New Age Deep Ecology
A book
review by David Orton
Toward A Transpersonal
Ecology:
Developing New Foundations
For Environmentalism
by Warwick Fox,
Shambhala, Boston & London, 1990,
paperback, 380 pages, ISBN 0-87773-533-6.
This book is based
on the Ph.D. dissertation of Warwick Fox, an Australian. He is someone who
has
written extensively on deep ecology
which, according to the author, should now be renamed and refocused
as “transpersonal ecology.” Any
book which holds out the promise of “new foundations” - and hence the
elimination of presently used foundations/concepts/language
etc, - for the environmental movement, should
be carefully and critically, looked
at. This is the case especially for radical environmentalists who consider
themselves supporters of deep ecology,
e.g. the eight-point “platform”, as elaborated by Arne Naess, with
George Sessions. I believe the sub-title
of this book is, in a sense, misleading because the book is primarily
about what, in Fox’s eyes, differentiates
deep ecologists from other ecophilosophers and what makes someone
a genuine deep ecologist or, what are
the required qualifications for entrance to the transpersonal ecology
guild. But in elaborating these qualifications,
the practical deep ecology movement which has emerged, is being
signalled the direction to go and what
its priorities and theoretical base should be.
The basic question
which this book does not raise, but which all of us must face, is how does
radical
environmental theory develop - and
how does it change? Does this theory come out of the heads of philosophers
like Arne Naess, and Warwick Fox? If
it does, what role does practical activism play in this theoretical
elaboration, for Naess, and for those
who come forward as the “interpreters” of deep ecology? (Fox defines his
view of ecophilosophy as “theoretically
oriented activism”, and stresses the role of a handful of academics.)
When does a theory gain a life of its
own and is not subject to embellishment or reinterpretation by the original
prophet or by those who have come forward
as disciples? What is the relationship between philosophers/
theoreticians, activists and the movement?
Who should decide, and on what basis, when foundations are
acceptable, or should be changed, and
why? Who decides when alleged theoretical clarity should override the
use of existing terminology which has
already been popularly embraced in the practical deep ecology movement,
e.g. biocentric to be replaced by ecocentric,
shallow to be replaced by reform, and now deep ecology by
transpersonal ecology?
The contribution
of this book is to make the reader think hard. It is also an erudite presentation,
although
rather know-it-all in tone. The “main
writers”, according to the author, are Naess, Devall, Sessions, Fox,
Drengson, and Zimmerman. A secondary
group includes La Chapelle, Aitken, Snyder, Seed, Macy, Hayward,
Evernden, Livingston, McLaughlin, Matthews,
Rodman, Rothenberg and Wittbecker. So excluded is a person
like Richard Sylvan, who is a supporter
of deep ecology (accepting the famous eight-point platform), but who
is a critic of the transpersonal ecology
associated with Fox. Yet it is Sylvan, according to Fox, who has the
“most comprehensive philosophical critique
of deep ecology that has been written to date.” (See the 1985
publication by Sylvan, A Critique
Of Deep Ecology, published in the discussion papers in environmental
philosophy series, of The Australian
National University; the recent, so far unpublished manuscript, A Critique
of (Wild) Western Deep Ecology;
and the important 1974 book, with Val Routley, The Fight for the
Forests: The takeover of Australian
forests for pines, wood chips and intensive forestry.)
Before trying to
present what seems to me to be the essence of this book, one should make
the caution that
critics, are usually admonished for
“not understanding.” For example, Sylvan, according to Fox, has mistaken
the main emphases of deep ecology.
All of us should strive to understand before criticizing. However, if
understanding requires a leap of faith
that only a handful of the initiated and doctrinally committed can take
(a knowledge of Eastern religions seeming
to be a prerequisite), then only the true believers in a particular
explication, are qualified to comment.
Fox presents in
Towards A Transpersonal Ecology, that Naess gives three meanings to
the perspective
of deep ecology. One has to do with
the anthropocentric/non anthropocentric distinction. This is a popular
sense of deep ecology, from which the
eight-point platform is derived. Fox wants to use the term ecocentric
ecology, and refer to the anthropocentric
and ecocentric ecology movements, not to the shallow and deep
ecology (or biocentric) movements.
The second meaning,
according to the author, has to do with a distinctive method, used by Naess,
of asking
deeper questions, used to characterize
deep ecology, as opposed to shallow ecology. Deep ecology is thus
derived from fundamentals, while shallow
ecology is not. Fox shows to my satisfaction, that this position cannot
be upheld, because a shallow position
can also be derived from fundamentals. However, I do not accept his
further view, that this invalidates
the use of the term deep ecology.
The third meaning
concerns the concept of Self-realization, which Fox sees as the most significant
and the
distinctive philosophical sense of
deep ecology, and what distinguishes it from other ecophilosophies. A
commitment to Self-realization defines
a transpersonal ecologist and the business of the transpersonal philosopher.
(For the Earth First! activist, the
concept of Self-realization from Naess, concerns expanding the sense of
self-identity so it comes to include
the well-being of the Earth, and organizing to bring this about on as large
a
scale as possible.) Fox says, “Naess’s
philosophical sense of deep ecology refers to the this-worldly
realization of as expansive a sense
of self as possible in a world in which selves and things-in-the-world
are conceived as processes. Since this
approach is one that involves the realization of a sense of self
that extends beyond (or that is trans-)
one’s egoic, biographical, or personal sense of self, the clearest,
most accurate, and most informative
term for this sense of deep ecology is, in my view, transpersonal
ecology.” Recent developments in
psychology are drawn upon - transpersonal psychology - to make distinctions
between the psychological-personal,
the psychological-ontological, and the psychological-cosmological, as three
bases of identification. Fox says that
the transpersonal concern with Self-realization, renders morality and ethics,
the concern with “oughts”, as redundant,
and the main writers on deep ecology share this position.
I believe that Warwick
Fox, and a number of his transpersonal associates, are trying to move deep
ecology
away from being a philosophy to change
the world, to a “theory” which will justify self-contemplation and
individual passivity. The direction
of focusing on Self-realization leads to a New Age agenda. The concern with
expanding self-identity is important,
but it does not exhaust the concerns of deep ecology. The Canadian
publication The Trumpeter seems
to epitomize the perspective advocated by Fox, and it is essentially irrelevant
to ecological struggles. In my view
the eight-point platform for deep ecology, which contains no mention of
Self-realization, while fairly abstract,
does provide a theoretical orientation that can be used for organizing. The
pressing theoretical work is to concretize
deep ecology in terms of actual environmental issues.
March 14, 1991
(This review appeared in
an edited form in Canadian Dimension, September 1991.)
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