article is to show that human beings are, in reality, the only living organisms on Earth, able to take care about nature as it deserves. The main problem is incorrect behaviour with nature, not a big amount of people living on the Earth. The ecological disasters, at the same time, are connected not only with humans’ irresponsible conduct, but with the natural forces that are independent from human activity, but that does not deprive people from the task to take r...
The human-nature relationship The emergence of environmental ethics
Market capitalism has increased wealth beyond the imagination of previous generations, but cannot, in and of itself, distribute it equally or even equitably. These are problems that cannot be solved within the terms set by modernity, for the simple reason that they are not procedural, but rather valuational or, to use the simple word, moral. There is no way of bypassing difficult moral choices by way of a scientific decision-procedure that states "Maximize X". We first have to decide which X we wish to maximize, and how to weigh X against Y when the pursuit of one damages the fulfilment of the other. The human project is inescapably a moral project." Jonathan Sacks (in Dunning, 2003)
"A Dialogue with Arne Naess on Social Ecology and Deep Ecology (1988-1997)"
In the spring of 1987, Donald Davis, an environmental sociologist at the University of Tennessee arranged a talk there by Murray Bookchin. At the time, I was working very closely with Bookchin, and I went there to meet with him and Davis, who had been a student and staff member at the Institute for Social Ecology. During the visit, Bookchin showed me the proofs for an article entitled "Thinking Ecologically: A Dialectical Approach," a large part of which was an attack on deep ecology, systems theory, Asian thought, and the radical environmental organization Earth First! I was disturbed by what I read. I found it to be seriously lacking in careful analysis or nuance, and often to be unfair to the objects of attack. I suggested that he rewrite it, making sure that he did not over-generalize or misrepresent any positions. He replied, rather unconvincingly, that it was too late to make any changes, and he did not respond in any way to the content of my suggestions. 1 What I did not know at the time was that he had recently written a much more extreme attack on deep ecology, in which he had parodied, and, indeed, The Trumpeter
Ecology for Whom? Deep Ecology and the Death of Anthropocentrism
2000
Deep Ecology arises as a new perception to visualize the inexora- ble changes that humanity currently confronts. This new scientific- philosophical-religious approach claims for a new treatment for the Earth. However, this new eco-centered approach transcends the limit of any particular science of today, and claims that simple reforms are not sufficient. Deep Ecology calls for a reduction of human
The domination of nature by man stems from the domination of human by human." (Bookchin, 1982). With that declaration, Murray Bookchin stated a foundational tenet of his theory of social ecology: the idea that it was hierarchy within human society that led to human domination over the rest of nature. At the time and place when Bookchin's magnum opus The Ecology of Freedom was published, this idea stood against the current strain of thought. Appearing just twelve years after Earth Day launched the modern U.S. "environmental" movement in 1970, Bookchin's thesis starkly contrasted the neo-Malthusianism sweeping the nation and heralding the bleak advent of neoliberalism. Two decades earlier, the student revolts had commenced with a clear anti-Capitalist bent sparked by "Frankfurt School" scholar Herbert Marcuse's influential work One Dimensional Man (1964) , which warned of Capitalist evils beyond labor exploitation, such as the psychological and ecological impacts of consumerism in all sectors of society and the earth itself. However, a few years later that analysis was being eroded, first by the appearance of ecologist, zoologist and eugenicist Garrett Hardin's The Tragedy of the Commons (1968), which claimed that hierarchical control of nature is necessary because without it, the masses of "humans" would greedily try to hoard it all for themselves; and second by Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb (1968), which shifted blame for the growing ecological crisis from Capitalism to "overpopulation", implying that an impoverished Global South citizen had equal or greater responsibility for ecological destruction as a multinational corporation CEO. In the following decades, the misanthropic and at times pro-corporatist bent of the "environmental" movement only intensified, from the eco-fascistic tendencies in certain deep ecology factions, to the consumerist and subtly eugenicist influences in many natural foods/medicine communities that have revealed themselves in the Covid-era, to "Green Capitalist" corporate ventures, to the "environmental" organizations that attempted to influence environmental offenders through collaboration and even buying shares in their companies. For decades, "environmentalists" avoided relating their "cause" to Capitalism, the class system, human oppression, or inequality. Individual consumers were admonished to consume more responsibly, but the larger power dynamics remained obscured. Only recently have social and environmental movements within the U.S. and beyond begun converging. Facing apocalyptic climate collapse and potential human extinction, awareness is growing that our ecological crisis is not separate from our predatory economic system and structural oppression. Calls within the U.S. for a "Green New Deal" and even "eco-Socialism" have become mainstream, especially among generations too young to have been bombarded with Cold War-era anti-socialist/anticommunist propaganda. A majority of young Americans now identify as Socialist (Elk, 2018), and climate justice movements are pushing for various forms of eco-Socialism. Additionally, rising racial justice movements and the influence of intersectionality, a term Black feminist legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw created to describe how various forms of human oppression intersect and overlap, has greatly increased awareness of how race, class, gender, age, ability and nationality intersect with ecological issues. Media decentralization has also helped raise awareness of how different populations