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Deep Ecology: A central theme of environmental ethics

Introduction

Human civilisation grew in the lap of nature. Nature thus provides the locus for everything that
flourished over it. Or it may be understood in the way that that which provides the platform for
birth and development of anything and everything is Nature. It is that which surrounds, inspires
awe, and above all, provides the basic conditions and bare necessities for the birth and growth of
life over it. Either with or without this realisation, human beings since the early days of
civilisation developed some sort of respect, love and care for nature.

Environmental ethics appears as a wing of practical or applied ethics. Its main objective is to
retain the balance of the environment or the sustainability of environment as a whole. There are
countless environments and the belief in a global environment seems inescapable. Environment
exists essentially because it is inhabited by a particular living organism. Therefore, the field
comprises ‘an infinity of overlapping environments’. Given this sense of environment, each
human group and individual has its own environment, and each forms part of the environment of
many of the others. Thus, ‘environment’ here actually means ‘encompassing system’.
‘Environment’ is also used to mean the sense of eco-system, i.e., a system of interacting living
organisms and non-living elements (biotic and abiotic communities respectively). Since an
ecosystem is usually thought of as occurring within a self contained and restricted area, and since
complete isolation in the real sense of the term in most general areas is impossible, it can be
argued that the Earth itself is the only real ecosystem. Thus, our understanding of environment is
a single ecosystem.

We are talking in favor of an organic whole. Environments never exist before the environed
creature does, and cannot exist without such a creature. They comprise a process rather than a
fixed objective entity, and are continually under construction through the activities of the living
being environed. Hence, a distinction should be made between environment and nature, and we
should be wary of expressions such as ‘the natural environment’. In fact, nature is a world that
can exist apart from us and it can be studied in a detached, isolated and scientific manner.
Environment is fundamentally historical and it cannot be understood through scientific
detachment.

All kinds of distortions arise for ethics when the environment is conceived as the preconstituted
base of human action. We have pre-ethical commitments towards the environment. Our pre-
ethical commitments or engagement with our surroundings ends with this being described as a
condition ‘by virtue of which we are all fellow passengers on this planet of ours’. We have both
intentional (perspective-dependent) and also objective concepts of environment. Objective
concepts include the concept of the environment as an objective system of causes and effects.
This concept is, of course, a relational concept but the relation is different and can be quite
independent of awareness and understanding on the part of an environed subject. However, an
object of understating, a causal or objective environment or its components may be recognized as
the bearers of value, whether intrinsically or otherwise. Such an environment will usually be the
shared environment of many people and other creatures. Thus, it comprises an interpersonal
environment. A conscious subject may have thus an environment in at least two senses. We can
employ both the intentional sense and the interpersonal sense. Even, we can shift between these
senses because intentional and interpersonal spheres interrupt on one another too much for things
to be otherwise. Accordingly, if pollution threatens our favorite places, we appeal for
environmental preservation. We cannot ignore or set aside the fate of our future generations, our
children and our grandchildren’s legacy.

Eco-philosophy is an environmental theory which is directed towards extending intrinsic value to

all natural communities. In fact, the main contention of environmental ethics is to ensure equal
values to all natural communities, biotic as well as abiotic. In anthropocentrism, it is claimed that
only humans have intrinsic value and other than humans all other natural communities have only
instrumental or use value. Ecology or environment is nothing but the storehouse of materials and
it has only use value and nothing more than that. The main objective of environmental ethics is
to restore intrinsic values to all natural communities and thereby ensure environmental justice. In
this regard, there develops biocentrism which claims that all biotic communities have intrinsic
value. Biocentric ethics represents a significant departure from traditional ethical thinking in
many different ways. Biocentric ethics seeks to avoid the moral hierarchy implicit in traditional
theories. Biocentric ethics is much more inclusive of the natural world by taking life itself as the
source of moral value. It thus involves a radical shift in ethical thinking by extending moral
standing too much of the natural world. However, many would say that biocentrism is not
enough to break with anthropocentric tradition. It has already been said that the basic objective
of environmental ethics is to bring non-anthropocentrism instead of anthropocentrism. In this
direction, biocentrism is the first attempt through which equal values to all biotic communities
has been established. Biocentrism, we think, does not contain the full force of non-
anthropocentrism. There are other varieties of approach which are directly associated with non-
anthropocentrism and all these theories belong to eco-philosophy or eco-centric philosophy. Eco-
philosophy gives both an adequate environmental and an adequate moral consideration to non-
living natural objects as well as to ecological systems. Ecological ethics should be holistic in
nature because it deals with ecological wholes such as ecosystems as well as nonliving natural
objects and their mutual and interdependent relationship. It states that like biotic communities,
abiotic communities deserve direct moral consideration. It is absent in the Biocentric approach.
Biocentric thinkers claim that environmental concern with ecosystems such as wilderness area is
not the same as a concern for the individual trees, plants and animals that live within the
wilderness. The wilderness and other eco-systems such as forests, wetlands, prairies, and lakes
are valuable in their own right and therefore deserve moral consideration. Thus, biocentric ethics
does not or cannot account for the value that we attribute to these ecological wholes.

Deep ecology is reputed to be an extreme interpretation of eco-philosophy. The term ‘deep

ecology’ was first introduced by Arne Naess, a Norwegian philosophy professor in the1970s. He
was a renowned Norwegian social activist and the first chairperson of Greenpeace in Norway
and within environmental ethics, his eco-philosophy, deep ecology, holds centrality as the
definitive non-anthropocentric approach. The very objective of eco-philosophy is to establish
non-anthropocentrism instead of anthropocentrism. Within the sphere of eco-philosophy, deep
ecology movement commands an important role. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say
that the deep ecological movement enjoys wide currency and considerable status in the
international environmental movement. Before delving into this issue let us, at the very outset,
find out the distinction between Deep and Shallow ecology. We think the distinction between
deep and shallow ecology will help us to properly understand the program of deep ecology in
proper. Here we will attempt to develop a coherent ethical scheme to serve as a common
foundation for the ethics of our dealings with other humans, with nonhuman individuals, and
with ecosystems and other environmental wholes. Following Naess’s concept of deep ecology,
many writers distinguish between environmental philosophies that are shallow and those that are
deep. Shallow ecology is primarily concerned solely with the welfare of human beings or one
particular group of human beings. In this regard, it would remain anthropocentric in some sense
or other. Of course, it would not be a strong anthropocentrism, but weak anthropocentrism.
Shallow ecology deals with those philosophies that broaden the scope to include concern for
non-human organisms. These are said not to be deep because they still focus on discrete
individuals, whereas deep philosophies are holistic in nature. According to Naess, deep ecology
entails, “rejection of the man-inenvironmental image in favor of the relational, total-field image.
Organisms as knots in the biospherical net or field of intrinsic relationships hold between two
things. An intrinsic relation between two things A and B is such that the relation belongs to the
definitions or basic constitutions of A and B, so that without the relation, A and B are no longer
the same things. Thus, we think that the total field-image dissolves not only the man-in-image
environment concept, but every compact things-in-milieu concept except when talking at a
superficial or preliminary level of communication.”

Environmental ethics is the fullest extension of objective ethics, extending the scope of moral
thought beyond one‘s community and nation to include, not only all people everywhere, but also
animals and the whole of nature, the biosphere, both now and immanent future to include future
generations. Global environmental ethics, through the logical extension of traditional ethics, is
revolutionary in that, it calls on us to think and act in the ways we hardly imagined,
subordinating our politics, economics, and technology to a holistic global understanding of how
we function within the ecosphere. It calls for a new deeper moral consciousness. (Pojman vi)
While elucidating deep and shallow ecology, Naess proposes several points as applicable to both
environmental philosophy and social philosophy and then he tries to extract considerable analogy
between the two fields. He then seems to realize that both environmentally and socially, the
individual is seen as a knot in a holistic fabric stitched together by intrinsic relations. Human
societies always attempt to extend diversity, complexity, autonomy, decentralization, symbiosis,
the principle of ‘live and let live’, egalitarianism, and classlessness. In this regard, ecosystems or
ecophilosophy seems to be healthy because of its diverse, complex, autonomous, decentralize
and symbiotic nature. Eco-philosophy thus paves the way for deep ecology and without the
perception of eco-philosophy, it would be very difficult to come by about the very nature of deep
ecology.

Review of Literature

According to Callicott, one may sense Darwinian roots in the Land Ethic of Leopold. Here
resources are used with an ever ending recycled process. The natural community is characterized
by countless of these interdependencies. Its health is characterized by its long-term integrity and
stability. The land ethic of Leopold thus appears as a fairly comprehensive theory including both
biotic and abiotic communities within the sphere of environment. It also functions as a decision-
making process for most environmental and ecological issues. It equally offers normative
guidance about issues as diverse as wilderness preservation, pollution, conservation, energy,
resource depletion, and so on.

In this context Leopold says, “Philosophy, then, suggests one reason why we cannot destroy the
earth with moral impurity namely that the ‘dead’ earth is an organism possessing a certain kind
and degree of life, which we intuitively respect as such.” The point that can be taken care of is
that if the earth itself is alive and if we can attribute to it such attributes as health, sickness,
growth, and death, we can argue along familiar lines that the earth itself warrants moral
consideration.
George Sessions edited Deep Ecology for the 21st Century (1995) anthologizes the discussion of
the nature of deep ecology by various theorists. Particularly, Naess‘ deep questioning process,
the platform principles, the human need for the process of identification with nonhuman life
forms etc. are some common focuses of this volume. Naess‘ personal philosophy, that is,
Ecosophy-T, as well as his response to the criticism from Social Ecology, Ecofeminism etc. and
misunderstandings of his position is also well furnished in this book. It also addresses the issues
of deep ecology as a movement like its development from Thoreau, Muir, Carson, to Arne Naess
as offered by various theorists. The discussion of wilderness and wild and its preservation get
prominence in one part of this anthology. The book is ended with the Naessian optimistic note of
the possibility of deep ecology in the twenty-second century.

Alan Drengson and Yuichi Inoue edited book The Deep Ecology Movement: An Introductory
Anthology (1995) has anthologized select articles explicating Naess‘ view of deep ecology. This
book is basically set in support of the radical ecocentrism and Naessian position elaborating the
views on Ecological Self, conservation and Self-Realization, platform principles etc. It also
includes the important topic on the relationship between deep ecology and ecofeminism as well
as urges the essentiality of rituals and council of all Beings. The editors of this volume claim that
pieces of writing in this anthology ―are not dull reading‖ but ―are of fundamental human
importance.‖

Specific philosophical discussions on deep ecology and other schools of environmentalism took
place under the auspices of the journals like Environmental Ethics, The Trumpeter, Hypatia etc.
Since 1979 the journal Environmental Ethics, edited by Eugene Hargrove, has been associated
with publishing papers on environmental philosophy.

William C. French‘s ―Against Biospherical Egalitarianism‖ (1995) etc. The Trumpeter, purely
dedicated to the development of ecosophy, has a number of references in the present work
quoting the deep ecology papers of Naess and other deep ecologists. Again, the academic journal
Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy devoted an entire issue in 1991 under the editorship
of Karen J Warren to a debate with the deep ecology standpoint. Many trends changing papers
published in that issue have made explicit connections between feminism and deep ecology.

Importance and Objective of the Study:

Deep ecology, as contrasted by Naess with shallow ecology, stands for an approach that
recognises intrinsic worth of nature. It stands in the opposite pole to anthropocentric or human-
centric approach to Nature. As such, deep ecology does not look at or explain things from a
human perspective but from the perspective of the ecology as a whole. The philosophy of deep
ecology professes man-in-environment image instead of viewing man and environment as
separate entities. The problem before Naess is that his thesis of deep ecology has been criticized
from different quarters. Particularly, the proponents who try to see environmental crisis as a
conflict between man and environment instead of man-in-environment criticize the Naessian way
of viewing the world. The main objective of this thesis is to see if deep ecology of Naess can be
defended. Moreover, the proposed study aims at the evaluation and introduction of new
perspective, if any, in environmental philosophy under the light of the Naessian deep ecology. In
the course of the study, it is proposed to compare and contrast deep ecology with its critics to see
if there is any converging point.

The problem before Naess is that his study of deep ecology will be criticized from different
quarters. Particularly, the proponents who try to see environmental crisis as a conflict between
man and environment instead of man-in-environment criticize the Naessian way of viewing the
world. The main objective of this wstudy is to see if deep ecology of Naess can be defended.
Moreover, the proposed study aims at the evaluation and introduction of new perspective, if any,
in environmental philosophy under the light of the Naessian deep ecology. In the course of the
study, it is proposed to compare and contrast deep ecology with its critics to see if there is any
converging point.

Methodology:
This present study will be based on primary as well as secondary data. The primary data will be
collected from disscusson and interview method and the secondary data will be collected fom
books, journals, periodicals, magazines and internet etc. The present work will make a
conceptual study of the present thread of environmentalism. This work will be attempted to
conceptually overview the gravity and seriousness of the visible environmental crisis as well as
to see the philosophical solution as enunciated by deep ecology. Deep ecology is a shift from
anthropocentrism to ecocentrism developed in 1970‘s. This work is a critical study of deep
ecology as formulated by Naess. In order to see if Naess can be defended, various methods will
be adopted. The methods will be used are mainly critical through the conceptual study with
select schools of environmental philosophy. In other words, this study will be a descriptive
study of select schools of thought in order to find out whether the Naessian version of deep
ecology can effectively function on its theoretical formulation in meeting will stated
environmental crisis.

Chapter plan:

This present study “Deep Ecology : A central theme of environmental ethics” will be cover six
chapters, which follows:

Chapter-1: Introduction

Chapter-2 : Review of Literature

Chapter-3: Deep Ecology of Arne Naess

Chapter-4: Eco-philosophy and Deep Ecology

Chapter-5: Deep Ecology on Social Ecology Eco-feminism

Chapter-6 : Conclusion
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