Preservation Versus the People: Nature, Humanity, and Political Philosophy

Preservation Versus the People?

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Preservation Versus the People? Nature, Humanity, and Political Philosophy

Mathew Humphrey

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Mathew Humphrey, 2002 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2002 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Humphrey, Mathew, 1962– Preservation versus the people? : nature, humanity, and political philosophy / Mathew Humphrey. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Environmental ethics. 2. Nature conservation–Moral and ethical aspects. 3. Environmental policy. I. Title. GE42 .H865 2002 179′.1–dc21 2002067180 ISBN 0–19–924267–4

Acknowledgements If I have managed to learn anything in this life it is that we rarely, if ever, achieve very much on our own. The production of this book is no different in this regard. I have debts of gratitude to many, but first and foremost to Michael Freeden, who supervised the thesis from which this book has been developed. Michael has been a source of constant encouragement and inspiration, and always showed steadfast patience with my somewhat erratic rate of production. There are many more who deserve my thanks, including Terence Ball, Andrew Dobson, Roger Eatwell, David Miller, Gillian Peele, Avner deShalit, Marc Stears, Robert Van der Veen, and all the members of the Nuffield Political Theory Workshop during my period of regular attendance. Thanks also to all who have helped me at Oxford University Press, first and foremost my editor Dominic Byatt, and also to Tom Chandler for scrupulous copy-editing. Above all, my heartfelt gratitude goes to Jayne, whose unstinting support over the years leaves a debt that I can never repay. Parts of Chapter Three first appeared in 2000 as ‘Nature in Deep Ecology and Social Ecology: Contesting the Core’ Journal of Political Ideologies 5(2): 247–68, reproduced by kind permission of Taylor & Francis (http://www.tandf.co.uk). For all the impressive help I have had in putting this book together, any errors and omissions are, as ever, the one thing for which I claim exclusive responsibility.

This Book is Dedicated to My Parents.

Contents A Note on Terminology Introduction 1. The Foundations of Ecocentrism 2. The Human Need for Nature 3. Dichotomy and Distortion: The Mutual Misunderstandings of Social Ecology and Ecocentrism 4. New Marx for Old? Marxism, Humanity, and Ecology Conclusion: Framing, Irreplaceability, and the Ineliminability of Contingency Bibliography Index

ix 1 17 52 86 128 179 197 209

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A Note on Terminology This book employs a number of terms which are either neologisms too recent to have a settled meaning or whose meaning is contestable; thus I think it necessary to offer some clarification of certain concepts that will be seen repeatedly. In particular, we have to be careful to distinguish terms that relate to the ontological aspects of this environmental discourse from those that relate to its axiological facets–whilst acknowledging the interconnections between the two. Ecocentrism: This is rooted in the denial of any fundamental ontological divide between the human and the nonhuman world. For Eckersley: ‘According to this picture of reality, the world is an intrinsically dynamic, interconnected web of relations in which there are no absolutely discrete entities and no absolute dividing lines between the living and the non-living, the animate and the inanimate, or the human and the non-human.’1 I take Eckersley to mean by this that whatever differences she accepts as extant between these types, they are not of a mode that would constitute a significant difference in the mode of existence between these types. So to take her last division above, although human beings might be self-conscious and reflexive in a way that other creatures are not, this does not entail that their existential mode is radically different from other beings, and certainly not different in a way that could be used to ground a value distinction between the human and the non-human.2 This ontological belief articulated by Eckersley has been labelled ‘anti-humanist’ by Murray Bookchin precisely because it refuses to recognize such a fundamental divide.3 ‘Anti-humanism’ is held by him to be that

1

Eckersley, 1992 : 9. Emphasis added.

2

The idea of an ontological difference is clear enough (at least in one aspect) if we are contrasting, say, a table and justice. One exists as a corporeal object in the world and one exists as a concept in the human mind. It is more difficult to be precise about the supposed ‘ontological divide’ between human and non-human nature, and it is not always clear that different writers are discussing precisely the same thing.

3

Although ecocentrists ostensibly deny this divide, Bookchin (see ch. 4 below) argues they unwittingly rearticulate it in an extremely unhelpful form. Mary Mellor makes a similar point, ‘ecocentrism must have at its heart a dualist distinction between “humanity” and “nature” . . . This must lead to an anti-human position, where humanity is not seen as part of nature, but against nature’ (1997: 38).

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which subverts ‘a belief in the power of reason, science and technology to render society and the human experience rational and free’.4 ‘Humanism’ is thus a position which accepts that ‘In fact, the ontological divide between the nonhuman and the human is very real’, and this divide lies (for Bookchin) in humanity's ability to reason, spiritualize, and represent the world in symbolic form.5 However, according to Eckersley and others ecocentrism does not oppose humanism, but anthropocentrism, which is defined as a form of species chauvinism, of privileging humanity in all conflicts of interest with non-human species regardless of how ‘trivial’ these human needs may be, analogously to the way that some individuals may be sexist or racist in their thought and actions.6 This is what humanism is held to have degenerated into, and that in turn is why it is now ‘dangerous’. To Fox, far from being anti-humanist, ecocentric approaches foster ‘an egalitarian attitude on the part of humans to all entities in the ecosphere–including humans’—and also ‘celebrate’ the existence of nonanthropocentric human beings.7 Anthropocentrism is clearly, in this context, an axiological term which refers to the question of the value of human beings vis-à-vis other natural entities. That is to say, the reason that human beings are privileged under an anthropocentric perspective is precisely because they are held to be the only things of intrinsic value in the world (sole value assumption), or to possess the greatest intrinsic worth (greater value assumption).8 More recently, Eckersley has sought to refine her conceptual usage further, suggesting that the appropriate political focus is to avoid (or perhaps even abandon) the confusing terms anthropocentrism and non-anthropocentrism, and draw a distinction instead between ‘human racism’ and ecocentrism, the latter taken to mean a more ecologically inclusive moral perspective which rejects human racism but not non-racist humanism.9

4

Bookchin, 1995b : 76.

5

Ibid. 101–2.

6

‘Ecocentrism in not against humans per se or the celebration of humanity's special forms of excellence; rather, it is against the ideology of human chauvinism. Ecocentric theorists see each human individual and each human culture as just as entitled to live and blossom as any other species, provided that they do so in a way that is sensitive to the needs of other human individuals, communities and cultures, and other life forms generally’ (Eckersley, 1992 : 6).

7

Fox, 1995 : 20.

8

The distinction between the sole and greater value assumptions comes originally from the work of Robin Attfield.

9

Eckersley, 1998 : 67. Note that Eckersley here articulates the difference in moral rather than ontological terms. Although the analogy with racism is weak (see below) I will argue in this work that the idea of a non-anthropocentric humanism can make sense.

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This conceptual development arises ostensibly in response to an attack on the notion of the possibility of nonanthropocentric ethics10 but is also at least partially in response to efforts that have been made to bring some conceptual clarity to this field.11 The notion of ‘human racism’ is used to distinguish the sort of unreasoned attachment of sole or greatest value to human beings, referred to above, from a supposedly weak or non-controversial anthropocentrism which asserts that all ethics have to inevitably emerge from, and govern the behaviour of, human beings, or that species have to be allowed to prefer their own when there is a clash of vital needs. What is crucial for Eckersley is that it is the relative importance of needs that should decide cases of environmental conflict, not ‘the relative importance of beings per se’.12 Thus we can see that in order to employ consistent conceptual usage in this book we need to engage in a little definitional work of our own as, for example, ‘ecocentric’ meaning ‘that which recognizes no clear divide between human and non-human nature’ is not the same as ‘ecocentric’ meaning ‘non-anthropocentric’, if ‘anthropocentric’ is used in Eckersley's axiological sense. Hereafter, for our purposes ‘ecocentric’ will refer to theories that recognize no fundamental ontological divide between human and non-human nature. ‘Deep ecology’ will also sometimes be referred to when that is the relevant articulation of the ecocentric perspective. Deep ecology constitutes a particular class of ecocentric argument. It accepts the basic ontological premise of ecocentrism, and then articulates this in a particular form centred on ‘Self-realization’. Appropriate usage of the concept of humanism is a more complex matter. It can (and will) be used to mark off those theories that explicitly recognize an ontological divide between humanity and the rest of nature, sufficient to ground a pursuant value distinction, and in this sense it clearly contrasts with ecocentrism. It is part of the argument of this book, however, that the positing of such a divide is not a necessary condition of treating human interests with moral seriousness. I will thus also mark the treatment of human interests with moral seriousness as humanism in this book. This means that humanism does not form a neat contrast with ecocentrism herein, but it does allow me to discuss what I consider to be ‘multiple humanisms’ across varieties of environmental discourse, regardless of their position on the ontological divide.

10

Lynch and Wells, 1998 .

11

See e.g. Hayward, 1997 .

12

Eckersley, 1998 : 67. The analogy with racism may hold if all that is meant is ‘to prefer (or value only) x without good reason’. There would be significant problems with trying to draw any wider parallels, in particular because ‘nature’ cannot articulate its own demands in the way that groups of human beings can.

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This then raises the question, if both humanist and ecocentrist thinkers can make human-interest based arguments that are consistent with their primary ontological and value commitments, what actually distinguishes ecocentric and humanist arguments? It is part of the case made here that the implications of the ecocentric—humanist divide are not nearly as significant for ethics as they are normally taken to be, and demonstrating the extent to which there are embedded within ecocentrism human-interest based arguments constitutes one element of that. Nonetheless, I will suggest that the primary divide at the level of political philosophy between ecocentric and humanist environmental ethics lies not in the acceptance or rejection of the import of human interests, but in the attempt by ecocentrists to render an environmental ethic non-contingent. It is the impossibility of this goal that ultimately undermines the apparent ethical significance of ecocentrism. Anthropocentric will be used in the ‘chauvinistic’ sense described above, in order to indicate any theories which appear to value human interests alone, or above all else, without good reason. Finally, we will reserve Bookchin's category of ‘anti-humanist’ for statements which appear to be positively misanthropic. Not all of these categories will feature large in this work, but I believe the attempt to achieve terminological consistency worth the effort despite that. One final point to note is that the ontological and axiological categories, although distinct, are, in the ecocentric argument, closely related. The denial of the ontological divide is a denial of any difference that is significant in the right way to ground either the sole or greater value assumptions. (This, as suggested, does not make it in any way inconsistent for ecocentrists to employ human prudential arguments in their philosophical armoury.) Similarly, anthropocentric arguments tend implicitly to rely on the assumption that such an ontological distinction does exist. This does not render this distinction unimportant, the whole question of the relationship between ontology, value judgements, and ethics is central to these questions—and to what follows.

Introduction The two rich and famous conservation bodies also take on the people of the Highlands who have lately grown tired of the whims of rich landowners–whether they be an Earl, foreigner, or those with claims to the true moral voice of the environmental good. For the people of Strathspey . . . the funicular railway holds the key to their economic future. As a result many look upon the RSPB, with its large estate at Abernethy, its removed authority and its limitless resources, with fear and loathing. For a visitor to stand on Abernethy's gorgeous land and hear Taylor say ‘I think our vision is 1,000 years long’ is to hear hope for the future of the landscape. For those who live along the Spey's meandering course, who try to make a living and raise families, the words rasp of guttural dictatorship.13

Preservation V. The People? The way in which a social or personal problem is ‘framed’, that is, the way in which a problem is presented to an individual or group which will be affected by a particular decision, or which actually has to make that decision, can be a crucial factor in determining the decision itself or attitudes to it. This is something which has long been understood in social science,14 and I want to suggest in this book that much of the work in contemporary ecological political philosophy ‘frames’ the problem of preservation15 in such a way that leads ecological politics to become inherently divisive and conflictual. I will suggest that ecological political philosophers need to move away from framing the problems they address in terms of

13

Nicoll, 1997 : 2.

14

E.g. ‘Allais’ Paradox', which showed that people tend to choose inconsistently between identical expected pay-offs if the choice situation is framed in different ways. The implications of this are disputed. For a discussion by Allais, see The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics (Macmillan, 1987): 80–2. With respect to framing problems and environmentalism, see Miller (2000 ).

15

I take ‘nature preservation’ to involve the maintenance of areas of non-human nature in something like their current state, regardless of considerations of purely instrumental ends such as sustainable resource use.

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ecocentrism and anthropocentrism (or ecocentrism and humanism),16 and should instead accept the ineliminable contingency of political argument. We face a choice between various suggested ‘modes of reconciliation’ of humanity and non-human nature, these choices do not have to revolve around an ‘ecocentric v. humanist’ axis. I will also conclude that a concept of ‘strong irreplaceability’ offers a useful support to preservationist arguments, partly because it is agnostic with regard to the ecocentric–humanist frame. The quote at the head of this chapter comes from a 1997 edition of The Guardian, from a cover story which carried the front-page headline ‘Preservation vs. The People’. This expression encapsulates a particular understanding of what one might call the problem of nature preservation, which finds expression at both the popular and academic level. This understanding entails that we are (at least usually) faced, when engaging in policy decisions with respect to the preservation of non-human nature, with a choice or trade-off; we pursue the ‘welfare’ (however construed) of nonhuman nature or the welfare of human individuals and communities. We must (normally) make a choice or trade-off along these lines. Only in circumstances of happy coincidence can we pursue both simultaneously. Thus in the story from which the quote is taken, the desire on the part of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) that a Scottish landscape remain relatively undisturbed is pitted against the desire of local inhabitants to see their economic prospects enhanced through the building of a funicular railway on the same site. These two options are clearly incompatible, and are interpreted by both sides in the dispute as a ‘people versus nature’ issue, although, importantly, the RSPB see themselves as also defending the interests of a wider humanity.17 This book is about this apparent dichotomy of interests, albeit at a more philosophical level than that manifested in specific policy disputes.18 In particular it concerns itself with the last point of the above paragraph. Under what circumstances can an organization or individual legitimately claim that in carrying out a project of nature preservation they are also serving the interests of humanity? When would such a claim be untrue? Do the interests of humanity and nature exist in harmony or discord? Is there any way of

16

For clarification of these terms, see Note on Terminology , above, pp. viii ff.

17

Nicoll (1997 ). Ultimately, the funicular railway was built at a cost of £14.8 m, see also The Guardian 28 Apr. 1999 and The Observer 14 Oct. 2001.

18

Although I am certainly not suggesting here that the two are disconnected–far from it. To a large extent this work is premised upon the idea that philosophical arguments can directly affect people's interpretation of problems, or their view as to whether there is a problem to be addressed at all. I do not intend to defend this proposition here.

INTRODUCTION

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deciding this question according to general principles? Clearly any answers to these questions have a significant weight for environmental public policy. To set out matters in this way is of course to simplify, but it also renders in sharp relief the problems to be addressed. There are important policy areas where environmental and human welfare concerns appear, according to best current scientific evidence, to coincide. If the thinning of the ozone layer puts millions at grave risk of skin cancer we may have good human-prudential reasons to tackle the problem. If global warming will lead to rising sea-levels that will displace millions and drown whole cities then again, we seem to have good human-interest based arguments for accepting the costs involved in solving, or at least ameliorating, the problem. If areas of non-human nature are also preserved as a contingent effect of the pursuit of these policies then this is likely to meet with approval (or at least indifference). The problem of preservation per se, however, can be far less congenial to clear human interests, and presents some of the most intractable problems for environmental public policy. The marshy field containing rare orchids: use it as a site for a new shopping complex, or protect it as habitat for some of the last remaining examples of a species? The tidal bay: flood it to create a new docks and marina which are hoped to bring economic prosperity, or preserve it as an important breeding ground for wading birds? It is, to say the least, far from obvious here that we can combine a preservationist policy with the best (even long-term) interests of humanity or particular communities.19 As suggested above, the idea that human interests and an interest in preservation will often conflict is embedded in environmentalist discourse at a philosophical as well as a practical level. This is what accounts for the various dichotomies between schools of thought that pervade environmentalist thinking—‘light’ v. ‘dark’ green, ‘shallow’ v. ‘deep’ ecology, ecocentrism v. anthropocentrism and so on. It is held by one ‘side’ that nature preservation can only be justified in terms of the interests, well-being, or value (somehow construed) of non-human nature itself, because of the contingency of any coincidence between apparent human interest and preservation. Nature-centred ethical principles are held to be the only ones to offer solid (i.e. non-contingent) reasons for nature preservation. It is contrarily held that such thinking is misguided at least, and morally pernicious at worst, because it opens the way for the development of ‘ecological’ ethical systems that fail to value human life and welfare appropriately.

19

These conflicts often appear particularly forcefully in the third world. See Jayal, 2001 , and also Rolston's (1998 ) discussion, and Minteer's (2001 ) response, which use Nepal as an illustration.

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Thus only human welfare centred arguments constitute legitimate reasons for nature preservation. These may well take us a long way down the preservationist road, if they do not that is unfortunate, certainly, but neither immoral nor unethical. These, of course, are distillations of the ecocentric and humanist positions in ecological thinking, and our quest for an answer to our questions will be pursued through an analysis and comparison of ecocentric and humanist ecological thought, and ultimately through a denial of any substantive import to this division, at least in the terms in which its protagonists understand it. This study commences with an examination of the eco-philosophy and political theory of ecocentrism. This is a school of thought which has been very influential in the developing philosophy of environmentalism,20 and a significant proportion of literature in this field has taken positions either for or against ecocentrism's central tenets. The reason for choosing this as our starting point is precisely because ecocentric thought arose as part of the response to environmental problems which became apparent in the latter part of the twentieth century. It constitutes, at a philosophical level, perhaps the most radical response to these difficulties, as it rejects what it takes to be a centurieslong dominant western metaphysical tradition. Ecocentric thinkers seek instead to offer us a ‘new metaphysics’ from which a ‘new ethics’ will apparently flow.21 Central to this is a conception of a unity of all existence, which conception is used to construct an ethics in which ‘nature-centred’ reasons for preservationist public policy are articulated. In particular this ‘unity’ is held to show that all entities, including humanity, are subject to ‘ecological laws’. For some authors, this means that human interests are served by conscious obedience of ecological laws, and thus these laws should be carried over into human ethics. Others take a less instrumental line, for them this ‘unity’ entails that nature has value in itself, which humanity should respect. Thus we begin with an examination of the metaphysics of ecocentrism and the system of ethics that are held to accompany this. That this system does offer ‘nature-centred’ moral arguments for public policies has led some critics (notably, though certainly not exclusively, the social ecologist Murray Bookchin) to suggest that ecocentrism is ‘antihumanist’ in its stance, and

20

‘There must be no doubt that Deep Ecology is indeed the Green movement's philosophical basis’ (Dobson, 1989 : 41). Although see also Attfield's reply (1990 ). On this see also De-Shalit (2000 : 49–50) who argues that although deep ecology represents the dominant approach to environmental philosophy, it has ‘rarely, if at all, served as a rationale for environmental policies’, including policy advocacy on the part of environmental activists.

21

In an alternative formulation, ethics are allegedly rendered redundant following the ‘metaphysical reconstruction’ of the self–see ch. 2 .

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is thus at least potentially a morally dangerous doctrine to embrace. This has a direct bearing on the questions at the heart of this book. Before we go on to consider Bookchin's criticisms and counter-proposals in detail, we will make the effort of establishing a systematic account of what ecocentric authors have to say about humanity and its place in the natural world, according to their ontological and ethical framework. I would suggest that ecocentric conceptions of humanity and human flourishing have been somewhat neglected in the critical literature. As we will see, ecocentrism has more than one way of attempting to reconstruct the relationship between humanity and nature. I will suggest that these different responses all revolve around the following core problem. On the one hand, ecocentrism offers us nature-centred reasons for preservationist public policies because its proponents believe that conceptions of human interest can often conflict with such policy goals. This, however, cannot be allowed to entail that preservationist policies are everywhere and always (or preferably anywhere and ever) directly contrary to humanity's interests, conceived in some general sense. This leaves ecocentrists with one of two strategies open to them. First, they can argue that some real, important, long-term human interest is served through the pursuit of the sorts of policies (such as wilderness preservation, a large reduction in human population levels, and low impact technologies) ecocentrism recommends, and that apparent short-term (especially economic) human interests can be legitimately sacrificed for these longer term interests. Secondly, it can be held that the traditional conceptions of what constitutes ‘human interest’, or ‘human need satisfaction’, have misconstrued their subject matter, and that ecocentrism can itself offer a better decontestation of these concepts.22 Thus in Chapter 2 we move on from the analysis of the ontological concerns of ecocentrism to a detailed study of the suggested ‘reconciliation’ of humanity and non-human nature on offer in this literature. Ecocentric authors are concerned with both the justification of their preferred policy options on the grounds that they (also) serve human interests, and the question of motivation of human beings as moral agents to abide by an ecocentric ethics (or, as we shall see, in some cases a non-ethics). Of particular relevance to the question of justification are the reconstructed account of human need offered by ecocentric literature and the ‘co-evolution hypothesis’, both of which seek to provide reasons for

22

‘Decontestation’ is a methodological concept employed in the morphological literature on ideologies. It is perhaps best rendered as ‘closed interpretation’, as it is used to describe an attempt to apply a particular meaning to a contestable concept, whilst concurrently disbarring other interpretations as illegitimate for one reason or another. See pp. 8–11.

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supporting ecocentrically inspired public policy. The motivational concern is addressed through the ‘Self-realization thesis’, which is particularly associated with deep ecology and its proponents' attempts to foster ‘environmental consciousness’. If these accounts of the reconciliation of human and non-human interest are convincing, then our central concerns might stand resolved, as it will have been shown that preservationist policies do indeed tend to serve human interests, and that the ‘preservation v. the people’ dilemma is generally a false one. I will show, however, that there are serious problems with these ecocentric approaches, and that they fail to square this particular circle. This failure brings us back to the ‘humanist’ alternatives to ecocentrism. Of particular interest to us, given the context of the thesis, are those strands of ‘humanist’ discourse that are formulated in response to, or at least in cognizance of, ecocentric literature, thus what we might call ‘ecologically informed’ humanism. The amount of this kind of literature has been increasing in recent years, and various authors, whilst expressing ecological concerns, have been unhappy at the prospect of a turn away from humanism.23 There is, however, one particular strand of humanist ecologism which has expressed the strongest opposition to ecocentrism, in terms of both philosophy and political theory, and this is ‘social ecology’—especially as articulated by its founder and chief protagonist, the veteran American eco-anarchist Murray Bookchin. Social ecology sets out the clearest and most fully articulated (if often rhetorically loaded) opposition to ecocentrism, and thus it is with social ecology that we begin our examination of humanist ecologism. Chapter 3 begins with social ecology's critique of ecocentrism, and the attempts (analysed in Chapter 2) to render the latter's nature-centred principles compatible with an account of human well-being. It will be argued that although raising some valid concerns, these criticisms are based upon a fundamental misconception concerning the nature of ecocentric thought, and that the contention that ecocentrism is inherently ‘anti-humanist’ is simply wrong. Thus social ecology fails to make a convincing case against ecocentrism. This in itself, however, does not mean that social ecology cannot offer a more convincing articulation of the human/nature reconciliation than ecocentrism. The second section of Chapter 3 thus examines the positive case of social ecology, which seeks to reconcile humanity and nature through conceiving a ‘very real’ ontological divide between them, based upon an account of nature as evolution. As the

23

One might cite as examples in this regard John Barry, Tim Hayward, John O'Neill, and Richard Watson. The arguments of these writers are considered at various points in this work.

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intelligent, reflexive pinnacle of natural evolution, humanity can, through the construction of an ‘ethics of complementarity’, take on responsibility for the direction of natural development—both human and non-human. This brings to the fore the question of the appropriate role for human beings in the ongoing evolutionary process, and it is in this regard that the proposals of social ecology have been criticized for displaying the same degree of hubris in the face of nature as does ‘conventional’ humanism. Despite their apparent grounding in ecological thought, the ethical principles and political thinking inherent in social ecology are, for ecocentrists, no more ‘ecological’ than more ‘Promethean’ strands of humanist thought. The ‘ecologism’ of social ecology is held to be a mere veneer. Whilst acknowledging that there is some force in these arguments, I will hold that the scrutiny of both the ecocentric and social ecologist contentions reveals that the protagonists on each side of the argument misconceive the position of their opponents. More importantly, in so doing, these two influential schools of ecological thought have helped to frame conceptions of the relationship between humanity and nature in a dichotomized, conflictual form. Despite their claims to the contrary, all these rival approaches can offer us are versions of ‘preservation v. the people’, whereby ecocentrism is portrayed as ‘anti-humanist’, and social ecology as ‘Promethean’. What each side fails to appreciate in the other, however, is that there are many ways of being humanist, and many ways of attempting to reconcile a concern for human welfare with similar concern for the natural environment. We are not faced with a choice between humanism and anti-humanism, but between multiple humanisms, that is, between the myriad forms that humanism can take, and the many ways in which these ideas can be articulated alongside ecological concerns. I will suggest that if the debate between ecocentrism and ecological humanism is seen in this perspective, both schools have far more in common than their protagonists suggest. More importantly, this understanding of the terms of the debate, this way of framing the discussion, offers a potentially more fruitful way forward for eco-philosophy than the rather sterile ecocentric v. humanist framework. Rather than offering a stark comparison of, and choice between, ecocentrism and humanism, we are instead faced with competing conceptions of the reconciliation of the interests of both humanity and non-human nature in a theoretical schema with public policy implications. I will furthermore claim that the most profitable way of coming to understand and compare these differing conceptions of desirable human/ nature relationships and their suggested ramifications is through a partial morphological analysis of their constituent concepts and

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INTRODUCTION

how these stand in relation to each other. This opens the way for a new substantive position with respect to the ecocentric/humanist axis in environmental ethics.

Conceptual Morphology As a claim about an appropriate method, the idea of conducting a ‘partial morphological analysis’ stands in need of some explanation. The modes of thought about the human–nature relationship that will come under scrutiny in this book (ecocentrism, social ecology, and eco-Marxism) are systems of ideas that operate at various points between popular and abstract-philosophical levels of thought. They are, or are at least related to, ideologies. However, given the use and abuse to which the concept of ideology has been put over the years, to make this claim is inevitably to step into a theoretical minefield, and my use of the concept of ideology has to be understood within the framework of morphological analysis. The analysis of ideology has been reinvigorated in recent years through an analytical method of study developed by Michael Freeden, that of morphological analysis (see Freeden, 1994 and 1996 for both the methodological theory and (in the latter work) a series of illuminating case studies). There are two distinct attributes of the morphological method which offer potentially fruitful development in ideology analysis. First, the understanding of ideology offered is both minimal and anti-essentialist. Minimal in the sense that much of the baggage frequently attached to accounts of ideology (such as that it is rigid and inflexible, or that it is closed to external critique, or embodies false consciousness) is left as an empirical matter, to be settled as a result of investigation, and as something that may be present or absent in different ideological traditions. Thus many of the more controversial elements frequently built in to definitions of ideology (for an overview see Hamilton, 1987) are here very deliberately not set out in an a priori fashion. This leads to the second point, that morphological analysis comprehends ideology in a non-essentialist manner. Again, the content of an ideology is also not set out in an a priori fashion. No ideational element or concept is taken to be so crucial to an ideological formation that the ideology cannot exist without it. This again negates some of the unnecessary conceptual baggage that frequently accompanies ideology analysis. Is it necessary that fascism is racially supremacist? Such a definition is often taken to rule out early Italian fascism, which was arguably culturally or nationally, rather

INTRODUCTION

9

than racially prejudiced. Yet how can a definition of fascism rule out the first set of people to self-identify as fascists? Is an ecocentric ethic (see below) essential to green ideology? If so, many ecologically concerned idea systems that retain a humanist core would be disbarred from membership of the ‘green’ family. But if these idea systems are centrally concerned with rethinking the relationship between human beings and non-human nature in a more ecological direction, why should they be considered not green? Essentialism, then, raises the general problem of what appear to be ideological variants being disbarred from membership of an ideological family because they lack one particular feature. But why this feature rather than another? Why racial supremacy rather than militarism? Or the leader-principle? Why ecocentrism rather than sustainability? Or a Malthusian view on population? The morphological approach takes the question of the conceptual content of ideologies also to be an empirical matter. Now this raises an immediate methodological problem. If we don't allow ourselves a definition based upon an essentialist definition, how could we ever identify an ideology of any particular type? If we don't begin with a claim as to what socialist ideology is, how could we ever identify it? Fortunately, ideologies do not exist in a vacuum of information. The people who develop ideologies do so in a reflexive, conscious manner, although these attributes are of course a matter of degree from text to text, thinker to thinker. Nonetheless, writers within particular traditions self-identify with that tradition, and this offers the analyst of ideologies a ‘way in’ to the empirical observation of ideological content. The eventual accumulation of a set of texts by self-declared (say) liberals, allows the analyst to compare and contrast the ideational content and derive a set of conceptual commitments that are shared by all or close-to-all of these thinkers. Therefore, a picture of core, adjacent, and peripheral conceptual commitments comes into view. Once a tradition is understood in this way, then subsequent texts can be assessed in terms of their ‘fit’ with that tradition, and earlier texts can be excavated in terms of the degree to which they appear to foreshadow it. Thus later writers self-identifying as ‘liberal’, might well be judged as mistaken or insincere if they fall far short of standard liberal conceptual commitments. However, it is crucial to bear in mind that a text aspiring to liberal status would be rejected, not on the grounds that it fails some essentialist test, but because the conceptual commitments it articulates bear little resemblance to a recognized liberal conceptual structure. Indeed these labels of liberal, conservative, socialist, etc. are recognized in the morphological account to be merely useful heuristic labels that can mislead as much as they can clarify. Texts can of course

10

INTRODUCTION

combine elements of liberalism and socialism, or conservatism and green ideology, without necessarily being selfcontradictory. Finally, the third main benefit I would claim for the morphological analysis of ideologies is that it does not mark any hard and fast distinction between ideology and political philosophy, and indeed seeks to reconnect the two. Now it is important to understand that this is not to deny a difference between thought that is simplistic, unreflective, and closed, as against thought that is highly reflexive, complex, and open to challenge and reconsideration. It is, however, to claim both that philosophical thought can itself articulate ideological (conceptual) commitments, and also that ‘popular’ political texts are as worthy of the attention of the political theorist as works of political philosophy. It is very much in this spirit that the analysis of ecological political thought operates in this book. There is no doubt that some of the texts placed under scrutiny herein are more conceptually and theoretically sophisticated than others, but what is of particular interest to morphological analysis is the conceptual commitments articulated in them. Of course the conceptual analysis of texts is nothing new, and to claim it was would be absurd. But the systematic understanding of a set of conceptual commitments within a framework of essential contestability and ideological morphology offers a new approach to understanding these texts. What is of interest here is how these contestable political concepts such as justice, freedom, and, in our case particularly, nature, humanity, and ecology, are decontested, and then the way in which these decontested concepts are constructed into a set of interrelated beliefs that collectively form an ideology (i.e. the conceptual morphology of the ideology). The above is inevitably a brief and sketchy account of conceptual morphology, and again I would urge the interested reader to consult Freeden's 1996 text, which merits close attention. The morphological analysis undertaken in this book is ‘partial’ because what is not being attempted here is the complete delineation of the full range of conceptual commitments on the part of deep ecology, social ecology, and so on. This would take us too far from our central concern, which is the political philosophy of nature preservation. It is, thus, the conceptual configurations around this issue that will be central to this study. This means that certain concepts figure large, and others less so. As one might imagine given the subject matter, understandings of nature are crucial here, as are notions of humanity (and its relationship with nature) and also the status and role of the science of ecology. These particular conceptual decontestations and the interrelationships between them will come under particularly close

INTRODUCTION

11

scrutiny. This understanding based on morphological analysis is then used to underpin the analytical normative critique of the use that has been made of the ecocentric–anthropocentric distinction.

Eco-Marxism Having come this far in sketching out the aims of this book, we can consider the central question (can we overcome the ‘preservation v. the people’ dichotomy?) from a different angle. Having argued that ecocentrism v. social ecology serves to perpetuate an unhelpful framework for thinking about ecological philosophy, the question arises—do any other eco-philosophies on offer manage to transcend this apparent divide? Whilst the work of some individual authors addresses this problem directly and in a very sophisticated manner, there is one school of ecological thought which does claim that its preferred philosophical system does transcend this divide and so delivers ‘preservation and the people’ in a coherent and attractive philosophical package. This is eco-socialism and in particular eco-Marxism.24 In Chapter 4 we set out to see whether eco-Marxism lives up to these aspirations. The chapter begins by trying to establish the nature of eco-Marxism. There are in general two strands to ecological versions of Marxism. One attempts to recover Marx as an ecological writer, through a reinterpretation of his corpus from an ecologically concerned perspective. The other strand accepts that classical Marxism lacked a serious concern with environmental questions, but seeks to reconstruct a new ecological version of Marxism that takes ideas such as that there are natural limits to productive capacity seriously. I should stress that this chapter considers Marxism rather than Marx, and is far more concerned with recent work in the tradition than with the work of Marx and Engels themselves. What is ‘eco’ about eco-Marxism, how can it be distinguished from ‘orthodox’ Marxism, and does Marxism remain a coherent doctrine when the necessary theoretical changes are made in order to render it in its ‘eco’ form? Thus we examine the eco-Marxist critique of orthodox Marxism. This leaves us with the question of what remains Marxist about eco-Marxism. I will argue that the crucial elements here are the retention of the Marxist critique of the

24

Thus for example David Pepper offers to take us ‘From deep ecology to social justice’ (1993b ), and David Harvey tells us that Marx's ‘principle’ that in coming to understand the world we simultaneously, and inevitably, change it, renders anthropocentrism and ecocentrism a false dichotomy (1993: 36–7).

12

INTRODUCTION

dynamics of capitalism (given an ecological twist), and, more importantly, the use of the early Marx's work on human ecology. Along the way we also examine an eco-Marxist critique of ecocentrism. The core elements of eco-Marxism which relate directly to our concerns—its conception of nature and its account of human ‘species being’ and the ‘humanization of nature’ are then examined, along with the views of both proponents and critics of the idea that there can be any such entity as a coherent eco-Marxism. Finally we ourselves ask the question as to whether there can really be a Marxist ecologism, and, to the extent that there can be, how well this succeeds in overcoming the ecocentric/ humanist, ‘preservation v. the people’ dichotomy. I will conclude that, because of its foundations in a Marxist account of human species being, eco-Marxism can never offer the fundamental commitment to preservationist policies and the ‘defence of the natural’ which have to constitute a core component of any genuinely ecological political thought (even though this commitment will never be absolute, it has to be a core component and, I will suggest, be articulated in a particular manner). Largely because of this, it fails to live up to its own aspirations. In the concluding chapter I pull together the threads of what has gone before and readdress the central question of the thesis—are we condemned forever to frame questions of preservation in ecological politics as ‘preservation v. the people’? I will argue that although we can never escape the occurrence of particular cases where this sort of framing just is appropriate, the general philosophical framing of questions of preservation is crucially important. If we operate within a background of multiple humanisms rather than ecocentrism, humanism, anthropocentrism, and other apparently competing and mutually exclusive accounts of human/ nature reconciliation we might be able to consider the problem of preservation through a frame that does not apply a distorting dichotomous filter. This may only constitute a minor improvement in the articulation of the problem of preservation, but I hope it can suggest a direction towards a more systematic set of ethical principles which could be employed when considering these difficult issues.

Environmental Pragmatism It might be suggested that the attempt herein to move beyond thinking about the problem of preservation in the dichotomized terms of ecocentrism and anthropocentrism does little more than rearticulate a version of

INTRODUCTION

13

environmental pragmatism, epitomized by Bryan Norton's ‘convergence hypothesis’—the hypothesis of converging policy prescriptions amongst environmentalists notwithstanding persisting value pluralism.25 On this view environmental ethics has to be contextualized. If we look at what environmentalists recommend in particular decision-making contexts we will see that their policy prescriptions are usually similar, and based on an understanding of scientific information. Norton's contention is that from this policy consensus we can search for a new, shared worldview, where a reading of science rather than shared metaphysical axioms or moral standards provides the common ground.26 In the introduction to their edited volume on environmental pragmatism, Eric Katz and Andrew Light also suggest that the introduction of the pragmatic method can resolve many controversies in environmental ethics.27 As with Norton, the key lies in the turn away from disagreements about the fundamental questions of being and knowledge. Although pragmatists views are diverse, ‘all agree in their rejection of foundationalist epistemology’.28 Diverse perspectives are judged for their ‘workability’ for an ‘increase in the moral-aesthetic richness of experience’29 or for making life on our planet ‘relatively better’.30 Problems with environmental pragmatism are, however, manifold, and centre precisely on the rejection of foundational questions. I will consider two objections here. First, moral values such as ‘richness’ and the relative betterment of life make little sense when divorced from more general or fundamental commitments. What is the standard of the better life? Why should ‘richness’ be a desideratum capable of trumping others? What, anyway, constitutes a ‘rich’ outcome, and why should this not be developmental rather than ecological? Pragmatists of course have responses to this kind of challenge, but they are themselves deeply problematic. The commitment to moral pluralism does not deny the need for a deeper grounding of these principles, but suggests that a diversity of metaphysical perspectives will endorse the same or similar axiologies. This is combined with an emphasis on a radically empiricist,31 experiential epistemology32 that can change moral consciousness33 in an ecological direction. This stress on experiential knowledge—values ‘are most often just experienced’34—leads also to a positive valuation of our common sense capacity for understanding.35

25

Norton, 1991 : 86.

26

Ibid. 92.

27

Light and Katz, 1996 : 6.

28

Parker, 1996 : 22.

29

Rosenthal and Buchholz, 1996 : 41.

30

Parker, 1996 : 27.

31

Hickman, 1996 : 55.

32

Parker, 1996 : 25. Also Light and Katz, 1996 : 7.

33

Rosenthal and Buchholz, 1996 : 43.

34

Hickman, 1996 : 66.

35

Rosenthal and Buchholz, 1996 : 46.

14

INTRODUCTION

But this leaves environmental pragmatism vulnerable to the same critique that applies to other forms of experiential epistemology.36 Why should we expect to harvest the same set of values from similar types of engagement in the world, unless we believe that we possess a reliable moral faculty that allows us to ‘read’ ethics from situations and that is capable of being correct or mistaken? However, this view, redolent of intuitionist ethics, opens the doors to a form of foundationalist moral realism that would be anathema to pragmatists. But, if we absent the assumption of such a faculty, why should my experience-based intuition that the natural world is a horrible place that should be ‘humanized’ as quickly as possible be any less valid than your similarly derived ecological ethic? If my idea of more richness and a ‘better world’ lies in more human development, the pragmatist is hardly in a position to gainsay me, providing that I have partaken in the appropriate kind of ‘active engagement’ with the world. This brings me to the second point, which is that Norton's hope for a common reading of science in order to overcome the diversity of value and policy perspectives is curious in its optimism. Readings of science are no less contestable than any other aspect of political discourse, even if such discourses do tend to operate within general parameters. Readings of natural science vary from Richard Dawkins's neo-Darwinian stress on competition in The Selfish Gene through to the emphasis on mutualism and co-operation found in (for example) Murray Bookchin's evolutionary ethics. Even the science of ecology offers radically different models for incorporation into politicized discourse.37 Political debates about the nature, cause, and impact of global climate change, and (in the UK) BSE and its human forms, and foot and mouth disease and its control, attest to divergent interpretations of scientific evidence that cannot, presumably, all be placed at the door of interest-based readings. In its very turn away from foundationalism, environmental pragmatism denies itself the possibility of adequate justification for the values that it articulates. The frustration with philosophical arguments about for example the nature of intrinsic value is understandable—at times it does seem that environmental philosophers fiddle away on their conceptual violins whilst ecological conflagration rages around them. Unfortunately for pragmatists, however, foundations for values do matter, and the ability to offer a deep justification for one's value commitments is a powerful philosophical tool. The attempt made in this work to transcend the anthropocentric– ecocentric divide does not, then, do so merely by turning away from the

36

See Humphrey, forthcoming.

37

Worster, 1994 .

INTRODUCTION

15

appropriate level of argument. It does not rest ‘content with particularistic or ad-hoc judgments’38 but rather seeks to grasp the nettle of foundational and metaphysical commitments, and their relationship to judgements about value and policy.

Ecofeminism I should, at this point, make mention of an important strand of ecopolitical thinking to which a chapter is not devoted in this book, and that is ecofeminism. The absence of a specific chapter-length analysis of ecofeminist thought is not intended to suggest an indifference to, or trivialization of, this mode of thinking. Ecofeminist analyses of the links between patriarchy and the ‘domination’ of nature have opened up illuminating areas of analysis and generated vigorous debate between ecofeminists, deep ecologists, and social ecologists.39 In particular, ecofeminists tend to stress androcentrism (man-centredness) as a root cause of ecological problems, as opposed to the anthropocentrism stressed by deep ecologists.40 There is a complex web of agreement and disagreement spun between ecofeminists and deep ecologists, and of course there are higher levels of agreement between certain thinkers and less between others. However, a number of ecofeminist texts make the following contentions. First, other forms of ecologism (with the possible exception of Bookchin's social ecology) underestimate, or neglect completely, the role of patriarchy in generating environmental crisis, and the connections between the subjection of women and the subjection of nature. This is held to be particularly true of deep ecology, which is held to celebrate the role of ‘man’ alone in an ‘unspoiled’ nature and is part of white ‘malestream’ writing. Second, ecofeminists tend to reject the idea of the existence of a fundamental ‘ontological divide’ between humanity and nature. This leads Eckersley to describe ecofeminism as a ‘valid expression’ of ecocentrism.41 Deep ecology's relational, holistic understanding of reality is what, according

38

This is from Tim Hayward's own critique of pragmatism in environmental ethics, 1998: 39. Note that Hayward does accept the point (and indeed it would be absurd not to) that different value commitments can converge on the same policy.

39

See e.g. the series of articles appearing in Environmental Ethics . Cheney, 1987 ; Dixon, 1997 ; Fox, 1989 ; Gaard, 1997 ; Salleh, 1984 ; 1992 ; 1993 ; Warren, 1987 ; 1990 ; Zimmerman, 1987 .

40

See e.g. Zimmerman, 1994 : 277.

41

Eckersley, 1992 .

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INTRODUCTION

to Jim Cheney ‘attracts’ ecofeminists to it. The two are, however, held to be ultimately incompatible because the realized ‘Self ’ of deep ecology is irreparably masculine.42 Plumwood makes a similar point; in their attempt to overcome dualism, deep ecologists produce a monistic, transcendent ‘Self ’ which is little more than the egoistic, masculine self writ large. The big ‘Self ’ was the answer. But on an interactive account, the loss of the essential tension between different and alike is characteristic of domination and instrumentalisation, which involves the erasure of the other as an external limit and its reappearance as a projection of self.43 For Plumwood the true transcendence of dualist forms of thinking revolves around a relationist ontology in which a broadly holistic understanding is tempered by a contemporaneous appreciation of the individual elements which interconnect to form the greater whole. She is concerned that not only the ‘humanity–nature’ dualism be overcome, but also the ‘man– woman’ dualism as well. This anti-dualist approach ‘reveals a third way’ for women avoiding uncritical participation in a male-constructed culture, or the acceptance of an old and oppressive ‘earth-mother’ identity.44 This thesis has a very specific focus, the problem of justifying nature preservation, and how this problem has played out in ecological political philosophy in a bifurcation around the notion of an ‘ontological divide’ between humanity and nature. Ecofeminists' main concern has been to reveal the common theme of patriarchy underlying both the domination of woman and the domination of nature. On an ecofeminist view both were granted inferior status to and dualistically opposed to the pair male and culture.45 This focus has resulted in a particular ecofeminist agenda covering a broad array of issues related to, but distinct from, the problem of preservation per se, as Greta Gaard acknowledges in her essay on ecofeminism and wilderness.46 Given this rather divergent focus, the adequate incorporation of ecofeminist ideas would have radically extended a work already rather broad ranging in its coverage. All I can do here is acknowledge the deficiency and trust that I give adequate reasons for selecting the theories for analysis that I do.

42

Cheney, in Zimmerman, 1994 : 287.

43

Plumwood, 1993 : 175.

44

See Ibid. 36.

45

See Griffin, 1978 for an example of this argument.

46

Gaard, 1997 : esp. p. 5.

1 The Foundations of Ecocentrism Introduction [T]he ecological crisis has exposed the hitherto unexamined flip side of our western humanist heritage. In the face of accelerated environmental degradation and species extinction, environmental philosophers are now asking: are we humans the only beings of value in the world? Does the world exist only for our benefit? It is important to emphasize that environmental philosophical exercise has not been directed at the notion of human dignity or intrinsic value per se. Rather, it has been directed to the fact that intrinsic value is generally taken to reside exclusively, or at least preeminently, in humans– a belief that environmental philosophers argue has resulted in the systematic favouring of human interests over the interests of the nonhuman world.47 What apparently worries deep ecologists about this ‘divide’, with all its bifurcations and boundaries, is not so much that its existence is obvious as that it is inconvenient.48 In this chapter we will begin an examination of the philosophical conflict that exists between ecocentric and humanist thinkers regarding the nature of the relationship between humanity and non-human nature. Beginning at the ontological level, we will discuss the nature of, and implications of, the claim that there is no firm ontological divide between ‘nature’ and ‘humanity’, which is the defining claim of ecocentrism. We will then see that this argument is often taken to entail a further claim that certain ecological ‘laws of nature’, accessible through the study of ecology, operating at the biospheric level and applying equally to all species, including mankind, and that these are broken only at humanity's peril. The proposition is derived from this claim that human behaviour that is in ‘harmony’ with these laws

47

Eckersley, 1992 : 2. Emphasis in original.

48

Bookchin, 1995b: 102.

18

THE FOUNDATIONS OF ECOCENTRISM

ought to be promoted by the moral laws of human communities. Two possible methods of incorporating these natural laws into human morality are examined. First, there is a human-instrumental argument. The claim here is that as biospherical ecological systems are essential to human welfare, they ought to be held to possess moral considerability in themselves. Second, an argument from ‘autopoietic ethics’: humans are not ontologically unique, but share with other beings the quality of autopoiesis. It is this latter quality that ought to constitute the correct criterion of moral considerability as the possession of this quality demonstrates that an entity ‘matters to itself’ in the appropriate way. The two quotes at the head of the chapter give an indication of the nature of a significant tension that currently exists between writers concerned with the philosophy of ecological political theory. On the one hand there are those49 who argue that the emphasis on specifically human interests in philosophical and political-theoretical discourse to date has resulted in the non-human world being valued, to the extent that it is valued at all, merely in terms of its instrumental usefulness to humans. This general attitude has, on this view, failed to erect any moral or behavioural barriers to the complete destruction of non-human life forms and habitats, if this is deemed to serve human interests defined in some specific way. This is the anthropocentrism into which humanism is alleged to have descended. Thus David Ehrenfeld's observation that ‘we have been too gentle and uncritical of it [humanism], and it has grown ugly and dangerous’.50 Humanism has apparently now to be protected from its own ‘excesses’. For his part Warwick Fox notes that ‘even many of those who deal most directly with environmental issues continue to perpetuate, however unwittingly, the arrogant assumption that we humans are central to the cosmic drama; that, essentially, the world is made for us’.51 He adds later that such ‘anthropocentric’ attitudes have been ‘disastrous’ in practice. On the other hand, the implications of a turn away from a humanist ethics—i.e. toward an ‘ecocentric’ perspective—are viewed by other writers (who still, importantly, consider themselves to be political ecologists of one stamp or another) as morally undesirable. For Bookchin this is because ecocentrism is held to open intellectual doors to a form of ideology in which the lives of human beings are considered to possess no more ‘worth’ than those of any other living beings (or indeed certain non-living

49

E.g. Robyn Eckersley, Warwick Fox, Bill Devall, George Sessions, Arne Naess, Andrew McLaughlin, Holmes Rolston III, David Ehrenfeld, and Alan Drengson.

50

Ehrenfeld, 1981 : xiii–xiv. Also quoted approvingly in Eckersley, 1992 : 2.

51

Fox, 1995 : 11.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF ECOCENTRISM

19

entities when whole ecosystems are brought under the ecocentric umbrella52), which in turn is considered to offer philosophical foundations for the sacrifice of immediate human interests for the sake of some ‘more fundamental’ entity. Arguments for the protection of non-human nature based upon human-prudential grounds will always be subject to certain contingencies, and it is, I contend, precisely these contingencies that those who have taken an ‘ecocentric’ turn are trying to eliminate from political-ecological argument. The crucial aspect of contingency in human-prudential argument is simply that the preservation of any particular example of non-human nature will be dependent upon its utility, in one from or another, to humanity; thus ultimately, if non-human nature is not of economic, spiritual, aesthetic, or some other benefit to humankind, then we have, on these grounds, no reason to preserve it. The various ecocentric perspectives seek to overcome this contingency by grounding arguments for the defence of non-human nature precisely in the well-being of non-human populations, either on the grounds that these non-human life forms (or ecosystems, which include non-living entities53) have ‘intrinsic value’, that is, value independent of any instrumental value they have for humankind, or rights based upon having interests.54 Can such an ecocentric approach overcome the problem of contingency, or are the boundaries of legitimate and illegitimate uses of nature never ‘fixed in the manner that an a priori commitment to the preservation of nature would require, but are ineliminably contingent’?55 If Barry is correct, (and I believe he is) then the problems of contingency cannot be overcome, and the reasons for this will be discussed below. We will see that contingency returns to haunt ecocentric arguments in other forms than dependence upon human interests.56

52

It is the inclusion of non-living entities in its value theory that distinguishes ecocentrism from biocentrism.

53

I accept that there may be problems at the margin between identifying the distinction between living and the non-living, but I do not believe that need detain us here. For a consideration of this problem see Margulis and Sagan, 1995 .

54

For a recent defence of the concept of intrinsic value, see Attfield, 2001 . For a careful critique of this concept, culminating in the view that the necessary conditions posited for the existence of intrinsic value are either contradictory, nonconsequential, or redundant, see Wissenburg, 1998 : ch. 4. Hayward makes the point that appeals to intrinsic value cannot act as a short cut for making reasoned judgements about the goodness of different states of affairs (1998: 38).

55

Barry, 1999 : 60–1.

56

Dobson argues against Norton that it is not true that all species will be granted protection by the umbrella of the ‘full’ protection of human interests (Norton, 1991 : 226; Dobson, 1998 : 228). In this he is also surely correct, and what this shows is that contingency operates on both the humanist and ecocentric sides of the philosophical divide-although in different ways.

20

THE FOUNDATIONS OF ECOCENTRISM

For some political ecologists, the attempt to overcome contingency in the manner of ecocentrism carries with it a very heavy price. That price is what Murray Bookchin labels ‘anti-humanism’. Deciphering precisely what Bookchin means by ‘anti-humanism’ is something of an interpretative task as he delineates the concept in more than one way. It is held to be that which subverts ‘belief in the power of reason, science and technology to render society and the human experience rational and free’.57 Elsewhere he describes it as ‘a faith in the power of God, of supernatural forces, and of “Nature”’,58 and again as ‘a common deprecation of the remarkable features that make our species unique in the biosphere. . . above all, its capacity for rationality’.59 It thus seems that anti-humanism consists for Bookchin in the negative rejection of the idea of humanity being unique in nature along with a corresponding ‘deprecation’ of certain human abilities, in particular our capacity for reason; along with a positive non-rational ‘faith’ in non-human elements (especially ‘Nature’) to offer lessons for humanity in how to behave with regard to non-human nature. Whether these are all necessary conditions to render one ‘anti-humanist’, or whether one could be so without, say, cleaving to the last belief is unclear. This deprecation of humanity's unique abilities opens intellectual doors to highly misanthropic forms of argument, according to Bookchin and some other ecological-humanist authors, doors that, particularly given the history of regimes devoted to the service of a supra-individual entity, be it ‘class’, ‘nation’, or ‘race’, would best remain closed. [I]f one is consistently ‘biocentric’ one can easily come to believe that Ethiopian children should be left to starve just as any animal species that uses up its food supply will starve. And one can also come to believe that AIDS is ‘nature's revenge’ of ‘excessive’ population growth, ecological damage, and the like. According to ‘natural law’, if lemmings' food supplies increase, their population will naturally increase to numbers that make them vulnerable to die off. Similarly, from a ‘biocentric’ perspective, if there is a surplus of available food for people, human numbers will automatically swell to numbers that eventually make them vulnerable to die-off by making them so destructive of their environment until it can no longer support them.60 Indeed, says Lovelock . . . ‘city life strengthens and reinforces the heresy of humanism, that narcissistic devotion to human interests alone.’ Like Thoreau's view of Walden pond ‘profaned’ by a boat this is modern ecocentrism transforming humans into little more than a ‘pollutant’, which destroys ‘wild’ or ‘traditional’ landscapes.61

57

Bookchin, 1995b : 176.

58

Ibid. 14.

59

Ibid. 4.

60

Bookchin, in Chase, 1991 : 123.

61

Pepper, 1993b: 148.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF ECOCENTRISM

21

Anti-anthropocentric biocentrists suggest that other species are to be allowed to manifest themselves naturally. They are to be allowed to live out their evolutionary potential in interaction with one another. But man is different. Man is too powerful, too destructive of the environment and other species, too successful at reproducing, and so on. What a phenomenon is man! Man is so wonderfully bad that he is not to be allowed to live out his evolutionary potential in egalitarian interaction with all other species.62 Clearly, arguing that ‘one can easily come to believe’ is not to argue that this connection is one of logical necessity, nonetheless these authors express a manifest concern that the sacrifice of specifically human interests becomes more easily contemplated when the assumption of a clear ontological divide between the status of humans and the status of non-humans is dispensed with. One might say that ecocentrism is held to frame the problem of human/non-human relationships in an ethically undesirable fashion. What we need, argues Bookchin, is not the end of humanism but a ‘New Humanism’ whereby humans themselves are given equal status with each other; only through the abolition of the domination of one section of humanity by another will we end the attempt by humanity to dominate nature.63 Similarly, Tim Hayward has argued for a particular form of humanism: ‘the humanist aim is not anti-ecological per se, but only to the extent that it is conceived in Promethean terms; the pursuit of human goods is not intrinsically hostile to the goods of the rest of nature, but only when human goods are conceived in an ecologically ignorant or hostile manner.’64 And later: ‘As long as such differences [in the status of different groups of humans] assume invidious forms, ecological morality will remain a mere ought (Sollen), relatively impotent to effect the transformation of those human social relationships without which the relation of humans to nature is unlikely to be transformed.’65 Thus ecocentric arguments are held to be both ineffective if operating without humanist underpinnings, and to be (potentially) morally dangerous. If however, we revert to ‘humanist’ forms of argument, are we not in danger of resurrecting the very contingencies that ecocentric political philosophers were trying to overcome in the first place? I want to begin the analysis of this question by exploring one of the aspects of ecocentric thought that gets relatively little coverage in the

62

Watson, 1983 : 252. Watson goes on to argue that this shows that ecocentrism is ‘really’ anthropocentric in that it implicitly relies on positing precisely the ontological divide between humanity and the rest of nature that it explicitly denies.

63

The logic of this particular argument is far from obvious and we will return to it in ch. 3.

64

Hayward, 1994a : 75.

65

Ibid. 85.

22

THE FOUNDATIONS OF ECOCENTRISM

critical literature. It is ecocentrism's non- or even alleged anti-humanist aspects that are understandably taken to be its core feature, and it is precisely these aspects that set it apart from traditional forms of humanism. However, both the ‘ecocentric’ and the ‘new humanist’ arguments are intimately concerned with the relationship between humanity and nature. Ecocentric philosophers are striving to give us arguments for the preservation of non-human nature that have a status ontologically independent of any human prudential considerations. Nonetheless, they carry with them, I suggest, a rich array of additional arguments about the nature of and interests of humanity. We can examine these with the question in mind as to what resources ecocentrists actually provide for supporting their free-standing arguments for the preservation of non-human nature on the grounds that this also serves some fundamental human interest. The presence of human-interest arguments in ecocentrism might be seen as rhetorical and/or trivial, and furthermore unsurprising. That is to say no writer on environmental, or any other, form of politics who wants to be taken seriously is likely to argue that the political values and arrangements they recommend are somehow harmful to human interests, and the arguments ecocentrics do have regarding human interests might thus be regarded as little more than a rhetorical add-on, an intellectual veneer to give respectability to arguments that a critic such as Bookchin would regard as containing underlying misanthropic tendencies. However, that this may be the case gives no reason why we should not want to examine seriously the human-interest based arguments that ecocentric philosophers put forward. One reason for this is that, in terms of authorial intentionality, these arguments may be more ‘genuine’ than the above description allows, and to the extent that we find these authors giving us an (at least) plausible account of human nature, interests and needs, which corresponds with their other arguments, we might well want to conclude that they are not insincere in this endeavour. There is also another consideration: political and philosophical texts are important not only in terms of authorial intention, there is also the question of how such texts are interpreted and understood, i.e. how they are consumed. Texts have meaning in consumption as well as production, and to some extent the author tells us whatever ‘we’ decide s/he tells us. Analysing what people may understand as the meaning of a text seems as legitimate a branch of enquiry as the understanding of what the author intended. Thus, for example, we should treat seriously Bookchin's claims that the writings of ecocentrists are implicitly misanthropic even though probably none of the authors he examines would accept this description of their own

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23

arguments. Even if these authors have no intention of putting forward misanthropic arguments, it is possible that groups inspired by their ideas will do—it has been argued that precisely this has happened in the case of activist groups allegedly inspired by deep ecology such as Earth First!.66 Thus we will be asking of ecocentric discourse whether its arguments for the preservation of non-human nature are consistent with its claims about human nature and needs; we will also be asking whether the decontestation of the concept of ‘human interest’ is compatible with the understanding of this concept in ‘humanist’ ecological discourse. Does ecocentric environmental philosophy appear to have the resources available to reconcile the two elements of our conundrum—to give both a free-standing account of why non-human nature should be preserved, not in itself derivative of human interests, and give us a complementary and plausible account of the satisfaction of human interests at the same time? Prior to this, however, we need to set before us the theoretical underpinnings of the ecocentric denial of a valueimparting distinction between human and non-human nature. This is the supposedly crucial divide between ecocentric and humanist approaches to nature, and it is upon this ontological divide that differing axiological positions are developed. A further argument on the part of some ecocentrists is that if indeed ‘no entity is above ecology’ then humanity is subject to ‘natural laws’, which need to be utilized in the construction of human moral codes in order that human behaviour will display the property of being ‘homeotelic’.67

A Unity of Nature and Humanity? Ecocentric theorists, then, reject the idea, as we have said, that we can draw a fundamental, value-imparting dividing line between human and non-human nature. Two questions immediately occur in relation to this. First, upon what is this rejection grounded? Second, what are the implications of this for the ecocentrists' account of human nature, and human interests? We will concentrate on the first of these questions in this section. The rejection of a belief in a fundamental divide between humanity and

66

See Chase, 1991 , and Taylor, 1991 .

67

That is, behaviour will be in accordance with furthering the supposed ‘stability’ of the ‘biosphere’ (this is one of Edward Goldsmith's many neologisms).

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the rest of nature is based upon a certain set of ontological criteria which ecocentrics argue are implied by both contemporary physics and ecology. That is, these beliefs are predicated upon a reading of science, although philosophical and religious premises are also sometimes employed. These ontological assumptions are set out by Eckersley68 when she considers three elements of the ‘dominant Baconian/Newtonian/Cartesian worldview’ which ecocentrics reject, namely atomism—the idea that the universe is formed of discrete entities; technological optimism—the idea that humanity can rationally manage nature; and anthropocentrism—which in Eckersley's version is taken to imply a privileging of the interests of humanity with respect to non-human species, on the basis of a belief in the superior value of human beings. Of these three rejected principles the latter is axiological, the first clearly ontological, and the second is at least partly empirical, but based on both an epistemological and an ontological assumption.69 We can elucidate the ecocentric worldview by examining the ecocentric alternatives to the first two principles. The first of these alternatives is holism.70 This is an ‘understanding of reality in terms of integrated wholes whose properties cannot be reduced to those of smaller units’.71 This is opposed to the ‘atomism’ or ‘reductionism’ of what ecocentrics consider ‘Newtonian’ science.72 It entails a belief that an item, such as a table, a tree, an ecosystem or the whole biosphere exists as an entity in such a way that a description of its constituent components (e.g. the tree's cells) cannot provide an adequate description of the entity itself—the whole represents more than the sum of its parts. As Brennan73 notes, (and this is the crucial point) an acceptance of the validity of holistic thinking requires the acceptance of supervenient characteristics as defining characteristics. Thus the functions that an organism performs in its interactions with its environment are part of the story of

68

1992: 51.

69

That is, that the world is of a form simple enough to manage and that furthermore we can come to know this form sufficiently well to enable us to so manage.

70

Naess prefers to use the term ‘gestalt’ rather than ‘holism’. This in the belief that the former term encourages awareness of interrelationships. ‘Gestalts bind the I and the not-I together in a whole’ (1989b : 60). An example he gives is ‘the quietness of the lake. This does not mean that the lake, “A” is “B” quiet, but that the quietness and the lake are inextricably bound together’.

71

Capra, 1982 : 21 n.

72

The ‘atomistic’ Baconian/Newtonian/Cartesian scientific paradigm comes in for sustained criticism in ecocentric discourse as implicitly devaluing nature through what is considered its ‘excessive’ reductionism. Ultimately it reduces nature to no more than a series of particular arrangements of atomic or sub-atomic particles which are colourless, odourless and removed from the world of sensory perception. This mechanomorphic physics is held to lie at the root of most popular perceptions of how the world ‘works’.

73

1988: 216.

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what it is. This approach might be held to be open to the charge of ‘ontological parasitism’, that is to say it describes as fundamental entities bodies that are in fact only secondary manifestations of more fundamental components. So where a holist sees an irreducible tree, one who argues this is a case of ontological parasitism would regard the tree as no more than a structured collection of plant cells, which are in turn reducible to their organelles, and so on. Whilst I do not find this sort of holism implausible it should be remembered that to the extent that ‘deep’ and other strands of political ecology seek to legitimate this worldview through an appeal to ecology, they draw on a particular branch of ecological science to support their holistic picture of reality. We should remain aware that there are both holist and reductionist ‘schools’ within scientific ecology, and holistic ecocentrists and deep ecologists are extrapolating from only one of these.74 The second alternative is complexity. The science of ecology ‘teaches’ us that ‘technological optimism’—characterized as a belief that nature can be comprehended and ecological problems successfully addressed through the application of technology—should be replaced by a belief, or acceptance, that ‘Nature is not only more complex than we know, it may be more complex than we can know.’75 This complex web of interrelationships we call ‘nature’ is therefore not something that humanity should consider itself at any time able to manage rationally, largely because we can never be sure what impact our activities at one point in the web will have at another. This last claim relates back to the holistic ontology. Existence itself is seen in relational terms, ‘things’ in the world do not exist as discrete entities, but as ‘intrinsic relations’, ‘such that the relations belong to the definitions or basic constitutions of A and B so that without the relation, A and B are no longer the same things’.76 In similar vein, Eckersley states that ecocentrism is ‘based on an ecologically informed philosophy of internal relations, according to which all organisms are not simply interrelated

74

For an absorbing account of the history of the scientific discipline, see Worster, 1994 .

75

Devall, 1988 : 155; also Eckersley, 1989a : 115. Devall is explicitly following Aldo Leopold here. Dryzek also argues that complexity is the most striking feature of ecological problems, but holds that accepting this does not require attachment to a metaphysical holism–this is surely correct (1987: 123–4). Note also that explicitly anthropocentric authors such as Barry (1999: 219) also stress the implications of epistemological uncertainty in society–environment relations. This is not a purely ecocentric point.

76

Naess goes on ‘The total field model dissolves not only the man-in-environment concept, but every compact thing-in-milieu concept–except when talking at a superficial or preliminary level of communication.’ (1989b : 28).

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with their environment but also constituted by those very environmental interrelationships’.77 Another point to make about holism is that there are surely degrees of it as an understanding of the nature of being. Thus the late Richard Sylvan78 takes deep ecologists to task for cleaving to an unnecessarily strong form of holism which conflates interrelatedness with identification. Thus ‘a is related to b’ becomes ‘a is identical to b’ when ‘the very notion that the world is composed of discrete, compact, separate “things” is dissolved’.79 Naess and Fox both argue that deep ecologists only use ‘thing-in-environment’ terminology (i.e. the idea of discrete, separate entities) when communicating at a ‘superficial’ level. Yet we are, according to Sylvan, trapped at this level permanently because there can be no communication without selection and abstraction. Sylvan asserts that holism becomes ‘extreme’ when notions of holistic interrelatedness slip into accounts of holistic identity— ‘whence total connection becomes total identity’.80 By contrast, the ‘moderate’ holism which Sylvan claims is sufficient to counter mechanistic modellings of the world focuses upon the ways in which discrete entities are related as parts of a larger whole. The contrast he is seeking to draw is between a model of identity and one of interrelations. If deep ecologists do indeed go beyond such a ‘moderate’ holism, this criticism is surely justified. I will, however, later suggest that Sylvan (along with Bookchin) exaggerates the homogeneity of ecocentric holism. The above ideas relate closely to each other in the construction of the ‘ecological worldview’. Humanity is just one part of an infinitely complex network, (complexity) ‘just one strand in the web of life’.81 This web of life, the biosphere, forms a whole that cannot be fully comprehended, understood, or communicated merely in terms of any of its constituent parts (holism). No entity is more than one element of this larger whole, no entity, that is, is ontologically divorced from this whole. From these ontological claims, the following value claims are frequently claimed to derive.82 If value exists it resides in the whole, and therefore in all of its parts, not just one. No element of this whole, therefore, (including humanity) can be valuable without all parts being valuable. Furthermore

77

1992: 49. Emphasis in original.

78

1985b : 10–11. (Formerly Richard Routley).

79

Fox, 1984a : 194.

80

Sylvan, 1985b : 10.

81

Fox, 1984a : 194. This kind of thinking is reflected in more poplar literature as well, see for example Jonathon Porritt's claim that we require an ontological assumption of oneness or wholeness (2000: 29, 127).

82

Whether such value claims really do derive from the ontology or merely accompany them is a moot point. It is not logically impossible to hold that all things are interconnected parts of a great whole, and that and yet none have value (perhaps because the whole lacks value).

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if we are elements of a larger whole upon which we are ourselves dependent, then damage done to any aspect of the whole is damage done to us, and so action to prevent this damage constitutes a form of self-defence. Thus Naess writes that ‘We must begin to see what we do to ourselves when we say “only change external nature”. ’83 The above constitutes merely a brief account of ecocentric metaphysics, about which a great deal more could be said. We have seen enough, however, to comprehend the view of nature, and humanity's relationship to it, at work in this particular radical ecological discourse. Once we see the world through the correct ecological metaphysical spectacles, we can see that it is infinitely complex and interrelational. Within this account of relational metaphysics, humanity is ‘Not a thing in environment, but a juncture in a relational system without determinate boundaries in time and space.’84 In this we are the same as all other beings, the fundament of existence is the encompassing relational field, and within this there are junctures of relations that come together to form entities of one sort or another, none of them any more than temporary, including human entities. We are all ‘knots in a biospheric net’, or ‘strands in the web of life’; whatever your metaphor, we are not, in any crucial, value-imparting respect, different from other forms of life. Now whether this is good, bad, or simply unnecessary metaphysics, it is claimed that it is from this that any ecocentric ethic is derived, from which in turn humanity is decentred.85 Is this underlying ontological philosophy of ecocentrism, with its associated axiology, a cogent one? We will see that both Murray Bookchin and Richard Sylvan have attacked it for being ‘extreme’ in its holism and thus failing to draw necessary distinctions between discrete entities. The consequences of this are held to be that it renders ecocentrism obscure as a potential guide to human action,86 and that if it appears to suggest any particular human behaviour it is an extreme passivity on the part of humankind. Whilst I will suggest that these criticisms are overstated, and based upon a misreading of ecocentric texts, there are nonetheless problems with the ecocentric picture delineated above. In particular, (and this is an argument which I will pursue in detail in the conclusion) the connections drawn between ontology and axiology are problematic. Whilst there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the move from an ‘is’

83

Naess, 1989b : 165.

84

Ibid. 79.

85

This does not entail that which deep ecologists often claim, that ontology is prior to ethics in a philosophical sense. We have to ask, as Dobson reminds us, ‘where does the metaphysics come from?’ It is, of course often chosen with respect to desired ethical ends. See Dobson, 1990 : 62.

86

On this see Lynch and Wells, 1998 .

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statement about the state of the world to an ‘ought’ statement about ethics, if that move is supported by a plausible theory which explains why a particular state of the world should be valued, ecocentrics overestimate the role that ontology has to play in determining value.

Social Ecology and the Ontological Divide The above section has given us a broad sketch of the ecocentric worldview. At the risk of leaping ahead of the argument I want in this section to introduce an alternative (indeed oppositional) ontology which itself claims to also be ‘ecological’. A clear understanding, at this point, of the two rival ontologies will set the ground for Chapters 2 and 3. This alternative understanding of the implications of ecology for ontology grounds a theory that will be considered at length in Chapter 3. As we have seen above, the social ecologist Murray Bookchin has argued that there is a firm ontological divide between humanity and non-human nature, and that this is based in human abilities to reason, and to symbolize and spiritualize the surrounding world.87 Furthermore he does not see this as being a merely academic or philosophical disagreement, instead he suggests that ecocentric arguments are either themselves inherently misanthropic, or even where they may not be, they supply the foundations for anti-humanistic arguments that could have very unwelcome political consequences. If this outcome is to be avoided we have to cleave to the idea that humanity is unique within nature in such a way as to make us uniquely valuable in comparison with non-human nature.88 He suggests that ‘human beings are a result of the long evolutionary history of the natural world. In fact, they are a very special result of that history. They are possessed of abilities no other life forms have equalled in kind.’89 This uniqueness is one of kind, not just of degree, and ‘anti-humanists who view human beings as

87

Joel Kovel supports this general orientation: ‘we are at one time part of nature, fully participating in natural processes; and at the same time we are radically different from nature, ontologically destined by a dialectic between attachment and separation to define ourselves in a signified field which by its very “nature” negates nature’ (1993: 410–11).

88

It is precisely this question of the attribution of import that is crucial here. No deep ecologist that I have read has argued that humanity is not unique in some way, it is rather that these unique properties do not ground an ontological separation, and that no particularly important value is attached to these differences.

89

Bookchin, 1995b : 18.

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merely another animal are making fools of themselves—and have a narrowly reductionist image of the natural world as well’.90 Despite certain rhetorical flourishes in these and similar arguments from Bookchin, we can discern a serious underlying argument, which he has sustained for a number of years. This takes the form of an evolutionary ethics, which I would maintain (despite his own denials) is teleological in a particular sense. Bookchin himself claims to be steering, with his ‘dialectic of nature’, a ‘middle course’ between a strictly nominalist account of evolution, and a teleological account. He certainly rejects any view of evolution as a process of random change, but his dismissal of teleology is only partial. It is a denial of teleology with a ‘mystical dimension’, such as would hold that humankind was inexorably bound to emerge as the high point of evolution from the moment the first primeval life appeared on earth. Instead he prefers to argue in terms of the unfolding of latently present potentialities. This can still be seen as a form of teleological argument as it assumes that the potentiality will become manifest under ‘normal’, or ‘most’ circumstances. Was the emergence of humans, he asks, mere accident, or is it the fulfilment of a potentiality? Certainly, because such bipedal hominids did appear after all, they did not emerge from smoke. Their development toward bipedalism built on earlier anatomical changes that had taken place long before primates descended from tree branches onto the ground. What we call human patently evolved from within an immensely important tendency in biological evolution.91 Indeed so important is this evolutionary tendency held to be that it gave rise to the one being in the world which has ‘transcended’ its own animality, i.e. humanity. ‘Having developed within first nature and as part of its very evolution as an animal, humanity evolved further to produce a second or higher nature.’92 The ‘background conditions’ assumed here by Bookchin are the workings of natural selection. This works in favour of animal species with certain attributes, and providing that natural selection continues to work in the same way, then it will consistently favour the species that proves itself to be most ecologically adaptable and versatile. The highly adaptive brain power of humanity was destined, under these ‘normal circumstances’,

90

Ibid.

91

Ibid. 20. An alternative account of evolution may see it as purely probabilistic, dispensing with any notion of a ‘natural’ realization of a potential. On this see Michael (2001 ).

92

Bookchin, 1995b : 21.

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to come to transcend the muscle and other powers of the non-human world. By my understanding of this argument, under the workings of natural selection—the ‘normal conditions’—a humanity that ‘transcended its own animality’ was certain to emerge. This, however, is not to evoke a theistic hand, and had conditions ceased to be ‘normal’, then humankind may never have emerged, the ‘potential’ for its emergence remaining unfulfilled. We might say in the same way that a foetus has the potential to become an adult human being with all the corresponding capabilities, and will under most conditions, but this cannot, however, be considered a guaranteed outcome at the foetal stage.93 This is important as Bookchin's humanist ecological arguments have long been underpinned by an account of evolutionary ethics, and thus we have to understand on just what grounds Bookchin decontests the evolutionary process as morally considerable. Evolution, for Bookchin, is a directional process. The direction in which evolution tends is towards greater diversity and complexity. The account of value in this theory consists in the following. As evolution is a process that moves toward greater diversity and complexity, it can be seen that those organisms which are most complex, and those ecosystems which are most diverse and complex, constitute the result of that evolutionary process to the fullest extent. These complex organisms possess the most highly developed capacities and abilities, and these embody the extensive evolutionary process; they are a unique achievement of that process and so should be valued. Clark is explicit here, seeing the ‘course of planetary evolution as a movement toward increasing complexity and diversity and the progressive emergence of value’.94 It is precisely in this capacity as the ‘pinnacle’ of evolution, as ‘nature rendered self-conscious’, that humanity, for Bookchin, has its unique value. Furthermore the differences between ourselves and the rest of nature are not merely of degree, they are of kind. It is not merely that we have unique capabilities that embody the evolutionary process and therefore we ought to be valued. Rather ‘value’ as a concept would not even exist without humanity's special abilities to reason etc., nor would ‘conservation’, ‘ecocentrism’, or any other intellectual construct. These exist because we have transcended the mere animality of our first nature. Whilst Bookchin seeks to maintain a naturalistic basis in his account of the unique value of

93

Bookchin himself uses this metaphor in ‘Recovering Evolution’. See also G. A. Cohen's account of the ‘three grades of potentiality’ in Hegelian dialectical argument, 1978: 12–15.

94

Clark, 1997 : 10.

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humanity, the divide between us and the rest of nature that has emerged with evolution is considered fundamental on this account. [I]t is a crucial fact that they alone know ,—indeed can know—that there is a phenomenon called evolution; they alone know that death is a reality; they alone can even formulate such notions as self-realization, biocentric equality, and a ‘self-in-Self ’; they alone can generalize about their existence—past, present, and future—and produce complex technologies, and cities, communicate in a complex syllabic form, ‘and so on!’95 It is clear that Bookchin sees this attribution of a qualitatively unique humanity as giving his own ecological theory the safeguard he is seeking against the possible sacrifice of immediate and profound human interests for the sake of the good of the larger, ‘more fundamental’ entity–the ecosphere, or biosphere, or Gaia—that can be a feature of ecocentric ethics.96 It is precisely on this unique mode of existence that Bookchin's value claims about humanity are based. The question that now arises for us is whether Bookchin and other humanist ecologists are right to consider ecocentrism inherently, contingently, or just potentially, misanthropic. We have seen that ecocentrists deny any ontological divide that could ground a value claim on behalf of humanity of the sort Bookchin makes, and that this belief in human/nonhuman unity is grounded in certain ontological assumptions about the relational nature of reality. What then are the potential political implications for humanity that might result from the holding of such philosophical beliefs? One possibly fruitful way to elucidate this question will be to analyse what ideas ecocentrists have actually derived about humanity from their theories about the nature of reality. This is to ask what conception of human nature, interests, and needs ecocentrics cleave to, as well as how well and in what way these are related to their beliefs about the nature of reality and what they say about the principles of human flourishing within the ecocentric picture. A systematic analysis of ecocentric accounts of human nature and interests, appears to me to constitute an essential element in coming to understand the possible implications of ecocentrism. Thus in the next chapter we will turn to the ecocentric account of human interests, needs, and motivations. First, however, we need to undertake a little more groundwork with respect to the implications of an ecocentric ontology. Thus in the next section we examine an important argument derived directly from the

95

Bookchin, 1995b: 101–2. Emphases in original.

96

‘[T]he planet is more than us, more fundamental and basic than our own species in isolation’ (Rothenberg, Introduction to Naess, 1989b : 12).

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thesis of a unity of human and nature—that, if nature is subject to the ‘natural laws’ described by scientific ecology, then so are human beings. From this naturalistic account of humanity is derived an argument that ‘ecological laws’ should constitute an important element in our moral dictums.

Human Subjection to Natural Laws Does the contention that humanity and nature form, collectively, a single unity entail that, for the ecocentrics who make this case, the ecological laws that govern natural processes should also govern human behaviour? The answer to this question will depend upon the account we are given of how this ‘unity’ operates, and how the parts within it, the ‘strands in the web of life’, are held to interact. As we shall see, there are generally claimed to be limits that are operative upon human behaviour assuming that the long term survival of humanity and other ‘higher’ life forms is accepted as a normative end, and this is considered to be of particular relevance to the question of human population levels; thus making it a politically salient consideration. We see here how the ecocentric belief in the ontological human/nature unity feeds into prudential, instrumental arguments for preservationism. One author with a strong belief in the necessity of using ecological laws as a guide to moral thinking is Edward Goldsmith,97 and the key desideratum in his account is ‘biospheric stability’. For him ecology informs us that natural systems of the biosphere are non-plastic, that is to say that the aim of biospheric stability98 is not compatible with certain forms of behaviour if these are indulged for any length of time.

97

Goldsmith is not an entirely unproblematic character to utilize as a representative voice of ecocentrism. In particular, there is a discernible dichotomy between ‘conservative’ and ‘progressive’ ecocentrists. In the conservative camp I would certainly include Goldsmith, and perhaps James Lovelock. In the self-declared ‘progressive’ camp, Robyn Eckersley, Warwick Fox, Carolyn Merchant, and Andrew McLaughlin. However, although there are clear differences at the level of policy prescription and in terms of which social institutions are valued or disvalued by these different authors, I would contend that at the level of abstraction we are herein considering, as well as in the specific project of justifying nature preservation, the commonalities between these different thinkers outweigh any contrasts. Furthermore, Naess, for one, has lent support to Goldsmith's general stance (Naess, 1989a ).

98

This concept of ‘biospheric stability’ is not explicitly defined by Goldsmith, I take it to mean something like the ability of the natural systems of the biosphere to maintain life on the planet in its present form and variety, or something close to it. (The final clause being necessary as I assume it is not intended to imply that every single species will necessarily exist over long periods of time.)

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The latter clause is important in that ecological laws are not considered by Goldsmith to be unbreakable, they can be violated in the short-term, but that violation will carry with it the ecological cost of a contribution toward the destabilization of the biosphere ‘both directly at a specific level of organization and indirectly at other levels in the Gaian hierarchy including that of the Biosphere itself ’.99 Thus violation of these laws will have repercussions not only at the level of organism but also at other levels of the ‘Gaian hierarchy’—the species and the biosphere itself. This belief is consistent with a relational view of reality, in which all entities within the unity are connected, however circuitous the connecting route. Goldsmith is explicit regarding his belief in the existence of, and applicability of, natural laws with regard to human behaviour. Is he, however, idiosyncratic in this? I do not believe so, although with other ecocentric theorists the role or otherwise of putative ‘laws of nature’ often only emerges implicitly in the discussion of other topics, in particular that of the problem of human population levels—an issue that Robyn Eckersley describes (along with wilderness preservation) as a ‘litmus test’ of the ecocentric approach. For his part Arne Naess stresses epistemological limits—humanity's ignorance regarding the long-term ecological consequences of its actions. ‘Only rarely can scientists predict with any certainty the effect of a new chemical on even a single small ecosystem.’100 There are, however, certain positive knowledge claims against which our disturbances of ecosystems are assessed. ‘The ecosystems in which we intervene are generally in a particular state of balance which there are grounds to assume to be of more service to mankind than states of disturbance and their resultant unpredictable and far reaching changes.’101 This idea of natural balance we can take as an equivalent to Goldsmith's ‘stability’. If this natural balance is ‘disturbed’ changes are triggered which, whilst being ‘unpredictable’, will nonetheless be ‘far-reaching’ and ‘detrimental for most or all forms of life’.102 We can reconstruct these arguments as follows: 1. The biosphere is a unity that contains interrelated parts. Premise. 2. This unity remains in a stable condition if the behaviour of the parts that constitute it remains within certain unspecified boundaries.103 Premise. 3. Humanity is one of the parts of this unity. Premise.

99

Goldsmith, 1992 : 8. Goldsmith's use of the language of Gaia is of course no accident.

100

Naess, 1989b : 26.

101

Ibid. 27.

102

Ibid.

103

Is ‘homeotelic’ in Goldsmith's parlance.

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4. Humanity benefits from biospheric stability. Premise. 5. Therefore, human behaviour should remain within homeotelic limits. Furthermore, given that, according to Naess and other ecological writers, we actually know very little with regard to the ecological consequences of human actions, a precautionary assumption against large scale environmental changes should operate. Do we find the same assumption that humanity is subject to natural laws in the writings of other ecocentric theorists? Not always explicitly; however, as stated above, the question of human population is an area where these arguments are particularly apposite, such that it may well be that certain underlying assumptions about the status of humanity and natural laws emerge in ecocentric accounts of this issue. Another area where humanity is often taken to be violating ecological laws is that of pollution, such as carbon emissions. Take two passages which, I would argue, constitute reasonably typical accounts of the fears that green writers and activists have expressed regarding the possible ecological effects of our current population levels and lifestyles. [E]nvironmental impact is a function not only of technology and affluence (i.e. level of consumption) but also absolute human numbers. Accordingly pollution, habitat destruction, and species extinction would continue apace as more intensive agriculture and industry expanded to meets [sic] the needs of an expanding population. This is why we cannot afford simply to await the ‘demographic transition’.104 People knowledgeable about ecology, geology and the chemistry of the earth's atmosphere are beginning to wonder out loud how much further this civilization can go before permanently crippling the earth's ability to sustain life. If recent predictions about the course of global warming due to the greenhouse effect are even close to accurate, the earth's climatic zones will be shifting many times faster than even the most resilient, healthy ecosystems are able to respond.105 Underpinning both passages we find implicit the same argument that Naess and Goldsmith make more explicitly, namely that humankind is subject to ‘ecological’ natural laws. Without this assumption the arguments do not appear to have any purchase with regard to achieving their desired effect, which is to get humans to rethink their patterns of behaviour. Eckersley's account calls upon the standard I = P.A.T formula used by population writers and some resource economists in order to demonstrate the relevant factors involved in environmental degradation. This is not just a question of population levels (P), nor merely of affluence (A) or

104

Eckersley, 1992 : 159.

105

Tokar, 1987 : 61.

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technology (T), but rather environmental impact (I) results from a combination of all three factors.106 The latter part of the quote clearly indicates a belief that an over-expansion of human numbers will bring in its wake a number of ecological problems as a direct result. Clearly here humanity is seen as subject to natural, ecological law in precisely the way Murray Bookchin finds objectionable. If human beings breed beyond the carrying capacity of the ecosystemic environment, then (potentially massive) negative ecological consequences, for humans and/or other species, will follow.107 The second quote, from Brian Tokar, whilst focusing more upon the problem of pollution, displays the same argumentative structure. Human activities (‘civilization’) are clearly held to be in breach of the sort of ‘Gaian laws’ adumbrated by Goldsmith. If we do not desist in our transgression of these laws, then our ecosystemic life-support systems will be taken to breaking point. Again, this is fairly standard green fare and might be thought to amount to no more than a reiteration of rather obvious points; who, bar someone of religious persuasion, would want to argue that humanity is not a ‘natural being’, and so subject to ‘natural laws’? Well, a number of economists have argued that humankind's ability for invention and substitution entails that ‘Malthusian doctrines’108 regarding human population levels have no purchase, although we will not be considering their arguments here as we are operating within, rather than externally to, the canon of political ecology.109 Other writers, however, whilst stressing their own ecological credentials have been vociferously opposed to the argument that simple human numbers represent a significant variable in the equation of environmental destruction. These have generally been writers whose own preoccupations have been with the perceived economic and social causes of environmental degradation, in particular the effects of

106

This, as far as it goes, is fine, and is certainly an improvement upon the sort of monocausal explanations that have at times been offered. The problem, from an empirical point of view, is of course to calculate the relative contribution of each of these factors, both in different locations at different times, and even more problematically with respect to global developments. It is precisely the question of the weighting of these different factors that seems to separate ‘populationists’ such as Hardin or the Ehrlichs, from others such as eco-socialists who claim that population per se is not an important factor.

107

See Bookchin quote on p. 31 above.

108

We should note that unlike e.g. Garrett Hardin, who champions Malthus, ecocentrists such as Eckersley consider themselves anti-Malthusian because, although they accept the idea that raw human population levels are environmentally significant, they reject Malthusian social prescriptions.

109

A good example, however, of this sort of literature is J. Simon and H. Kahn, The Resourceful Earth .

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global inequalities of wealth and the capitalist economic system. The human being, they stress, is a uniquely cultural, as well as natural, creature, and the question of how we live on the Earth is significantly more important than the question of how many live upon it.110 We will come to an examination of these texts in subsequent chapters, but for the moment I want to concentrate on a further, and far more problematic question that arises on the ecocentric account. If humankind is held to be subject to natural laws imposed by the workings of the biospheric unity of which it is a part, should humanity's own moral and legal codes of practice embody the requirement to obey ‘Gaian’ laws–and if so, to what extent?111 If they should, what is this held to entail for the moral laws of humanity? It is precisely in opposition to the prospect of a possible carry over from the realm of ‘natural law’ to the realm of ‘moral law’ that Bookchin, for one, is at his most trenchant.

Ecological Laws as Moral Laws Working within the constraints of nature, the ecologist could apply the knowledge derived from studying nature's economy to restore the health and survival prospects of the diseased social organism known as human society. The task of the biologist was to discover nature's moral prescriptions and thereby serve as savior of society.112 Again, for the most explicit treatment of this subject we can turn to Edward Goldsmith and his arguments that our moral laws should reflect Gaian law. For vernacular man, Goldsmith tells us, ‘the laws of nature were essentially moral laws’.113 Two questions arise here. First, what exactly does it mean for natural laws to be moral laws? We may well believe that the second law of thermodynamics is a natural law, but is that supposed to translate into our moral laws, and if so, how? Second, if this translation from the natural to the moral can be undertaken, what form would this

110

E.g. David Pepper, 1993b , Murray Bookchin, 1995b .

111

Goldsmith often talks of ‘Gaian laws’. This terms comes from James Lovelock's ‘Gaia hypothesis’–a thesis that the earth can be plausibly seen as a self-regulating organism—which is discussed below. The idea of Gaian ‘laws’ refer to the biological processes taken by Goldsmith to be necessary for the earth to continue this selfregulating function in a manner appropriate for the maintenance of human life. Human interference in these processes will, on this argument, lead to conditions on Earth hostile to human life.

112

Mitman, 1992 : 7.

113

1992: 83.

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moral code based upon natural constraints take? Goldsmith does not give us a systematic account of a moral code based upon natural (ecological) laws, but it will be worth seeing what we can piece together from what he does say. As an example of a vernacular society whose moral laws were based upon their interpretation of natural law, Goldsmith points to ancient Greece. Moira (fate) and Dike (Justice, law, morality) are held to be hardly distinguishable in Greek ethical discourse. ‘As F. M. Cornford notes “the ordinance of fate is not a blind and senseless barrier of impossibility: it is a moral decree, a boundary of right and wrong”. ’114 The order of nature was a moral order. By contrast, the ethical systems of moral philosophers of our own day ‘operate in a complete void’. An emotivist115 conception of morality is held to best fit the ‘paradigm of modern science’ and such attitudes are in turn held to throw light upon the metaphysical assumptions that underlie scientific beliefs. This does not entail that all contemporary moral philosophy is held to be emotivist. Goldsmith does, however, perceive a strong connection between the content of current scientific beliefs and the background assumptions of contemporary western moral theory.116 Goldsmith picks out two particular background assumptions of modern moral theory in this regard. First, the ‘cardinal tenet of modernist ethics is that morality begins with modern man and that one cannot talk of primitive man, or other forms of life as being moral’.117 Second, he points to the individualism of contemporary moral discourse. Of these two assumptions, which I would accept as being widespread background assumptions of contemporary western moral discourse, the first is perhaps the more fundamental, though Goldsmith's account of it is only partially correct. That moral behaviour is a uniquely human attribute is indeed a pervasive belief, that ‘primitive man's’ behaviour is excluded from the realm of behaviour we normally think of as being moral or otherwise is a more problematic argument. Contemporary ethicists may be inclined to argue that ‘primitive’ societies merely have a different morality

114

Goldsmith, 1996 : 101.

115

By ‘emotivist’, Goldsmith means the rejection of moral realism, i.e. the belief that moral statements can be either true or false. 1996: 102.

116

As ‘best fit’ clearly does not necessarily entail ‘only possible fit’. The general contention that scientific beliefs as to the nature of reality underpin moral ones is in accord with the ecocentric proposition that metaphysics underpins morality.

117

Goldsmith, 1992 : 84. It is not entirely clear whether Goldsmith is discussing moral considerability or moral agency here, if ‘being moral’ means having a morally informed existence it would presumably be the latter, although I will consider both.

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to western society, one upon which we cannot validly pass judgement without subjecting the ‘other’ to the terms of our own ‘totalizing discourse’. This question is, however, something of an aside; the fundamental difference that Goldsmith seeks to draw between his own and other theorists' accounts of moral considerability is in terms of the underpinning assumptions about attributions of moral considerability. The two fundamental factors of modernist morality (on Goldsmith's account) are humanism and individualism, and these are, he says, derived from a particular scientific worldview that sees humans as unique in nature and which posits discrete entities in a (separate) environment. As an account of the underpinnings of contemporary moral philosophy, Goldsmith may indeed be right in positing its foundational structure as ‘derived’ in some way from contemporary science. If we consider, for example, contemporary liberal political philosophy—which constitutes a powerful current in the modern western discourse—and ask ourselves about its foundational assumptions, we find that one of the most fundamental intuitive assumptions is precisely that there is something uniquely important about being a fully developed (or having the potential to become a fully developed) human being. What we get from authors such as John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, and other mainstream Anglo-American political philosophers is an account of moral personality that does indeed posit a fundamental divide between human and other forms of life, a divide ‘depending on consciousness, purpose, knowledge and all other supposed unique endowments of modern man’.118 Thus Rawls, to take one example, when discussing the basis of his argument for equality, tells us that I now turn to the basis of equality, the features of human beings in virtue of which they are to be treated in accordance with the principles of justice. Our conduct toward animals is not regulated by these principles, or so it is generally believed.119 Rawls is not, in the subsequent passage, in the business of challenging these ‘general beliefs.’ ‘Moral persons’ have two distinguishing characteristics: first they are capable of having (and are assumed to have) a conception of their good (as expressed by a rational plan of life); and second they are capable of having (and are assumed to acquire) a sense of justice, a normally effective desire to apply and to act upon the principles of justice, at least to a certain minimum degree. We use the characterization of the persons in the original position to single out the kind of beings to whom the principles chosen apply.120

118

Goldsmith, 1992 : 85.

119

Rawls, 1972 : 504.

120

Ibid. 505.

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We need to be careful here first to bear in mind the distinction between possessing the status of a moral agent and a moral client, and second to remember also that there are other moral criteria apart from justice—benevolence for example, by which treatment of non-human entities may be subsumed in an extended Rawlsian schema (although we should also bear in mind that in this regard justice has moral priority for Rawls). It is one thing to argue that humanity is the only type of being to display moral agency, quite another to hold that humanity is the only type of being worthy of moral treatment. Nonetheless, as we can see in the first passage Rawls is discussing ‘treatment’ in accordance with principles of justice—this clearly does therefore relate to moral considerability (under terms of justice), not moral agency; again in the second section he is discussing the ‘kind of beings to which these principles apply’—considerability again. In fact these passages contain a number of the very features Goldsmith is objecting to. Clearly for all intents and purposes only human beings are covered by this account of (justice-based) moral clienthood as, although any living creature may well have a good of its own, only human beings can conceptualize their good, or have a ‘rational plan of life’, and certainly only humans can be expected to develop a sense of justice. Second, this account is precisely of moral persons, suggesting, at least, the sort of individualism of which Goldsmith is also sceptical. It is precisely as individuals, as largely self-sufficient moral entities that human beings are considered important in this moral discourse, rather than in their roles as parts of larger entities, upon which ecocentrics focus. Goldsmith's critique of such criteria of moral considerability is connected to his ‘ecological’, relational metaphysics.121 We are all, remember, interrelated parts of a larger (internally diverse) unity. He tends to base his own account of morality on the science of the Chicago School of ecology, which reached its peak in the 1940s. The followers of this school were impressed by the interrelationships, co-operation, and symbiosis in nature, rather than the competition and predation, and looked to use symbiosis to provide a naturalist underpinning to morality—‘If nature is found to be a world of interdependence then man is obliged to consider that characteristic a moral dictum.’122 Such interdependencies are held to extend, crucially, beyond the human species, so that ‘Human welfare

121

He would, I am sure, insist it is ‘derived from’ his metaphysics. The problem with this claim is that thinkers such as he who are highly reflexive about their ontological assumptions do not get these assumptions from nowhere.

122

Gerard, in Goldsmith, 1992 : 87. For an account of the history and beliefs of this school see Mitman, 1992 .

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depends on extending the circle of cooperative, communal relatedness to encompass all beings.’123 The most fundamental aspect of humanity, at the risk of repetition, is that we are a part of a larger unity, upon which we in turn are dependent for our continued existence. Thus this entity and parts thereof are morally considerable, therefore humanist ethics are unacceptable, our ethical frameworks have to include the non-human and inscribe within them ecological tenets. We might distinguish the value the biosphere has for us by suggesting that, as our very existence is reliant upon its proper functioning, it has ‘intrinsic value for us’, as opposed to mere instrumental value. It is not simply an instrument that allows our lives to go better, its good order is rather the sine qua non of human existence. However, the use of the notion of intrinsic value in this sense serves to create as much confusion as clarity, as it inevitably raises notions of ‘intrinsic value’ that propose that entities have value completely independently of any services they might render to humankind. Thus I suggest that a useful categorization here would be between existential value on the one hand, and instrumental value on the other. Both concepts refer to value that entities have for us, as human beings, but the former indicates a reliance on our part upon this entity for our very existence as human beings, the other refers to those things which enable this existence to be more enriched, fulfilling, or suchlike. Thus food, per se, would have existential value for me, whilst access to gourmet food would have instrumental value, in that it renders the life I am able to lead through having access to food per se that much more pleasurable.124 In Edward Goldsmith's ecological philosophy the biosphere has this existential value. Furthermore, to return to the main subject matter of this section, we can now draw the connection between the belief that humanity is subjected to biospherically imposed long-run limitations on its behaviour and moral law. Authors such as Goldsmith are not merely claiming that there are amoral constraints, imposed by nature, on human activities, which in turn serve to impose constraints upon the extent to which desirable moral outcomes in human societies can be achieved. Somebody, by contrast, who cleaved to (say) a Rawlsian conception of justice may well take the view

123

Goldsmith, 1992 : 86–7.

124

I do not want to suggest that this suggested division ‘solves’ any substantive questions as to the nature of value, or of values in nature. I merely suggest that it is useful in this particular respect. What entities have either existential or instrumental value will of course depend further upon background theories. The early Marx would not, I would suggest, have accepted that mere access to adequate supplies of food to keep one alive would have even existential value in my sense, as this access would not allow one to enjoy food in the distinct species-being of the human.

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that although social justice is still achievable, it will, because of ecological constraints, operate at a lower level of material affluence than originally hoped. From this perspective, ecological considerations are merely human-prudential constraints that may undermine, to some degree, theories of justice that fail to take into account ‘sustainability’. The stronger claim that Goldsmith is making is that humanist morality is foundationally unsound. Thus rather than a knowledge of ecological principles constraining moral theories in some way, it is rather that a knowledge of ecology, correctly used, will shape the very structure of moral theory, as it entails that non-human entities are morally considerable.125 Although the grounds for this considerability are here still human-prudential (healthy ecological processes constitute the basis of our continued existence) the ecological knowledge upon which this belief is based forms the starting point of moral theory, rather than serving to mitigate non-ecological morality. Because of its crucial role in enabling human existence, contributing to biospheric stability becomes the keystone of ecocentric ethics in this form. There exists a new moral focus, at the heart of which lies the ‘biosphere’, ‘Gaia’, or ‘the planet earth’, but this still bears a connection to human welfare. Thus for example the correct moral path for Goldsmith is ‘the Way, which endless generations of vernacular man have taken to be moral, in that it serves to maintain the integrity and stability of the world of living things’.126 This idea is also expressed in Goldsmith's approving account of Bantu philosophy: ‘Moral behaviour for the Bantu is behaviour that serves to maintain the order of the Cosmos and hence that maximizes human welfare. Immoral behaviour is that which reduces its order, thereby threatening human welfare . . . ’127 The problems with this Goldsmith-type argument for some other ecocentrists are clear. If the initial foundation for developing this ethic is that it reflects the value of that which grounds human existence, then it is this, and not any intrinsic values in nature, that remains at the centre of any resulting ethical system. If the well-functioning biosphere has value in this regard, it is clearly an existential value in relation to humanity—which grants the biosphere no ethical considerability in itself, but merely insofar as it continues to serve this basic human interest. The fact remains that were we to find a way of living with a ‘damaged’ biosphere there is nothing on this account to tell us that inflicting such damage would be a moral wrong. The empirical unlikelihood of this may take us in practical terms a

125

Although in exactly what way they are held to be considerable varies from author to author. There is a clear difference between, say, an ‘animal rights’ account of this, and a ‘Gaian’ account.

126

Goldsmith, 1996 : 105–6.

127

In Goldsmith, 1995 : 180.

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large part of the way in which ecocentrics seek to travel, but it does not remove the contingencies about which ecocentric writers tend to be concerned. However, any step in the argument that takes us from ‘the biosphere is existentially useful to humanity’, to ‘the biosphere has entirely nonderivative intrinsic value’ is clearly untenable without further argumentative work. What Goldsmith's argument does demonstrate is that ecocentrists, whilst disputing the idea of an ontological divide between human and non-human nature, can nonetheless cast their arguments in very straightforwardly human-interest and thus quasi-anthropocentric terms. I will go on to argue that this reflects the fact that at a deeper level the idea of an entrenched ecocentric–humanist divide in environmental political philosophy is seriously flawed.

Autopoiesis Before we consider further problems with this idea of ecologically inspired moral law, we should again ask ourselves whether Goldsmith, upon whom I have drawn extensively, is idiosyncratic in this regard. We shall see that the reasoning behind Goldsmith's account of ecocentric moral law is also reflected in the thinking of the other theorists we are herein considering, although concern about the potential ‘privileging’ of supraorganismic entities such as the biosphere or ecosystem has led to a revision of ecocentric morality away from a ‘biospheric’ ethic. Furthermore in so doing ecocentric morality is moved away from a reliance upon a human-existential basis. One of the most famous examples of an ecocentric ethic is Aldo Leopold's ‘Land Ethic’. This runs as follows, ‘A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it does otherwise.’128 Here we have, potentially, a clear

128

Leopold, here quoted in Eckersley, 1992 : 61. Also in Fox, 1995 : 176. Referred to in McLaughlin, 1993 : 157. Leopold's ethic has been reconstructed in a less subjective mode by James Heffernan: ‘A thing is right when it tends to preserve the characteristic diversity and stability of an ecosystem (or the biosphere). It is wrong when it tends otherwise.’ (1982). See also Barry's (1999: 124–6) more contextual account of Leopold's ethic, which shows that Leopold placed said ethic within economic constraints. That this has commonly been ignored in environmental ethics once again shows the importance of the consumption of ideas as against authorial intentionality.

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collection of criteria by which to judge the rightness and wrongness of human actions, products, and attitudes. Furthermore these criteria are far removed from ‘conventional’ humanist moral frameworks in that the referent for the distinction being made between rightness and wrongness is a supra-human entity—the ‘biotic community’—his collective term for all the flora and fauna within a particular ecosystem. The Land Ethic is frequently cited in ecocentric literature, and we can illuminate the moral framework of contemporary ecocentric thinkers by examining their reaction to it. Whatever Leopold's precise meaning, the ‘biotic community’ is clearly an aggregate entity in that it is a collection of individual organisms, and thus this ethical system clearly does not operate at the level of ascribing ultimate value to human, or any other, individual being. How morally acceptable is the Land Ethic held to be when it is placed under scrutiny by contemporary ecocentrics? Robyn Eckersley does not feel able to accept it as its stands. She recognizes the problem that individual organisms may, by the Land Ethic, come to appear expendable on behalf of a ‘higher’ entity—the ‘biotic community’. She instead (following Fox) opts for an ‘autopoietic’ ethics as one ‘valid expression’ of ecocentrism.129 This ethic ‘recognizes the value of all process-structures’ that ‘continuously strive to produce and sustain their own organizational activity and structure’,130 thus conferring value at all levels of existence, the individual, the ecosystem, the ecosphere. Prima facie, then, we have here an ‘ethical system’ which allows as morally considerable all self-supporting entities, and thus a system intended to incorporate individual living organisms as intrinsically valuable. Nonetheless, assuming both ecosystems and the ecosphere are held, ontologically, to also exist as ‘self-maintaining organisms’, these are also rendered ‘morally considerable’ by this theory. If so, does this create internal tensions to the idea of ‘autopoietic ethics’? Do we have any grounds, in the case of a conflict of apparent interests, to prioritize the good of a self-maintaining entity operating at one level over that operating at a different level? We need to make a closer examination of this putative ethical system if we are to hope to find an answer. The defining aspect of autopoiesis in terms of moral considerability, i.e. what renders self-maintaining entities morally considerable, is that having the quality of being autopoietic demonstrates, according to Fox, that a thing ‘matters to itself.’ To say an entity ‘matters to itself ’ may immediately appear to be an anthropomorphic suggestion, but Fox denies this. It is not

129

The others being Self-realization and ecofeminism.

130

Eckersley, 1992 : 61.

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a question of organisms being self-concerned in a sentient way, it is merely that ‘They are primarily and continuously concerned with the regeneration of their own organizational activity and structure. What clearer definition of an entity mattering to itself could one possibly want?’131 This particular manifestation of self-concern is sufficient for autopoietic entities to be regarded as ends in themselves, and so intrinsically valuable and therefore morally considerable. One question that needs to be asked here is why this particular manifestation of being an ‘end to oneself ’ is of the correct sort for us to attribute moral considerability to an object in the world. The classical argument for the moral considerability of entities which are ends-in-themselves is associated, of course, with Kant. He was very clear about the criterion by which certain entities are rendered morally considerable through possessing the quality of being ‘ends in themselves’. Rationality, above all, is the key, and this plainly excludes non-human beings. ‘The autonomous being is both the agent and the repository of all value, and exists, as Kant puts it, ’as an end in himself'. If we are to have values at all, we must value (respect) the existence and endeavours of rational beings.‘132 So whether or not Fox is surreptitiously invoking Kant in support of his own argument, in relying on autopoiesis rather than rational autonomy as his defining characteristic, he is clearly moving away from the ’classical' notion of what it means to ‘matter to oneself ’.133 The question then becomes the following—even if we think that autopoietic entities matter to themselves in the right way to suggest the bestowal of moral considerability, can this help us develop a coherent non-anthropocentric ethics? One author who has suggested not is William Grey, who detects a problem in that: there are conflicts of interest between goal-directed entities, and something needs to be said about how these are to be resolved. Smallpox and HIV no doubt have their own viral autonomy (as well as being products of natural historical processes), but for all that it is perfectly legitimate to disregard their interests when they conflict with our own. Yet it is hard to see how a decision to deny them a place in the scheme of things can be defended except by appeal to a value system which favours human interests.134

131

Fox, 1995 : 172.

132

Scruton, 1982 : 70.

133

Although for an argument that the deep ecological positions put forward by Naess and Fox are compatible with Kantian ethics, see Reitan (1996 ). For the opposite view Humphrey (1999 ). We should note the close parallels between autopoietic ethics and Paul Taylor's preferred biocentric ethic of ‘respect for nature’. Under this moral schema each organism ‘is seen to be a teleological (goal orientated) center of life pursuing its own goal in its own unique way’ (1986: 45).

134

Grey, 1993 : 471.

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So, for Grey, whatever ecology may tell us about the self-maintaining or self-regenerating qualities of natural entities, moral value can only be sensibly attributed upon an avowedly anthropocentric basis. Wissenburg also suggests that such attributions of intrinsic value leave us unable to make comparative moral judgements between species.135 Authors who have rejected anthropocentrism, but then followed through the consequences of a clash of vital interests under a scheme of autopoietic ethics have come, I would suggest, to conclusions which render these ethics little different, in practical terms, from straightforward anthropocentrism. To illustrate this contention, we can consider the arguments of James P. Sterba, who maintains that even if we operate within a non-anthropocentric framework, we can still offer good reasons for privileging humankind's vital interests over those of other species in situations where ‘there are conflicts of interest between goal-directed entities’. The crux of Sterba's argument is that merely because an entity is held to be morally considerable, this is not sufficient to prevent our wiping it out if its vital interests are in conflict with ours as a species. Thus we can attribute intrinsic value to other living creatures on biocentric or autopoietic grounds, yet still exterminate them if it really is a question of ‘us or them’. To illustrate this argument he borrows an example from Eugene Hargrove. Suppose, he suggests, that the creatures depicted in the series of Alien films really existed. According to Hargrove we could not hold that these creatures, whose very existence is parasitic upon killing us, had intrinsic value, as it would be unreasonable for us to do so.136 As we can only expect humans to hold to values that it is reasonable for them to cleave to, all values have, pro tanto, to be anthropocentric. It would not be reasonable to value intrinsically, and therefore preserve, an entity that is in conflict with fundamental human needs in this way—be it the smallpox or HIV virus, or the Alien. According to Sterba, this is simply incorrect, we can attribute intrinsic value to an entity, but still, on the basis of a ‘Principle of Human

135

Wissenburg, 1998 : ch. 4. It is not of course impossible to attribute differential quantities of intrinsic value across species. The problem, of course, with this ‘solution’ is the apparent arbitrariness of so doing and the probability of reintroducing disguised anthropocentrism by attributing the highest differentiated value to humans.

136

Cited in Sterba, 1994 : 240. Robin Attfield takes a broadly similar line to Sterba, in that he allows that intrinsic value can exist by degrees. He distinguishes ‘moral standing’–the granting of moral considerability, from ‘moral significance’–the degree to which one has moral considerability. These in turn are distinguished from intrinsic value, which is what forms the basis of moral considerability. Importantly, moral significance varies not only between species but also between relevant interests. Thus the fundamental interest in being allowed to flourish of a non-human species can take preference over the peripheral interests of a human being. See Attfield, 1987 .

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Preservation’ exterminate it on the grounds that we are allowed to commit those actions which are essential to meet our own basic need, and it is held to be an indubitable human need that we are not ourselves killed by viruses or any other life-threatening entity.137 Thus on the basis of Sterba's axiology, it would be perfectly feasible to grant entities ethical standing on account of the quality of autopoiesis, and then conflicts between human and non-human interests would be resolved according to the Human Preservation Principle. However, if we employ this principle, what distinction can we then draw between anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric ethics in practical terms? Are we merely forced back to the question concerning what constitutes fundamental human interests? If all the differences evaporate once conflicts of interest between autopoietic entities become real, does this not undermine the ecocentric case? A relevant question to ask at this point is at what level of existence (individual organism, species, ecosystem, ecosphere) autopoietic ethics ‘cuts in’ for ecocentric authors such as Fox and Eckersley. This will allow us to at least map the terrain of autopoietic moral considerability—what entities are incorporated, and which are excluded from this moral framework? Fox favours an inclusive rather than exclusive characterization, thus ‘the criterion of autopoiesis suggests that all process-structures that continuously strive to regenerate their own organizational activity and structure should be included in the class of living systems. Thus, this criterion opens the door for the inclusion of ecosystems and the ecosphere (Gaia).’138 As with Eckersley, we seem to have here an ethical ‘system’ which attempts to operate simultaneously at a number of what we might call ‘existential levels’, and this immediately raises the questions put above—given a conflict of interests between entities operating at different ontological levels, which entity has ethical priority? If each has equal moral considerability, how can our ethical system guide our actions? Perhaps we can gain a clearer idea of Fox's position here through an examination of what he has to say directly about the Land Ethic, clearly itself an holistic ethic of a particular sort. Ecosystemic ethics are no more, Fox tells us, than a subset of autopoietic ethics. Unlike Eckersley, Fox dismisses suggestions that ecosystemic ethics

137

There has been a similar debate to Hargrove/Sterba between Thomas Birch and Tim Hayward over Birch's argument for ‘deep respect’–the granting of moral consideration ‘in a root sense’ to all beings. See Birch, 1993 ; Hayward, 1996 .

138

Fox, 1995 : 171–2. The argument for the inclusion of ‘ecosystems’ as ‘entities’ of the right sort clearly is reliant upon the holistic metaphysics discussed earlier.

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could be considered as constituting ‘environmental fascism’. This denial turns on the distinction between inclusive and exclusive ethical systems. What Fox stresses is that ecosystem ethics are inclusive; the message is not that the ecosystem is the only object of moral considerability, it is that the ecosystem is also of moral considerability; that is to say, as well as the (more conventionally) morally considerable individual biological entities such as human beings. Thus Fox clearly does want to bestow moral considerability upon a variety of entities at different ontological levels. Yet even Fox seems to resurrect practical anthropocentrism when he suggests that ‘intrinsic value’ is spread unevenly across the universe, increasing concomitantly with complexity. ‘[I]n situations of genuine value conflict, justice is better served by not subscribing to the view of ecological egalitarianism. Cows do scream louder than carrots.’139

Conclusion Where does this leave our ethical ecocentric, wondering how to act rightly in the world? What the foregoing theoretical constructs (i.e. Goldsmith's on the one hand, and then Eckersley's and Fox's on the other) give us, I would argue, are two different accounts of the ecocentric ethical framework, only one of which gives relatively clear guidance for action. The reason, however, that it can give clear guidance is because it is insufficiently nuanced to take account of the ethical worries expressed by Eckersley in her explanation of the turn to autopoietic ethics. The Goldsmith/Leopold consequentialist accounts tell us both what is of value and, providing we can cross certain epistemological boundaries regarding knowledge of the consequences of human actions, it also allows us to draw certain imperative demands from this value system, thus giving guidance regarding human behaviour. For Goldsmith, appropriate behaviour just is that which contributes toward biospheric stability, thus, assuming we can know what behaviour does work towards this end, we know what correct behaviour is. Thus, despite being human-existential, his argument conveys a strongly ecological morality as long as the suggested empirical connection between biospherical stability and the preconditions for human existence

139

Fox, 1984a : 199–200. It is perhaps because of these problems with environmental ethics that Fox currently cleaves to Self-realization as the most satisfactory articulation of deep ecology.

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is accepted. Leopold's ethic works in the same (although not in a human-existential) way, providing we can actually understand what behaviour will contribute to the ‘stability, integrity and beauty’ of the ‘biotic community’,140 (and this understanding comes through the study of ecology) that is the behavioural pattern we should follow: the ‘ecological laws’ that are postulated become a guide for human behaviour. For all Fox's assertions to the contrary, holistic or ecosystemic ethical rules are clear regarding what is of ultimate value, ‘biospheric stability’ on the one hand, and the good of the ‘biotic community’ on the other. Thus, to take Eckersley's ‘litmus test’ issue of human population levels, if, to the best of our knowledge, current human population levels are threatening either of these desiderata then clearly, according to the relevant ethical criteria, we have an imperative moral obligation to act in such a way as to remove that threat. What of the Eckersley/Fox reconstruction of the Land Ethic—autopoietic ethics? This attributes value at all the levels we have been considering, the individual organism, the ecosystem, and the ecosphere, as well as, possibly, the species. This constitutes one way of getting around the charge that one is prepared to sacrifice the interests of an individual organism for some apparent ‘greater good’. If the ‘lesser organism’ is considered to be of value in the same way as the greater one—it displays the ability to self-maintain, then we have no a priori grounds for sacrificing the lesser to the greater. However, does this leave our ecocentric looking for ethical guidance in the position suggested by Richard Sylvan? The guidelines as regards day-to-day living and action for a follower of deep ecology remain unduly and unfortunately obscure.141 The question here is, if this collection of different entities possessing moral value all possess it for the same reason—which it appears they do, they are after all each morally considerable because of the possession of autopoiesis—then are they therefore all held to be of equal moral value? And if they are not, why not? In the sort of ‘humanist’ ethics of authors such as John Rawls considered above, humans are all morally considerable because of certain features, their ability to be moral, or rational, or

140

These desiderata can themselves be seen as questionable. ‘Beauty’, for example, is a culturally specific human projection. How can the preservation of this be taken as an ethical ideal without appeal to the aesthetic values of a particular time-bound culture?

141

Sylvan, 1985b: 13. Eckersley responds to a similar accusation from Lynch and Wells (1998 ) by pointing out that day-to-day guidance is too much to ask of a ‘primary value commitment’. (1998: 175). This may be true to an extent, but if ecocentric ethics can never guide day-to-day environmental decision making, we might well inquire as to the point of the exercise.

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whatever, and because all human beings are considered to be equally capable of possessing these qualities, they are considered to be moral equals.142 Within the canon of progressive humanism we cannot consider one human being more morally considerable merely because they are white rather than black, male rather than female, blue-eyed rather than brown-eyed. This, of course, would constitute precisely the sexism and chauvinism that Fox and Eckersley consider to be equivalent to anthropocentrism. So we should also not privilege the human, or the ecosystem, or any species on any grounds that are arbitrary from the autopoietic point of view, nor can we on the grounds of autopoiesis itself as we all display this quality. Where does this leave us? I believe it leaves supporters of autopoietic ethics in a position whereby they have to undertake an equivalent task to that undertaken by Rawls in relation to his own intuitions; that is, there is a need for the articulation of a system of distributive rules whereby potential interest and resource conflicts between different autopoietic entities can be resolved. As we have seen, tentative steps down this road have been taken by authors who have suggested a ‘hierarchy of interests’ rule whereby the fundamental, existential interests of one such entity must have precedence over a less-than-basic interest of another.143 This, however, begins to resolve this dilemma, insofar as it does at all, only at a very abstract level, and says nothing regarding conflicts involving fundamental interests on both sides.144 As another way of trying to elucidate what behaviour autopoietic ethics might recommend to humans, let us again turn to Eckersley's ‘litmus test’ of human population levels. Remember, within the ethical guidelines of Goldsmith and Leopold we derived clear guidance for action here, if only at a general level. If human numbers threaten the desiderata, they must be reduced. This is a conclusion with which both Fox and Eckersley would, I believe, concur. However, in their attempt to build ethical safeguards for individual organisms into their moral frameworks, we have to ask whether

142

Thus the problematic cases of those who show no signs of being able to demonstrate these qualities, for example the recent discussions as to when it is morally acceptable to deprive those in a ‘persistent vegetative state’ of life support (something that will be returned to in the conclusion of this work).

143

See e.g. James P. Sterba, 1994 . Also Eckersley, 1998 , here cast in terms of ‘needs’. For an attempt to articulate a systematic position with respect to this kind of value hierarchy, see Breen, 2001 .

144

Sterba suggests that in such cases each species can just ‘prefer’ its own. However, this hardly appears to be a ‘moral’ rule, and anyway to say that non-human species possess a ‘species-bias’ comes across as a fairly crass anthropomorphism which is also empirically unsound– cannibalism, for example, is not uncommon in some animal species, including chimpanzees.

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they have denied themselves the necessary theoretical leverage to reach this conclusion. I would suggest that autopoietic ethics might be able to articulate both the ‘cut human populations’, and ‘protect the interests of individual autopoietic human beings’ message simultaneously as follows. Despite the fact that all autopoietic beings are held to be equally valuable, perhaps the fact that the continued existence of certain of these entities as a class is dependent upon the existence of others might allow us some grounds for prioritization. Specifically, the autopoietic entities beneath the level of the biosphere are dependent upon its continued flourishing if they are to continue their own existence. Thus in an argument reminiscent of Aristotle's account of what it is to be ‘prior by nature’, we can say that as the (lesser) autopoietic entity cannot exist without the biosphere, but the biosphere can continue to exist without the (particular) autopoietic entity, the biosphere is morally prior. Thus autopoietic ethics can tell us that when human population levels threaten biospheric survival they ought to be reduced, but additionally that this has to be done in such a way so as not to harm the interests of other autopoietic entities (including humans) which already exist (on the grounds that entitlement to a priority in moral treatment does not necessarily entail exclusivity of moral treatment). So, we have an argument for the protection of biospheric life-support conditions, which also places something like side-constraints on the way individual autopoietic entities are treated. We will review the (considerable) problems arising from this ecocentric construction in the next chapter. For now I just want to note that the articulation of autopoietic ethics by ‘progressive’ ecocentrics such as Eckersley and Fox demonstrates that for them, just as much as for ‘conservatives’ such as Goldsmith, moral frameworks are made to rest upon natural (ecological) laws. To quote Fox again, individual biological organisms should be free to follow their diverse individual and evolutionary paths to the extent that this does not involve seriously damaging the autopoietic (i.e. self-regenerating) functioning of their ecosystem or ecosphere. . . on the basis of ecosystem ethics or ecosphere ethics, members of an ecosystem or the ecosphere are free within limits that may be encapsulated by the phrase ‘no entity is above ecology.’ It is scarcely necessary to add that this message has a profound relevance for our species.145 In this section we have examined arguments for the inclusion of certain phenomena identified by ecological and biological science (i.e. that human

145

Fox, 1995 : 178–9.

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welfare is dependent upon ‘biospheric stability’, and that certain entities display the quality of ‘autopoiesis’) into systems of human ethics. This is part of the ecocentric attempt to articulate a reconciliation of human and non-human nature—the part which tries to tell us why non-human entities deserve moral considerability. There is another side to this question—what's in it for us? Apart from a reliance upon a functioning biosphere for basic survival needs, what do ecocentrics have to say about the possible benefits to humans that can be reaped through the adoption of ecocentric morality? It would clearly strengthen ecocentric arguments if they could be shown to serve humaninstrumental purposes as well. We turn to this question (and some of the others noted above) in the next chapter.

2 The Human Need for Nature Introduction The literature which has been critical of the move to ecocentrism has made the contention that the granting of freestanding reasons for the preservation of nature—because of its intrinsic value, worthiness of respect, or any other reason—is incompatible with the maintenance of an appropriate level of concern for human well-being. ‘What is important’ says Murray Bookchin, ‘is that when grizzly bears can be placed on a par with human beings in the name of biocentrism . . . we are witnessing not a greater sensitivity to life in general but a desensitization of the mind to human agony, consciousness, and personality’.146 Placing non-human entities into the same moral framework as humans beings (such as autopoietic ethics does) is held, by thinkers such as Bookchin, to have dangerous implications for our moral sensibilities toward humans. This is not the only aspect of ecocentrism to come in for criticism. In Chapter 1 we examined the ecocentric understanding of the nature of reality. We saw that humankind's status in this picture is very much that of an element in a larger whole; as, to use the preferred metaphors, a ‘strand’ in a web or a ‘knot’ in a net. This refusal to recognize an ontological divide between humanity and the rest of nature is also attacked for implicitly downgrading the moral status of human beings. ‘Antihumanist demographics begin to seem plausible once we begin to diminish humanity's uniqueness and evolutionary stature by viewing people merely as animal organisms.’147 Instead, ‘[T]he ontological divide between the non-human and the human is very real . . . It is a crucial fact that [humans] alone know—indeed can know.’148 This surely raises a question. Granted that ecocentrists want to ‘de-centre’ human beings from any position of sole occupancy of moral

146

Bookchin, 1994 : 40.

147

Ibid. 59.

148

Bookchin, 1996 : 102.

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considerability, where does that actually leave the status of human interests in the ecocentric picture? I want here to focus on this question through an element of ecocentric thought which has to date been inadequately assessed in the critical literature. How do ecocentric thinkers decontest the notion of human interest? What do ecocentric and deep ecological thinkers actually have to say about the nature of humanity and the ways in which its interests would be served by the adoption of ecocentric principles? The appeal and plausibility of any answers we get to this question will have a large bearing upon our estimate of the potential ethical and political appeal of ecocentrically based green ideologies. Clearly, for all the anti-anthropocentrism of ecocentrism, for all the sublimation of humanity into a larger whole in the ecocentric worldview, it is inevitably to human beings as the only reflexive element in this larger whole that ecocentrism has to appeal as an ethics or as a way of framing the problem of preservation. Ecocentrism, given its ideational structure and aims, faces a set of constraints which are probably unique in the world of political philosophy. It has somehow to deprivilege human interests in the interests of humans. For all their declared opposition to ‘human chauvinism’, ecocentrists cannot self-define as opposing the furtherance of human interests, unless they are to seek, absurdly, to restrict their appeal to genuine misanthropes. Thus they are required to give an account of the compatibility of ecocentrism with human interests, under the constraint that they do not, in so doing, arbitrarily privilege humanity over the rest of the natural world. It is to this endeavour that we now turn. How do ecocentric texts reconcile the displacement of a central concern for human well-being from the prime position within an ethical system, with a claim that such a reconstructed ethical system will still serve human interests better than (or at least as well as) an overtly humanist system of ethics? This reconciliation is, as we shall see, substantiated in one of two ways in ecocentric literature. One approach is to claim that conventional ethical discourse misunderstands or mis-defines the character of human need(s). This claim requires the support of an objectivist account of human need, which can distinguish ‘real’ from ‘artificial’ or ‘manufactured’ needs in order to furnish ecocentrists with the resources required to found a further claim: that ecocentrism constitutes a preferable method of satisfying this suitably reconceptualized account of human needs. This approach will be examined below. Here we will see that ecocentrists do indeed frequently call for a reconceptualization of human need, and furthermore claim that conventional understandings of human need are inadequate or distorted.

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Ecocentrists are also, however, frustratingly vague when it comes to the more positive work of fleshing out an account of human needs which is compatible with their general position. The second approach does not rely directly upon giving a reconceptualized account of the complete set of human needs, but looks rather to tell a broadly evolutionary, historical story which directly links the preservation of nature with (at least one element of) human well-being. This takes the general form of the drawing of inferences from an account of the co-evolution of humanity and its natural environment, and thus might be called the ‘co-evolution hypothesis.’ This, in turn, takes two forms. First, there is the claim that precisely because we have evolved in a particular natural environment we are uniquely adapted, or ‘phylogenetically adjusted’ to it. As a result of this coevolution, our requirements as human beings reflect the context in which they developed. Thus only recognizably natural environments can meet the full range of human needs adequately. Second, there is also a distinct but structurally similar version of the ‘co-evolution hypothesis’, which is the ‘external context argument’, versions of which have been suggested by both Goodin and McKibben. According to these accounts, nature and humanity have co-evolved, and this has implications concerning the conditions claimed to be necessary for human well-being. There is held to be a reciprocal relationship between human flourishing and the flourishing of the non-human natural world, and this proposition is derived from a perceived unique ecological ‘fit’ between humanity and the environment in which it has evolved over millennia. From this account of co-evolution and mutual adaptation, some ecocentrists seek to develop an argument that human beings require contact with a ‘spontaneous’ nature (i.e. a natural environment not overtly altered by human hand) or to at least have the possibility of such contact available to them, in order to acquire at least one of the elements of basic human welfare. This weaker claim is that spontaneous nature provides a context of the ‘right’ sort in which human beings can embed their lives and thus gain a sense of ontological security. All of the above arguments are related to a conception of human need or welfare, and are thus concerned with fulfilling some minimal criteria necessary to allow humans to lead an acceptably decent life. There are also ecocentric arguments concerning human fulfilment and perfection, centred upon the concept of ‘Self-realization’. I take these to be a separate, although related, class of arguments to the ‘human need’ arguments as they refer to more than the mere conditions humans are held to require in order to lead a sufficiently ‘well-adjusted’ or ‘psychically healthy’ life.

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They consist instead in arguments of a perfectionist nature as to what the good human life consists in. Thus they are concerned with the ideal rather than merely adequate form of human life.

Human Needs Reconsidered Why should contact with ‘free’ nature be held to satisfy a human need? It does not appear to be something in universal demand; nor does it serve an empirically obvious biological requirement in the way that supplies of water and adequate nutrition, for example, do. Before going on to examine the specific arguments as to the role of nature in meeting human need, we should set the discussion in the context of general considerations about human needs and politics. I do not have the space here to give a comprehensive discussion of this topic, so I will touch on those elements that seem particularly relevant. The crucial distinction in work on human needs is that between needs and preferences (or wants), the question being whether such a distinction can be maintained, and what the implications of the distinction are if it can be.149 If wants equate to needs, then a ‘politics of wants’ would also be, of course, a politics of needs. Furthermore, there are advantages of transparency and non-paternalism to a politics of wants, as Watt suggests: To determine wants is normally very straightforward, since in most cases each person knows what he wants . . . and nobody knows what a person wants better than he does. The fact of a want, then, is normally easy to establish. Wants moreover, can serve as norms, by holding that the task of government is to meet people's wants in so far as these wants can be reconciled.150 Thus if wants and needs are equivalent our problem will be one of reconciling different preferences through some form of social welfare function. If, however, there are good reasons to think that needs and wants can diverge, we have to decide whether we proceed best by addressing wants or needs. If we opt for the latter, we might well lose the advantages of transparency and non-paternalism noted above, and we will require principles for deciding upon and ranking human needs.

149

See e.g. Doyal, 1993 ; Doyal and Gough, 1991 ; Goodin, 1988 : ch. 2; Goodin and Ware, 1990 ; Miller, 1976 : ch. 4; 1989: 147–9; Soper, 1993 ; Watt, 1982 .

150

1982: 534.

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Miller suggests that needs and wants do indeed diverge. Consider the statement ‘A needs X’ = ‘A wants X’: This equivalence fails to hold in either direction. For (a) we often say of people that they want things that they do not need; for instance, a child who demands a lollipop, makes efforts to get one etc., certainly wants a lollipop, but we are most unlikely to acknowledge that he needs one. (b) We (rather less often) say of people that they need things that they do not want. We might say of the child that he needs to eat more healthy food, though he gives us every evidence that he wants to do no such thing.151 The point, Miller tells us, is that wanting is a psychological state. Needing is not, it is rather ‘a condition which is ascribed “objectively” to the person who is its subject’.152 I find no reason to argue with this general line of thought. It does not seem problematic to suggest that a scurvy-ridden fifteenth-century sailor needed some vitamin C, even though he didn't know of its existence and was not in the psychological state of wanting lime juice. The ascription of needs on this basis raises a further issue, as it implies a background, or second order ‘want’ on the part of the sailor, and that is that he wishes to be as fit and healthy as he can reasonably expect to be, and certainly does not want to suffer avoidable disease. We usually assume at least that much about people, whilst acknowledging the feasibility of certain exceptions.153 Assuming more than the achievement of a certain level of biological health as a criterion for ascertaining universal human need is however far more problematic, as ‘needs’ begin to seem more culturally specific and socially relative.154 Thus the assertion of very particular needs, such as contact with free nature, are always going to be regarded as contestable. How do we begin to ascertain what might count as a need? Writers who look to maintain the needs/preferences distinction tend to use the notion of a ‘harm’ as an identificatory criterion of need. If we consider what we have in mind when we ascribe needs to a person, we shall, I believe, recognize that we are thinking not of the person's wants, whether actual or hypothetical, but rather the consequences for the person of not having what is needed. We are thinking of the harm that the person will suffer through not being given what we say he needs.155

151

1976: 129.

152

Ibid.

153

For example when the amount of pain and suffering in a person's life is sufficient that it appears rational for them to want assistance in ending their life.

154

See e.g. Doyal and Gough's attempt to delineate a set of human needs (1991 ), Soper's broadly sympathetic critique of this (1993 ), and Doyal's reply (1993 ).

155

Miller, 1976 : 130.

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Frankfurt holds that ‘allocating resources to meeting needs takes precedence over allocating them to fulfilling mere desires’ because ‘the former aims at avoiding harm, while the latter aims only at providing unneeded benefits’.156 Doyal and Gough connect the notions of need and harm through the medium of ‘disabled social participation’. As has already been stated, we do not identify serious harm with the absence of basic need satisfaction. Rather we equate it with the presence of disabled social participation. Basic need satisfaction is the precondition for avoiding such disablement.157 For Watt the notion of harm (or, strictly, ‘non-flourishing’) is what allows us to ascribe needs not only to humans, but also to non-human species who could never articulate a ‘want’. To say that an animal needs a certain environment, is not to say that we want it to have that environment; it is to say that the animal will not flourish without that environment.158 We might ask quite fairly whether this advances our understanding, or whether we have merely replaced a rather nebulous notion of ‘need’ with an equally nebulous one of ‘harm’.159 Does the notion of ‘harm’ itself depend upon a rather ‘thick’ and fixed conception of human (or animal) nature and human flourishing? Do we have to accept a neoAristotelian account of human teleology in order to adopt a universalizable notion of harm?160 In Social Justice Miller suggests not. We can relate notions of harm to people's ability to carry through their own lifeplans. Strong theories of human nature are held to be not only unnecessary but undesirable. In order to identify harms we need first to understand an individual's plan of life; harms then consist in those things that will hamper the pursuit of this life-plan. This is what allows us to make the needs/preference distinction. If people want something that they do not need, then what they desire is a source of pleasure to them but not an essential component of that

156

Critically cited in Goodin, 1988 : 33. Goodin goes on to argue that the prioritization of needs over wants based on Frankfurt's criterion of ‘harm’ leads to strongly counterintuitive results.

157

Doyal, 1993 : 119.

158

Watt, 1982 : 539.

159

We clearly need an account of harm that is more than ‘not having one's needs met’ in order to avoid circular reasoning. Frankfurt makes a distinction between being made worse off (harm) and being made better off (want). For Miller at the time he wrote Social Justice , we are harmed if we are hampered in the pursuit of our life-plans (see main text).

160

Perhaps rather like the account that O'Neill offers in his Ecology, Policy and Politics (1993 ); see e.g. p. 3 of this work.

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plan of life. This also allows us to say that individuals may not be aware of their needs, as they may not be aware of the necessary conditions for their life-plans. Does this entail that the concept of harm (and so need) has been completely relativized in the sense that needs can only be judged by standards internal to an individual's chosen way of life? If so it would seem to risk reconflating the distinction Miller is trying to establish between want and need. This would be problematic for ecologists. As Soper suggests, at least some conceptions of the good life have to be ruled out of court by political ecologists, even if ‘we are committed here only to a minimal essentialism on needs.’161 If someone decides their chosen way of life involves becoming (say) a connoisseur of pornographic films, can we, on Miller's account, say they might want, but do not need, pornography? He suggests we can—by insisting that plans of life have to be ‘intelligible’. Thus we would not supply a pyromaniac with the matches he thinks he needs because the ‘plan of life’ of a pyromaniac is not intelligible to us, and the same, presumably, would hold true of the supply of films to our pornography watcher. Miller holds that this does not throw us back into the opposite problem of paternalism because the judgemental criteria are merely ‘weak’. That is, they refer to judgements about intelligibility only, and not relative worth.162 Whilst I am sympathetic to the maintenance of a needs/preference distinction, it must be noted that Miller gives us no explanation of, or criteria for, judging the ‘intelligibility’ of different lifestyles. In the absence of this his distinction between the ‘intelligibility’ judgement and a ‘relative worth’ judgement is not as clear as he suggests. Is it really ‘unintelligible’ to us that an individual might find fire something aesthetically beautiful or awesome to behold? There seems to be a risk of using ‘unintelligibility’ as a mask for moral disapproval. There are a whole host of reasons why we would want to prevent someone leading a certain type of pyromaniacal lifestyle, which have to do with the protection of the goods of other people, but would we refuse to give matches to someone who merely liked to buy wood and build his own bonfires? There is also the problem of

161

Soper, 1997 : 63.

162

In a later work (1989: 147) Miller holds that needs are what are ‘in fact’ necessary for a decent life, and thus refer to an implicit notion of what it means to live a decent life. ‘Decent’ here rendered as the development of a set of capacities and availability of a set of opportunities, rather than as a substantive moral notion. It may be that in a similar fashion lives that do not involve the development of these capacities, and are thus not ‘decent’ would also be ‘unintelligible’ in his earlier formulation.

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unintelligibility to whom?—particularly in multi-ethnic societies. Because I completely fail to comprehend the notion of a life devoted to conspicuous consumption, does this give me a reason to somehow rule it out of court as an acceptable life-plan? This attempt to steer a course between the Scylla of paternalism, and the Charybdis of relativism (which equates needs with whatever people happen to want), through the equation of needs with what is necessary to pursue a life-plan, is ultimately unconvincing. In claiming that individuals have needs which are irrespective of what they want, we inevitably make judgements about elements of human flourishing that are also independent of people's own account of what their flourishing consists in. Alternatively we allow a closer connection between needs and wants. Best to grasp this particular nettle and then address the problem of articulating convincing reasons for these judgements. The maintenance of an objective distinction between needs and wants is a necessary precondition for the arguments put forward by ecologists seeking to argue that ‘free’ nature can serve a human need. The claim that a need is being fulfilled has to remain true regardless of the psychological dispositions of the individuals about whom the claim is made. This in turn entails that the nature of the human need involved, and the reasons as to why nature can fulfil this need also have to be articulated. As will be seen, Edward Goldsmith addresses these two points though an evolutionary anthropology. In this account needs and the means of satisfying them are not independent of each other, but emerge together in the evolutionary process. Because human beings have interacted with a particular kind of environment throughout their history, this environment is optimally equipped to satisfy the set of needs human beings have, and any human-induced large-scale environmental alterations will take that environment away from its optimal form. In the arguments of Robert Goodin and Bill McKibben, the empirical proposition is made that people have a need for their life to be set in a wider context. To refer back to the general discussion above, if this context is not provided individuals will suffer harm as they are deprived of what we might call a sense of ontological security. They then go on to argue that nature is the paradigmatic resource for supplying the condition necessary for this sense of ontological security, thus preventing harm and fulfilling a human need. Thus we have good reason to preserve nature. I will go on to suggest that the ‘context’ argument is plausible in a general form, but the assertion that ‘nature’ is the only relevant good to supply is simply wrong. Nonetheless, the context argument does have an important role to play in providing intellectual support for a policy of nature preservation.

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Nature and Human Need The idea that contact with nature fulfils a human need is often asserted (and, it has to be said, more frequently asserted than explained) in ecocentric literature. For example, David Rothenberg approvingly cites Tim O'Riordan's first, and most accurate, summary of deep ecology, ‘the intrinsic importance of nature for the humanity of man’.163 (with the clear implication that ‘man’ needs nature in order to be fully human). Later in the same work, Arne Naess has this to say: The increasing negative reaction towards the increase in human population is not to foster any animosity towards humans as such—on the contrary, human fulfilment seems to demand and need free nature . . . Gradually the prospect of protecting the planet as a whole and for its own sake is seen as one of the greatest challenges ever. And it certainly is a specifically human task. A deep human need is involved, we realise a unique potentiality in revising political decisions so as to satisfy such a need.164 It is worth commenting upon this notion of ‘free’ nature here as conceived by Arne Naess. One possible alternative— ‘non-human nature’ can be taken to include the living and the non-living, indeed mankind's entire environment, whether managed by humans or that which would exist spontaneously. The notion of ‘free’ nature refers to a natural environment which itself is not managed by us, but is rather that which would exist spontaneously in a particular location, without any extensive human interference, as the environment of any human communities which dwelt therein. Of course ‘free’ is hardly an appraisively neutral term, and Naess clearly seeks an ideological decontestation of what one might also call ‘wild’ nature in positive terms, given both that the converse term would be ‘unfree’ nature, and the positive connotations attached to the notion of liberty in nearly all forms of political-ideological discourse. Subsequently, he writes that: Human nature may be such that with increased maturity a human need increases to protect the richness and diversity of life for its own sake. Consequently, what is useless in a narrow way may be useful in a wider sense, namely satisfying a human need.165

163

Rothenberg, in Naess, 1989b . Emphasis added.

164

Naess, in ibid. 141. Emphasis in original.

165

Ibid. 177.

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Another example of a claim about the particular nature of human need comes from the pen of the ‘intrinsic value’ orientated environmental philosopher Holmes Rolston III: Wild nature is a place of encounter where we go not to act on it but to contemplate it, drawing ourselves into its order of being rather than drawing it into our order of being. We need wild nature in much the same way that we need other things in life that we appreciate for their intrinsic worth, except that wild nature provides our sole contact with worth independent of human activity. Wild nature has a kind of integrity, and we are the poorer if we do not recognize and enjoy it.166 In similar vein, Bill Devall tells us that humans have a need for a sense of ‘mystery’, including a ‘sense of wonder’. To achieve this we should let go of our efforts to manage, manipulate, and manhandle the ‘self-in-environment’.167 One of the means through which this need can be satisfied is through situating ourselves in wild nature. We will consider the arguments as to why humans might be held to actually need (rather than sometimes desire or prefer) contact with nature below. There is however another side to ecocentric thinking about human need. As well as the insistence that any feasible conception of human need must include an element of contact with ‘free’ nature there is also the critique of existing conceptions of human needs as being overly complex, ‘distorted’, or inclusive of ‘artificial’ elements. This can include not only the conceptions of needs themselves, but also the methods by which these needs should be satisfied. Robyn Eckersley insists that ecocentrism is ‘able to accommodate human survival and welfare need . . . while at the same time respecting the integrity of other life forms’,168 and suggests that our conception of what human need consists in requires ‘revision and simplification’.169 Andrew McLaughlin suggests that the deep ecology platform leads to a fundamental critique of existing conceptions of human needs.170 For Edward Goldsmith, the natural world is what constitutes our ‘real’ wealth, and is thus that which can satisfy our ‘real’ needs without the unnecessary intermediation of modern technology. He says: Our appetite for material goods and technological devices seems insatiable. Indeed, it is in terms of our access to them that our wealth, indeed our welfare, is normally gauged. It is undoubtedly true that today we need a lot of material goods and technological devices, but this is not because we have an intrinsic need for them but because, in the aberrant conditions in which we live, they are required

166

Holmes Rolston III, 1988 : 40.

167

Devall, 1988 : 198.

168

Eckersley, 1992 : 34.

169

Ibid. 94. Also p. 129.

170

McLaughlin, 1993 : 202.

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for the purpose of satisfying our biological, social, spiritual and aesthetic needs–our real needs. Material and technological goods can be regarded indeed, as bribes to induce people to accept the systematic annihilation of their real wealth that inevitably accompanies economic development or progress.171 The above quotes exemplify a line of thought that runs strong not only in ecocentric thought, but in green political thought more generally, be it grounded in ecocentrism or humanism. This strand of thinking centres upon a conception of human needs and their fulfilment. The argument is that our understanding of what human needs consist in has become distorted, and conflated with ‘mere’ wants and desires. What follows from this is a further argument that we require a revised schema of human needs, which will focus on ‘real’ human needs rather than merely reflecting a conception of need distorted by the material and cultural accretions of contemporary industrial society. Eckersley tells us that: From an ecocentric perspective . . . creative leisure is best procured through the critical revision and simplification of human needs and the development of tools and goods appropriate to those revised needs rather than through the systematic replacement of human labour by energy intensive machines.172 And that: [E]cocentric theory is most certainly new in the way it seeks to reorient humanity's relationship with the rest of nature. In this respect, it represents a new constellation of ideas that challenges the anthropocentric assumptions of post-Enlightenment political thought and calls for a more radical reassessment of human needs, technologies, and lifestyles.173 Andrew McLaughlin approvingly notes that Saral Sakar, in a study of the German Greens ‘recognizes the importance of the definition of need’ in the attempt to construct alternatives to ‘industrialism and consumerism’. Definitions of need should be ‘objective and based on ecological limits’ not ‘subjective and hence infinite’.174 When human need is understood in this ‘objective’ and ecologically constrained way, then deep ecology can be understood as being ‘in a sense’ centred upon humans. Can we delineate any pattern regarding what an ecocentric reconceptualization of human need would entail from these very general remarks? We may not be able to draw up a comprehensive set of ecocentrically defined

171

Goldsmith, 1992 : 175–6.

172

Eckersley, 1992 : 94.

173

Ibid. 129.

174

Quotes from McLaughlin, 1993 : 81.

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‘human needs’, but certain features can be ascertained. First, subjective accounts of human need, based upon the felt or conscious desires of an individual, are ruled out of court as an identifier of human need. Instead they should be ‘objective’, and based on ‘ecological limits’. This appears to imply that, for McLaughlin anyway, the science of ecology can be used to set the parameters of what counts as human needs in terms of ecological limits. That which is ecologically unsustainable would not ‘count’ as a human need. If this is what he is implying it appears inadequate as an identificatory approach to human need. We could, for example, reach a point where it would be ecologically unsustainable (in that it would soon deplete all available sources) to supply food and water to all the human beings on Earth. All that this would tell us is that the universal satisfaction of the human need for water and sustenance was unsustainable; it would not imply that these needs could not be needs because of this, which would be an absurd conclusion. Thus it is hard to understand why definitions of need should be based upon ‘ecological limits’. McLaughlin might also be suggesting that the science of ecology can impart information as to what human needs are. This might be true but it is a very different proposition. Certainly the above criticism of McLaughlin does not entail that we have to use subjective accounts of need, there may well be other reasons why we would not want to go down this road. Goldsmith suggests above that when (as now, for him) we are living in ‘aberrant conditions’, our ideas about the means by which we can satisfy our ‘real’ needs become distorted, such that we do come to ‘need a lot of material goods and technological devices’. If, however, the aberrant conditions could be corrected, then these merely apparent means of satisfying ‘needs’ would no longer be required. I take Goldsmith's ‘aberrant conditions’ to imply contemporary urban-centred life.175 It is commonly asserted in this family of literature that urban living distorts our understanding of the world by removing us from contact with the natural environment upon which we depend. All the more reason to mistrust subjective accounts of need. ‘City dwellers whose experience with natural things is minimal may express no interest in nature; but those whose experience has given them an appreciation of the enrichment of human life by other kinds of life will grant the wisdom of opposing the uncontrolled destruction of natural wealth.’176 ‘For many people, the closest contact with unmediated nature allowed by urban life

175

I do not mean by this that Goldsmith would consider life in the contemporary countryside in industrial nations non-aberrant. Rather the urban-centred industrial lifestyle distorts both city and country life.

176

Hardin, 1993 : 73.

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is that contained in parks . . . the so-called reality of urban life is confirmed by the its [sic] contrast with lesser realities such as Disneyland and the like.’177 Thus our different life experiences are held to lead to different subjective accounts of our needs. Because of this, subjective accounts of need are not to be trusted. If you have not had the relevant experience of nature you will not appreciate its role in enriching human life, its role as a fulfiller of human needs. Of course why we should accept an ‘ecological’ account of human needs as the ‘objectively correct’ one remains to be seen. The general critique of current conceptions of human need centres, predictably, on the argument that they have become over-elaborate and ‘distorted’. This implies (as the quote from McLaughlin suggests) that human needs are objectively knowable, and they are accessible to human knowledge through a comprehension of ecological interactions between humanity and nature. If we know that an important element of human well-being is satisfied by a life in which there is contact (of the right sort) with ‘spontaneous’ nature, then it would seem reasonable, on that basis, to posit contact with free nature as a human need (although maybe only one amongst many). If such contact fulfils a human need then we have a human interest based argument located within the ecocentric account for the preservation of nonhuman nature, and thus a potential transcendence of the ‘preservation versus the people’ frame.178 The contemporaneous exclusion of many material goods as legitimate elements in the bundle of resources which can satisfy human needs complements this argument by suggesting the possibility of radically reduced natural resource consumption. What is not clear at this stage is what kinds of contact with

177

McLaughlin, 1993 : 71.

178

The claim I make here–that the ecocentric–humanism distinction breaks down when we recognize the extent to which human-interest based arguments are embedded within ecocentric discourse–raises a legitimate question. What, then, would count as an ecocentric argument? Can't one discuss human-interest within ecocentric theory, as long as these interests do not imply moral superiority over other species? The answer to this is simply yes, and at no point do I deny a philosophical difference between ecocentrism and humanism. Ecocentrists and humanists differ about the nature of being. My point is that this difference, whilst real enough at the level of abstract philosophy, does not mark a difference at the level of applied philosophy—i.e. at precisely the level where ecocentric writers claim it to be crucial. This is not, either, a claim about convergence just at the level of policy. The point about the ‘multiple humanisms’ (as in human-interest based arguments) that operate across the whole range of environmental philosophies is that it is precisely these arguments that operate at the level of philosophically justifying and legitimating policies such as nature preservation. That is it is precisely at the level of political philosophy that the ecocentric–humanist distinction becomes trivial and the quality of the specific arguments put forward come to the foreground. Thus my position does endorse a form of moral pluralism, whilst cleaving to the idea that connections between moral beliefs and fundamental worldviews are important. I am grateful to Avner de-Shalit for raising this point with me.

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‘free’ nature are held to be necessary for human self-development, and therefore how much free nature we should be interested in preserving by the ecocentric account. Before we can colour in these particular blanks we require a more detailed account of the ‘simplified’ ecocentric account of human needs, and so it is in search of this that we go next.

Quality of Life V. Standard of Living? Such a search, it has to be said, may well prove rather frustrating. Ecologically minded authors appear reluctant to undertake the doubtless difficult task of offering a comprehensive account of human need which has been ‘revised’ in the light of ecological considerations. Can we infer from ecocentric writings what such a revised schema might look like, what an ecologically decontested notion of human need would entail? Clearly basic human biological requirements would form an important element, but in themselves be an insufficient core intension of the concept of human need. The need for clean water, unpolluted air and food are referred to in the quote from Goldsmith, for example. Although these needs will only form a minimal core of this concept, they are in themselves sufficient to generate certain ecologically orientated policy proposals with respect to the provision of certain goods fundamental to human wellbeing. Indeed the claim that human beings require access to sufficiently unpolluted and plentiful supplies of water, air, and food as a vital element of need satisfaction should in itself be an uncontroversial claim. Of course the question as to what standard meets the ‘sufficiently unpolluted’ criterion, or what costs ought to be tolerated in order to move toward the universalization of such provision, would not be. Ecocentrists, however, clearly want to suggest that there is more to the question of fulfilling human needs than this. If we refer back to the quotes above, a recurring theme of these is that humanity ‘needs’ a ‘free’ (spontaneous, unspoilt) nature. This is clearly a very different sort of claim about human need, not as easily supportable on clear empirical grounds as the above claims would be. How do ecocentrists begin to justify the claim that there is an objective set of human needs which are also epistemologically accessible? Can we get any conception, from ecocentric literature, as to what this set of needs might consist in? How do ecocentrists want to engage in the process of measuring human wellbeing?

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The ecocentric account holds that whatever the metric used, in practical terms too much emphasis has been placed upon a material wealth element of human well-being, measured in terms of affluence, conventionally conceived.179 Their contention is that instead we need to turn to a conception of ‘life quality’. ‘The material standard of living’, write Devall and Sessions, ‘should be drastically reduced and the quality of life . . . should be maintained or increased’.180 The claim here, presumably, is that ‘life quality’ as a metric of human well-being captures important elements of this wellbeing that ‘standard of living’ misses. Are we given any idea as to what ‘life quality’ is supposed to consist in that ‘standard of living’ lacks? Devall and Sessions give a subjective rendering of the concept of ‘life quality’. It is ‘the sense of basic satisfaction in the depth of one's heart or soul . . . This view is intuitive, as are all important views, in the sense that it can't be proven.’181 This hardly clarifies the conceptual differences between ‘life quality’ and ‘standard of living’. For his part, Naess says initially only that: The ideological change required 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.182 His ‘clarification and elaboration’ of this remark is that: Some economists criticise the term ‘quality of life’ because it is supposed to be too vague. But, on closer inspection, what they consider to be vague is actually the non-quantifiable nature of the term. One cannot quantify adequately what is important for the quality of life as discussed here, and there is no need to do so.183

179

In terms of an account of the understandings of human well-being put forward in ‘conventional’ moral and political discourse this is clearly inadequate if the inference is meant to be that material well-being has been the exclusive criterion of writings concerning human welfare. To take just one very well-known example, Rawls's lexical prioritizing of the basic liberties in A Theory of Justice explicitly invalidates any increase in material wealth if this can only be had at even the smallest cost to the basic liberties, which are not themselves directly concerned with material standards of living. If, however, the claim is the more modest one that material affluence has figured too prominently as one element of our conception of human well-being ecocentrists may have a case, although one that remains to be shown rather than merely asserted.

180

Devall and Sessions, 1985 : 75.

181

Ibid. With regard to the ethical validity of intuitions, compare Taylor: ‘[W]e cannot use either our own or anyone else's moral intuitions as grounds for accepting or rejecting a theory of environmental ethics.’ Taylor sees intuitionism as invalid because the grounding intuitions are socially constructed (1986: 22).

182

Naess, 1989b: 29.

183

Ibid. 31.

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A further elaboration of the notion (and one is certainly needed) comes later: A central slogan of the ecosophical lifestyle: ‘Simple in means rich in ends’. It is not to be confounded with appeals to be Spartan, austere, and self-denying. The ecosophical lifestyle appreciates opulence, richness, luxury, affluence. But the joys are defined in terms of quality of life, not standard of living. When circumstances force people with a high quality of life to retreat to a mere high standard, the transition can be painful and dangerous for their self-respect. The abundance, richness, luxury, and affluence are within the framework of quality of life define in such a way that personal experiences of these states are central, whereas standard of life requires the goods and goodies which are accepted socially at the moment to define ‘the good life’. The retrogression from quality to standard leads soon to the inordinate attention to the budget. ‘How much can we afford? There is now a still better car, video etc. being sold. Can we afford all the things to keep up with what is the best?’. What is ecosophically ‘best’ for somebody relates to their total view. If a camera is said to be much better than yours, it may nevertheless be much worse for you. It may not be sensible to buy it, and the ecosopher will then not feel any regret at not possessing it.184 With this quote we appear to see the beginnings of a delineation of what constitutes ‘quality of life’ from Naess's ecocentric perspective. In the first quote it is held to consist in ‘dwelling in situations of intrinsic value’. What ‘situations’ are held to have such ‘intrinsic value’? The first quote constitutes ‘point seven’ in an eight-point ‘platform’ of the deep ecology movement. Points one and two inform us as to what entities are held to possess intrinsic value. One tells us that the ‘flourishing’ of human and non-human life on Earth possesses this attribute, and in particular that the value of non-human life is independent of any instrumental value for humans. Second, the ‘richness and diversity’ of life forms constitute ‘values in themselves’, which I assume means they also constitute instances of intrinsic value. The term ‘life’ is used, we are told, in a ‘non-technical, comprehensive’ way such that it includes ‘rivers (watersheds), landscapes, cultures, ecosystems, “the living earth”’.185 With regard to the second point we are told that ‘richness’ as well as variety is included to imply that loss of abundance, as well as loss of species diversity, contravenes this particular desideratum.

184

Ibid. 88. Second emphasis added. Naess's account of need here appears both relativist and subjective. By contrast McLaughlin argues that no satisfactory account of needs can be subjective (see below).

185

Thus an eco-rather than bio-centric platform, despite the stress on ‘life’.

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So, the achievement of ‘life quality’ consists in dwelling in places in which both human and non-human life flourish, and in which species abundance and diversity is either maximized or at least exists above some threshold level below which these qualities are held to be lacking. It also, we are told, consists in having personal experiences of the ‘luxury, richness and affluence’ of dwelling in situations of intrinsic value. The question as to what constitutes such an experience, or how the experience has to be structured, will then also require attention. Is merely to exist in the midst of ‘intrinsic value’ sufficient, such that one has psychological awareness of its existence? If this was the case, then it would make little sense to insist on some criterion of ‘personal experience’, one could rather merely assert the need for situations of intrinsic value to exist, and for people to be made aware of the fact that they do exist. Furthermore, ecocentric literature stresses the value of an active life in nature to a sufficient degree that one has to surmise that some sort of personal, active interaction with spontaneous nature is being held up here as the need-fulfilling form of life.186 As ‘standard of living’ is taken as the opposing metric of human well-being, but its constituent components never clearly articulated (other than it consists in a desire for those goods currently socially defined as definitional of the ‘good life’) we have to assume its fundamental ‘flaw’ to be a lack of concern with ‘dwelling in situations of intrinsic value’. Instead of this, as far as we can see, there is a similar concern to live in ‘opulence, richness, luxury, and affluence’, but through the possession of goods socially defined as constitutive of the good life. The clear implication is that if we imagine that possession of such goods satisfies human need, we are mistaken. Instead our ‘real’ wealth is maintained through dwelling in situations of intrinsic value, because this satisfies a ‘real’ need humans beings have. Thus: Human nature may be such that with increased maturity187 a human need increases to protect the richness and diversity of life for its own sake. Consequently, what is useless in a narrow way may be useful in a wider sense, namely satisfying a human need. The protection of nature for its own sake would be a good example of this.188

186

Naess writes that ‘To “only look at” nature is extremely peculiar behaviour. Experiencing of an environment happens by doing something in it, by living in it, meditating, and acting’ (1989: 63). See also Naess, 1984a : 268.

187

The idea that this need will increase with ‘increased maturity’ is entirely consistent with Naess's philosophy of developmental psychology (see Humphrey, 2000 ).

188

1989b : 177.

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and: ‘Biophilia’ would entail that ‘being in tune with nature’ is a sign of health that can offer a hard, objective reference into the arena of ethical debate. The ‘moral’ is then not far behind. Environmentalists are engaged in the moral exercise of preserving the health of human individuals.189 So, in seeking the preservation of non-human nature, ecocentrists are happily also looking to serve human interests at the same time. Once we understand our requirement to live in situations of ‘life quality’, we will see that the preservation of ‘free nature’ also provides the conditions under which this interest can be served. What are we to make of this argument? The first problem is that these claims about the human need for ‘free’ nature read as assertion rather than argument. Little supportive evidence is referred to, and there is little in the way of substantive argument. Even if it is not possible for ecocentrists to give us empirically validated support for such a contention, we can at least ask that they try to furnish a plausible analytical account as to why humans might need such contact with free nature in order to develop as ‘fully human’ beings. So, do ecocentrists have any argumentative resources at their disposal which could be used to flesh out such a claim, and show us how preservationism and the protection of human welfare can be reconciled? Two suggestions have been put forward which might fill in the gap in argumentative reasoning, and transform assertion into argument. These are variations on the ‘co-evolution hypothesis’ referred to in the introduction to this chapter. The first of these uses the phenomenon of ‘phylogenetic adjustment’ as a supporting principle. The second is an ‘external context’ argument, which differs from the former approach in that it provides indirect rather than direct support for a human welfare based argument for the preservation of nature. It is to these that we now turn.

The Co-Evolution Hypothesis (1): Phylogenetic Adjustment The ecocentric case that humanity has an objectively ascertainable need for contact with ‘free’ nature is developed from an account of the mutual

189

Partridge, 1996 : 159.

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adaptation which ecocentrists conceive humanity and free nature as having; we can call this the ‘co-evolutionary hypothesis’. Free nature has constituted the evolutionary setting of humankind over millennia, and this fact has consequences when we come to consider the effects of industrial society upon human lives. We are, as a species, capable of creating conditions which make our own survival impossible, according to writers such as Edward Goldsmith. He finds it ‘encouraging’ that ‘a number of our more thoughtful scientists’ have ‘realized’ that: the living brain, after a billion years or so of being shaped by the environment, is suited to it with an accuracy that is both remarkable and profound. C. H. Waddington points to a ‘congruity between our apparatus for acquiring knowledge and the nature of things known’ and suggests that the human mind ‘has been shaped precisely to fit the character of those things with which it has to make contact’. Konrad Lorenz . . . notes the way we experience the outside world, and indeed ‘a priori’ forms of intuition, are ‘organic functions based on physical and even mechanical structures of our senses and of the nervous system’ and these ‘have been adapted by millions of years of evolution. ’190 And, later: As Wes Jackson put it, if man was designed to be an agriculturalist, ‘he would have had longer arms’. If he had been designed by his evolution to be an industrialist, Jackson might have added, he would be a robot with no requirement for a family or a community, no feelings for the natural world, no morals and no emotions. He would also be equipped with a physical constitution that enabled him to feed, with impunity, on devitalized and contaminated food, to drink polluted water and breathe polluted air. It must follow that the optimum environment for man can only be that in which his hunter-gatherer ancestors evolved, one provided by a climax ecosystem. As we transform this environment to satisfy the requirements of economic development or progress, so it satisfies his basic needs ever less satisfactorily.191

190

Goldsmith, 1992 : 72.

191

Ibid. 223. This latter development Goldsmith, following Boyden, labels ‘phylogenetic maladjustment’. The same idea is expressed in his The Great U-turn: De-industrializing Society : 79–82. Note that this is not per se a primitivist argument. One does not have to argue for a return to hunter-gatherer form of human society on the basis of an argument that the environment in which such people existed is the optimum one for humankind. The claim is merely that a ‘climax ecosystem’ constitutes the optimal environment for mankind. On the basis of that, we may think that (a ) possession of sufficient amounts of climax ecosystem to offer humankind contact with it is compatible with more advanced forms of society than the hunter-gatherer, or (b ) to the extent that we face a trade-off, we may be able to combine an environment which is degraded to some degree by this criterion but which is still sufficiently close to being ‘climax’ as to meet the human need for contact with spontaneous nature.

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Rudolf Bahro also gives expression to a version of the co-evolutionary hypothesis when he states that: ‘[I]n reality humanity and the earth have grown together to be one system.’192 Bahro goes on to hold that our forgetfulness of this fact underlies the ‘ecological crisis’ which he contends we now face.193 For McLaughlin ‘evolution provides a single framework for understanding humanity and the rest of nature’.194 City life might ‘appear to be liberation from nature’ but ‘This apparent liberation . . . conceals a deeper dependency on a vast and fragile network of human and natural systems.’195 The obvious question that arises here is that of why we should accept this particular evolutionary story as being particularly compelling. Accounts of the evolution of Homo Sapiens tend to stress an extraordinary adaptability as a, if not the, key to the ‘success’ of the species in colonizing the world. Adaptation to climates varying from arctic tundra to Saharan desert has long been held up as one of humankind's more remarkable achievements. Why should such adaptability not also be demonstrated in an equal ability to live contentedly in environments which are strongly anthropogenic? This would not mean having to refute an empirical claim about concurrent evolution. Clearly any species can only satisfy its needs from the environment is which it exists, and that environment in turn will act as a limiting factor on the needs any species has. Additionally for a reflexive species such as humanity the environment will presumably also shape conceptions of need. This still leaves unanswered the question as to why humanity cannot, at least in some areas, improve on the needs-satisfying potential of natural environments. This may however, be unfair to ecocentrists such as Goldsmith. We are, we might remind ourselves, concerned here with the marriage brokered by ecocentrists between arguments for the preservation of non-human nature and accounts of the fulfilment of human needs, and no more than that. Thus for our purposes the lesson to be learned from the idea of phylogenetic adjustment may not be that urban life is unfulfilling (a claim which for many would appear to be simply untrue) but that some access to ‘free’ nature has to be possible in order for human beings to satisfy certain needs deeply rooted in our evolutionary development. If this is true it might be enough to establish the principle of nature conservation on human needs grounds. The argument from phylogenetic adjustment is

192

Bahro, 1994 : 56.

193

Interestingly, however, Bahro holds that this forgetfulness is itself embedded in our very evolved human natures as insecure hunter-gatherers.

194

McLaughlin, 1993 : 148.

195

Ibid. 71.

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still, however, far too vague as to the question of which human needs are fulfilled by contact with nature to be a useful tool for ecocentrists. ‘Climax ecosystem’ environments, as the (relatively) constant environmental context in which humankind evolved might be ‘optimal’ for us, as Goldsmith suggests. There is however no reason why we should just assume that this is true. All our evolutionary history is able to tell us is that such environments are ones in which we can survive as a species. This is not unimportant, if we have an interest in the continuing survival of our species, but nor does it entail that this environment really is optimal in terms of its ability to satisfy human need. Without a welldeveloped account of what human needs actually entail, ecocentrists do not have the resources to substantiate such a claim. Many people, for example, appear to feel a strong desire to engage with complex human cultural achievements of the sort found only in urban settings. How do we know that such a desire is not a manifestation of a more genuine human need? We require a more specific account as to exactly why contact with ‘free’ nature is held to satisfy a deep human need. The argument considered in the next section seeks to furnish more detail on this account.

The Co-Evolution Hypothesis (2): The External Context Argument A different argument, though one that can also be considered an example of the co-evolution hypothesis, makes the case that one of the important elements that go to make up a minimally decent human life is that it is lived within a context, in terms of some wider pattern. A further, related, claim is that such a context only has the appropriate value for human beings if it itself is non-anthropogenic. We then have to ask what can supply such a non-anthropogenic environment, and the clear answer to this question is held to be ‘nature’. Thus we have here a two-stage rather than one-stage argument, which is held to bring us to the same conclusion as the phylogenetic adjustment argument, that life in a natural context constitutes an important element in human well-being. A version of this ‘external context’ position is put forward by Warwick Fox. In explaining the development of his own ‘non-anthropocentric’ version of transpersonal psychology from earlier anthropocentric versions, he argues that earlier theorists failed to draw out the anti-anthropocentric implications

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of their own work. Thus Abraham Maslow was expounding ‘pure Naess’ when he wrote that we needed a ‘transpersonal, transhuman’ psychology because ‘without the transcendent and the transpersonal, we get sick, violent, and nihilistic, or else hopeless and apathetic. We need something “bigger than we are” to be awed by and to commit ourselves to in a new, naturalistic, empirical, non-churchly sense, perhaps as Thoreau and Whitman, William James and John Dewey did.’196 Maslow's only mistake here, apparently, was in explicitly limiting the sphere of expanded identification to one with ‘all human beings’; thus whilst Fox apparently endorses the idea that we need something ‘bigger than we are’ to identify with, he would not draw the boundaries of the identificational sphere at the human, but instead encompass all of non-human nature. Robert Goodin expresses similar ideas as to possible justifications of a green theory of value in his Green Political Theory. In asking why humans might consider natural processes to be valuable merely because of their ‘naturalness’, he holds that we need: an argument along the following lines. (1) People want to see some sense and pattern to their lives. (2) That requires, in turn, that their lives be set in some larger context. (3) The products of natural processes, untouched as they are by human hands, provides precisely that desired context.197 Although Goodin never explicitly mentions the concept of co-evolution, we have to ask ourselves why we should consider nature ‘precisely’ suitable to provide the ‘larger context’ we apparently want to see in our lives, rather than, say, a strongly anthropogenic context such as a city? Nature would appear to provide a uniquely suitable context to give ‘sense and pattern’ to our lives because it has been precisely such a context for humans during the millennia of our evolution.198 Precisely the same sentiments and ideas provide the framework of Bill McKibben's The End of Nature, a book-length lament of the fact that humans no longer live in a natural world that is ‘bigger’ than they are because the natural environment is increasingly subject to human influence, both intended and unintended. Thus precisely

196

Maslow, in Fox, 1995 : 201. Maslow's work has also, of course, been used to underpin Ronald Inglehart's work on post-materialism.

197

Goodin, 1992 : 37. I do not take Goodin as an ecocentric writer, he is included as he makes a structurally similar argument here to McKibben, who is. Such crossover is unsurprising given that we are dealing with those aspects of ecocentrism that appeal directly to human welfare.

198

Goodin is intersubjectivist rather than objectivist on this point. The claim is that people want sense and pattern in their lives, and that nature is capable of providing this sense and pattern. If either of these claims can be shown to be empirically false then his version of the argument would fall.

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the things that have brought a sense of pattern to people's lives, such as the changing seasons, winter snows, annual monsoons, and other macro-level natural phenomena, are now subject to human induced influence, interruption, and alteration. Because of this they no longer have the power to fulfil the need we have to maintain a sense of pattern to our lives. He tells us that: We have killed off nature—that world entirely independent of us which was here before we arrived and which encircled and supported our human society. There's still something out there, though—if you look out of the window, there's probably a cloud. In the place of old nature rears up a new ‘nature’ of our making. It is like the old nature in that it makes its points through what we think of as natural processes (rain, wind, heat), but it offers none of the consolations—the retreat from the human world, the sense of permanence and even of eternity.199 John O'Neill, in the process of rejecting the idea that our ‘alienation’ from nature in the Hegelian/Marxist sense is something we should consider a problem, articulates a similar notion: The appeal here is to the value wilderness has in virtue of its not bearing the imprint of human activity. Wilderness, empty mountains, the stars at night, the complex behaviour of non-human living things—all have value as objects of contemplation in part in virtue of their lacking any human significance. Their indifference to our interests, concerns and projects, together with the absence in them of any signs of human presence, is a source of their value. We value the non-human world because we do not want to see in everything the mirroring of human powers or possibilities for human activity.200 What exponents of both the ‘phylogenetic adjustment’ and the ‘context’ arguments are trying to provide is a convincing argument to the effect that humans are psychologically, as well as physiologically adapted to life in which they have contact with spontaneous nature. Thus it is an argument that human lives will go better if people are living in an environment to which they are adjusted by evolutionary development, compared with one in which they are not so adjusted. What sort of weight can be placed upon such arguments? Obviously, the empirical aspects of these questions loom large in any judgement of the validity of these propositions. How would we set about testing the hypothesis that human beings benefit from leading a life in the ‘context of external nature’? Whatever the answers to that may be, at this level we can at least tackle the question of the plausibility of such

199

McKibben, 1990 : 88.

200

O'Neill, 1994 : 27.

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generalizations, and the logical consistency of these arguments. These particular claims cannot be dismissed out of hand. The first claim that human lives go better if lived in a context that transcends the human; that this gives human beings a sense of place in the world, and that this endows their lives with some sort of pattern or meaning may just be true. However, even if we assume, arguenda, that it is, difficulties remain in tying this to a nature preservation argument. What may still be open to debate is the question of exactly what phenomena might be considered able to provide such a context. That is to say that in the two-stage version of the argument, the second stage may be questionable even if we accept the first part.201 We can ask two questions about this second stage: first, at just what level beyond the merely ‘personal’ can we expect an individual life to be endowed with ‘context’? Second, even if this context has to be provided by something beyond the human, is ‘nature’ either the only, or the best, candidate to fit this particular bill? If we take the psychological assumption that human lives require a context in order to have some sort of sense and pattern to them, i.e. in order to go ‘better’ in a particular way, does this context itself need, in some way, to transcend the human? One reason why we might want to reject human created environments as a suitable context is simply because they are held to be ‘unnatural’. To reach that stage, however, we have already to have decided that only the ‘natural’ can provide an adequate context. There is surely, however, a prior consideration, which is that the ‘naturalness’ or otherwise of a context may be immaterial, that human created environments, whether designated natural or artificial, are perfectly adequate environments to endow people's lives with the necessary sense of pattern and meaning. Although such environments may not be ‘bigger’ than humanity, in that they do not emanate from something outside of us as a species, nonetheless they are sufficiently ‘bigger’ than the individual human being such that they are contextual in the right sense. We can begin our attempt to ascertain the strength of this objection by asking what, exactly, are held to be the necessary features of this context such that it is rendered a context of the right sort. Goodin is somewhat vague here, but does hold that ‘whatever the source of people's undeniable desire to see some coherence within their lives, the same thing would naturally lead them to want to see some continuity between their inner worlds and the external world’.202 Another hint comes on the following

201

David Miller makes a similar point in relation to Goodin's argument in Miller, 1999 .

202

Goodin, 1992 : 38.

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page, ‘When I join writers like McKibben in saying that we value the products of natural processes precisely because they are the product of something larger than ourselves, I trust that no questions are being begged by the word “larger” . . . for my purposes, it would do equally well to say that the processes in question are things “outside of ourselves”. ’203 They help ‘fix our place in the external world’.204 Now, the things that provide people with a ‘fix’ in relation to the external world, which provide them with a sense of living a coherent and patterned life, presumably vary from individual to individual, but is it reasonable to assume that these things always consist in something ‘beyond’ the human? I would contend that, without a good deal of further evidence, it is far from clear that this is the case. Is it not possible that the paradigmatic element in many people's lives that performs this function is the possession of an economic occupation? Employment in the human created market economy (albeit one ultimately dependent on natural resources) provides a vast number of people with the strongest element of ‘pattern’ in their lives, even to the point that they can resent the degree to which occupations do impose such order. It frequently gives one a particular place to be in at a particular time on a certain number of days of the week, and it lays down how many hours of the day one will remain there. It may also determine standards of excellence in the working life of an individual, particularly if it is a skilled trade or profession, and it will frequently provide the means to participate in other aspects of social life. Other human created aspects of people's lives also come to mind; it may constitute an important part of my identity that I follow a particular football club, that I am a member of a trade union or political party, or even that I regularly drink in a particular public house or live in a particular part of a city. For an individual, it seems reasonable that we might consider a combination of these and many other possible factors to form a potential framework in which an individual might embed himself in order to enjoy a sense of constructive relationship between his own self and the larger world. Another way of stating this might simply be to say that urban lives, lived without any contact with nature, can still be lives which, for the individual, are lived in a context. Furthermore this context may be valued by the individual embedded within it. What pubs, football clubs, and occupations all of course do have in common is that they are human creations. One might want to resist the

203

Ibid. 39. When Goodin here talks of ‘ourselves’, it is not clear whether he referring to each of us as individuals, or ‘ourselves’ as a species. This distinction makes a clear difference with respect to what constitutes the ‘external’.

204

Ibid.

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general line of argument by holding that, although these things can offer some conception of a context in which a human life is lived, this context is impoverished precisely because it lies firmly within the realm of human creation, and is not constituted by something of an ‘external’ (i.e. non-human) nature. This is however, a question begging response if the original contention was merely that ‘people want to see some continuity between their inner worlds and the external world’. If one's inner world is shaped by the very experiences of urban living, then it seems likely that it will exist in close continuity with the ‘external’ urban environment. If this conception of context is impoverished, then what is important are the reasons for this impoverishment, and not the ‘fact’ that life must be lived in a context. Now the claim would have to be that we need to live in a non-anthropogenic context, and the reasons why this has to be nonanthropogenic are what matter. So, have ecocentric authors offered us any such reasons? If we remember McKibben's assertion of the importance of nature, this was based upon the idea that it can provide solace and retreat for human beings. It might be tempting to dismiss this assertion as overly vague and romantic, but I think it is possible to give the idea a sympathetic reconstruction such that it makes a plausible theoretical point. What the human creations discussed above all have in common is that, in providing a sense of pattern to people's lives, they also embed people in interpersonal relationships with other people. All activities based around human created institutions do this to some extent, even if the interpersonal relationships are in themselves actually rather impersonal and anonymous. Thus the market orientated activities of production and consumption entail interpersonal relationships between employee and employer, buyer and seller, and social activities only have the meaning that they do precisely because they entail some sort of social relationship. It does appear that if we need to escape periodically from this world of interpersonal relationships then perhaps we do require contact with something that is ‘outside the human’.205 The question we now have to ask is whether there is any particular reason that ‘nature’ should paradigmatically fit this particular bill. One reason we have to ask this is that traditionally religion has also been perceived as performing a very similar function. When people have felt the need to obtain solace and comfort from the cares of the human world they

205

From the diaries and other writings of the likes of Muir, Whitman, and Thoreau we at least know that some people have felt precisely such a need, and furthermore have sought to satisfy it through contact with spontaneous nature. The extent to which we can generalize the claim that people feel such a need would again be subject to empirical evidence.

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have often sought it in their religion and in their God(s), or at least in a creationist myth that sets human life within an extra-human story.206 Thus even if Goodin and McKibben are right when they claim that nature can provide precisely the context necessary to provide such solace and comfort, if it is not the only thing that can then the suggestion that the argument provides a sufficient basis for a political imposition of preservationist policies based upon a green theory of value appears doubtful. If humans do require solace from the everyday world, and this can be provided as well by religion, meditation, some other spiritual wellspring, or even by contemplating the stars in relation to Earth as it can be by free nature, then we seem to require yet further arguments to specifically ground a value-based argument for the preservation of non-human spontaneous nature. So, the strongest ‘context’ claim that we appear to be able to make on behalf of spontaneous nature is that it can provide, in and of itself, one of the avenues by which people can satisfy a human need for escape from the world of interhuman relationships. It constitutes one way, but only one way, of giving human lives a context of the sort demanded by a Goodin or a McKibben.207 This, as it stands, might be enough to provide a basis for an argument for public policy decisions to preserve areas of spontaneous nature (i.e. provide wilderness parks, etc.) on the basis of a ‘human needs’ argument (although this particular need could not be plausibly attributed to all human beings, even when the more general ‘need for context’ argument is accepted). Furthermore, we can also grant that expressions of such need, if need it is, do appear to be manifested on the part of many human beings who join wilderness societies, hiking clubs, nature preservation movements, and so on. One problem, however, is that we now have a conception such that we are dealing with a general human need (to live in an extra-human context) which can or might be satisfied in ways which have

206

It is of course possible to interpret ‘God’ and ‘Nature’ as one and the same thing, as with Spinoza's doctrine of the single substance of the universe, which is a doctrine that some deep ecologists, such as Devall and Sessions, appeal to. However, it is only necessary for the purposes of this argument that God and Nature have been seen as providing different ‘extra-human contexts’ as well.

207

As Goodin and O'Neill cast their arguments in terms of wants, and McKibben in terms of ‘human consolations’, it might be that there is a deliberate reluctance on the part of these authors to cast the context argument in terms of ‘need’ (Goodin has anyway expressed scepticism as to whether a universal prioritization of needs over wants is justified (1988: ch. 2)). One of my exercises in this chapter has been to ask whether the ‘nature as context’ argument can be classed in terms of a need.

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nothing to do with ‘free’ nature. This would appear far too contingent a basis to satisfy ecocentrists, and there clearly remain many difficult problems for the argument. One of the most likely objections will take the following form. Why should we accept the suggestion that such things fulfil a deep, objectively (ecologically) defined human need, rather than merely constituting expressions of taste? Why not just treat the ‘desire to live in a natural context’ as an expressed preference, in itself capable of carrying no more moral weight than a preference for chocolate or fast automobiles? People, says Goodin, ‘want to see some sense of order and pattern to their lives’, but, as suggested above, if it is only for some or a few that such pattern is provided by nature, why should we institute, via the medium of political decision making, publicly provided and authoritatively allocated areas of spontaneous nature? Why should those who choose to satisfy this need in this particular way be so privileged?208 One answer might lie in a consideration of the conditions of supply of this particular good. If ‘free nature’ is decoded as ‘wilderness’, as this latter concept is usually used in North American environmental discourse, then it might be possible to make a stronger case for public provision. The motivation for such provision would itself revolve around a notion of strong irreplaceability.209 Wilderness in this context is generally taken to refer to tracts of land that as yet fail to show the imprimatur of man.210 If this is considered as a resource it is clearly a scarce one, and it is clear that if the criterion of never having shown the imprint of human activity is applied strictly, then as a resource it is irreplaceable if lost. If this is the case, then our concern may well be one of access to this resource in future years.211 Although human society is in the position of constantly having to make choices as to use of scarce resources, the majority of these choices do not involve situational irretrievability. If we express a preference for, for example, railway transport today, and road transport tomorrow, we can, at a cost, replace all our railways with roads, and should our preferences

208

See Miller, 1999 , for an alternative view on this question.

209

For a more comprehensive account of this concept, see the Conclusion.

210

The concept of ‘wilderness’ is of course a human construction, and it is not clear that any ‘wilderness’ in this strong sense remains in the world, or even whether we could overcome the epistemological barriers to knowing whether an area of land bore the imprint, in some way, of human activity or not.

211

At this point one might invoke a concern for the preferences of future generations, but such an argument has problems of its own and is not here necessary. When considering the problem of irreplaceability one merely has to be concerned with the possible preferences of the present generation at time as against the preferences of t+1 this same generation at earlier time . t

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change back, we can at a further cost return to railways. There will clearly be an irreplaceable element to the cost of doing this in terms of energy consumption etc., but that does seem to constitute a different order of problem from that of wilderness. If we express a preference for ‘no wilderness’ tomorrow, and turn all tracts of wilderness into farms and cities, but then express a preference for wilderness again the following day, we can clearly never going back to possessing tracts of land which have never shown the imprimatur of man, we cannot create authentic wilderness, only something that looks like it. Should we at least want to allow that wilderness may satisfy a human need in the way that ecocentrists claim, this might be enough to generate an obligation to conserve remaining tracts of wilderness212 (a similar argument might be made for the preservation of species). To put this another way, the costs in both cases may be irreplaceable, but the situation in the roads and railways case is not irretrievable, whereas in the second it is. It is this irreplaceability that entails situational irretrievability that I want to call ‘strong’ irreplaceability. As an argument for publicly mandated nature preservation, however, this is clearly still weak, contingent, and highly problematic. If some kind of ‘created’ wilderness does not satisfy ecocentrists' criteria of acceptability, then they would be left defending only fragments of ‘genuine’ wilderness from human encroachment. What of the vast tracts of the world (including almost the whole of Europe) where ‘nature’ has been tamed for so many thousands of years that very little of the landscape could be said to consist in ‘wilderness’? Would this make the countryside of Europe valueless in terms of the benefits it can bring humans? If so why should we care what happens to this land? Yet if we argue that human interests can be served well enough by converting some of this land ‘back’ to something like ‘free nature’, then why should we care about the authenticity of ‘genuine’ wilderness with which, presumably, we could do the same (i.e. the concern with irreplaceability would no longer hold). It is precisely these sorts of problems which drive ecocentrists to grounding arguments for the preservation of nature in something beyond identifiable human interests, and it is worth reminding ourselves at this point that we are dealing here with supplementary, yet still important, arguments from ecocentrists as to why, in addition to free-standing reasons for protecting nature, there are also reasons revolving around the claim that the preservation of non-human nature serves human interests. Thus

212

There is some literature that deals with the ethics of authenticity and nature restoration. See e.g. Elliot, 1995 , 1997 ; Katz, 1992 ; Light and Higgs, 1996 .

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rendering ecocentric and human interest arguments compatible. We have seen that although there may be a certain amount of plausibility to this claim, if certain psychological assumptions are granted, it seems unlikely that these arguments could of themselves justify extensive public policies for the preservation of non-human nature on the sort of scale ecocentrists want to see.213

Ecocentrism and Perfectionism This chapter has considered ecocentric arguments that serve to link demands for the preservation of non-human nature with conceptions of human need. By their nature, then, these arguments are concerned with the conditions necessary for an (at least) minimally decent human life. Life lived outside of an appropriate context is deemed, if not less-than-human, then at least less than adequate, in that needs remain unmet. There are other ecocentric arguments that focus on the best form of human life, rather than the at least minimally decent. The most widely known of these is deep ecology's account of ‘Self-realization’ as development to a full, mature state of human psychological well-being. As Arne Naess says of the version of Self-realization embedded in Ecosophy T, ‘In the systematisation of Ecosophy T, the term “self-realization” is used to indicate a kind of perfection. It is conceived as a process, but also as an ultimate goal.’214 Deep Ecology, best considered as a sub-class of ecocentric argument, is constructed around two key themes, intrinsic value in nature and ecological Self-realization.215 The first of these factors is more general in ecocentric literature and has been considered in relation to autopoiesis. The second is more distinctively associated with deep ecology. I have published an extensive critique of the Self-realization thesis in deep ecology elsewhere216 and will therefore here offer only a very condensed account of why I believe this is not a useful avenue to explore in terms of possible justifications for nature preservation as a political policy. Deep ecological Self-realization consists in expanding the sense of self from the corporeal individual (self) to a far broader identification with

213

On the question of the scale of nature preservation implied by deep ecology see Devall and Sessions, 1984 .

214

Naess, 1989b : 84.

215

A third theme, ‘deep questioning’ is sometimes (untenably) suggested as a distinguishing feature of deep ecology.

216

See Humphrey, 2000 .

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‘all life’ (Self). As a form of human consciousness it is based upon the same ecological metaphysic of interrelatedness that ecocentrism more generally employs. It seeks to dissolve any sense of hard and fast boundaries between self and other, through such notions as ‘soft boundaries’217 and ‘relative autonomy’218 without losing the individual in an ‘ocean of organic and mystic views’.219 This sense of common identity in turn fosters the perception of an identity of interests with the rest of nature such that we ‘spontaneously react to their interests as if they were our own’.220 One consequence of this form of consciousness is that actions in defence of the environment against human encroachments become acts of Self (rather than self) defence.221 It acts as both a legitimation for, and motivation for, direct actions such as monkeywrenching and ecotage. The Self-realization thesis, as Warwick Fox acknowledges, operates in the realm of psychology rather than ethics (indeed de-Shalit suggests that its adherents are more concerned with salvation of the human psyche than they are with ecology222). In fact the deep ecologists who subscribe to the thesis take the psychology either to (a) render ethics superfluous, or (b) to render the ethics fully determined by the psychological state.223 Herein lies the fundamental problem with Self-realization as a possible grounding for nature preservation. It demands a particular conception of the good (in its case a psychological condition) be recognized as the ‘most mature’ and ‘fully human’ form of life. Furthermore this psychological condition is taken to entail an attitude to, and actions in relation to, the rest of the world. However, if we think ‘it really is a matter of importance, not only what men do, but also what manner of men they are that do it’,224 then there are reasons to be highly sceptical of deep ecological Self-realization. The problem with promoting Self-realization to a ‘top norm’ as Naess puts it, is nicely articulated by Joseph Raz: The autonomous person is the one who makes his own life and he may choose the path of self-realization or reject it. Nor is autonomy a precondition of self-realization, for one can stumble into a life of self-realization or be manipulated into it or reach it in some other way which is inconsistent with autonomy. One

217

Eckersley, 1992 : 54.

218

Fox, 1995 : 223.

219

Naess, 1989b : 165.

220

Naess, 1990 : 187.

221

See Devall, 1988 : 59; Devall and Sessions, 1985 : 82; Mathews, 1991 : 354; Aitchtey, 1993 : 22; Fox, 1995 : 217.

222

De-Shalit, 2000 : 48.

223

For these views see Fox, 1995 : 217; McLaughlin, 1993 , ch. 9; Eckersley, 1992 : 62; Rothenberg, 1996 : 261; Rothenberg, Introduction to Naess, 1989b : 2; Naess, 1993a : 71.

224

One would now of course want to replace ‘men’ with ‘people’ (the quote is from J. S. Mill, On Liberalism ).

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cannot deny this last claim on the ground that one of the capacities one has to develop is that of choosing one's own life. For this and any other capacity can be developed by simulation and deceit, i.e. by misleading the person to believe that he controls his own destiny . . . One is not autonomous if one cannot choose a life of self-realization, nor is one autonomous if one cannot reject this ideal.225 Such a critique may seem to prejudge the value of the life chosen from within, but one does not have to be committed to valuing autonomy above all else to share intuitive qualms about the value of living a life of self-realization into which one has ‘stumbled’ or ‘been manipulated’.226 Ultimately deep ecological Self-realization is not an ethical theory, and values little, if at all, the ability of human beings to make choices about how to live their lives. It thus does not merit extensive discussion in a book that is precisely about the ethics of nature preservation and its relation to human life.

Conclusion We have seen in this section that the ecocentric conception of humanity conceives of us as a species with an objectively definable set of needs. This set is taken to include either a need for contact with, or an active life in, spontaneous nature, or alternatively the need to give some coherence and pattern to our lives through being embedded in some wider context, of which nature is taken to be the paradigmatically good example. The attempt to construct an ecocentric argument (or one at least compatible with ecocentrism) that nature preservation fulfils a deep seated human need has been problematic in a number of respects. First, ecocentrists, perhaps because this constitutes the subordinate strand in their argument, have been less than systematic in developing the idea that our conception of human need requires revision and simplification. As a claim about humanity this merely raises a whole set of questions as to what human beings really can be said to need. Do we have a universal, objectively identifiable set of needs in common? Or do we, as individuals, have to judge for ourselves what we need, beyond certain goods essential for biological

225

Raz, 1986 : 375–6.

226

Some of Naess's comments on education suggest a willingness to value Self-realization above developing the capacity for autonomy. See e.g. Naess, 1993a : 101.

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functioning? Unless ecocentrists begin to answer these questions, this claim will never appear to be more than a mere appendage, a marginal element to their thought. Furthermore, to the extent that this gives the appearance that ecocentrists do not take the question of human need seriously, it will give some leverage to the criticisms of ecocentrism by humanist ecologists such as Bookchin to the effect that human welfare is not treated seriously therein. As to the far more specific claim that a human need is fulfilled through contact with nature or through having nature as a context within which to live a life, this idea has undergone more thorough development. As it seeks to give a specific grounding for arguments to preserve nature this should not be surprising—it is far more central to ecocentric ideals. As we have seen, the ‘context argument’ does offer some hope of offering rational, human interest based justification for preserving areas of non-human nature, but not unproblematically. In particular, to the extent that phenomena other than non-human nature are able to fulfil the ‘context’ function, then it is not clear that we should treat this nature as something of value to all human beings. Rather, it begins to resemble a preferred context for certain human beings, and this makes the justification of politically mandated provision more difficult to justify on humaninterest grounds. I will, however, return to this problem in the Conclusion of this book, and suggest that the context argument, when combined with an argument from strong irreplaceability, can be used to articulate reasons for weighing preservationist considerations heavily in the environmental decision making process. These reasons will, however, still presumably seem too contingent and conditional for ecocentric theorists to accept. It would seem, then, that to have any hope of making a convincing case for the political preservation of non-human nature on the sort of scale they want to see, ecocentrists do need additional arguments. Approaches such as that grounded in autopoiesis, to the effect that nature should be preserved because it itself is morally worthy of such preservation, constitutes one example of such additional argument. It is a fundamental contention of this book that such ecocentric manoeuvres fail to remove contingency from environmental politics. Ecocentrists however, are not of course the only thinkers to put forward human-interest based arguments for nature preservation. Precisely where ‘humanist’ and ecocentric ecologists part company is in the humanists' refusal to accept that human-interest based arguments are insufficient in this regard. Humanist ecologists have their own array of human-centred

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arguments for nature preservation. I will turn, in the next chapter, to one long-standing attempt to articulate precisely a ‘new humanism’ that claims to be capable of reconciling human and non-human nature. This is the school of ‘social ecology’ as articulated by (most famously) Murray Bookchin, as well as John Clark, Janet Biehl, and others. The questions we ask of such humanist ideologies will be much the same as those asked of the human-centred elements in ecocentrism. How are they held to serve the interests of human beings? And in what way, and how effectively, do they impose demands for the preservation of non-human nature?

3 Dichotomy and Distortion: The Mutual Introduction In the last chapter we analysed ecocentric conceptions of human need, flourishing, and desirable forms of interaction between humanity and non-human nature. From this analysis it was apparent that there is a strong ‘humanist’ element to ecocentrism, in that it has a partially developed conception of human need and human flourishing, and an account of how these are best fulfilled. This conception of human need satisfaction and human good is strongly coloured by ecocentrism's ontological picture, and these conceptions are grounded in the alleged existential unity of human and non-human nature. I want, now, to concentrate on the criticisms of these ideas generated from within the political-philosophical ecology movement. We are thus dealing with a related set of ideas, generated by thinkers who themselves share certain motivations grounded in ecological concerns. The ideas these theorists have developed are intended to articulate a system of beliefs and an ethics by which human beings could both exist in ‘harmony’ with non-human nature and also live a life that is rich in terms of the development of human potential or the satisfaction of human needs. At a very general level, this is the aim of all political-ecological thinkers, yet ecocentrism and deep ecology have been trenchantly criticized from within the ecology movement. Why so? As we shall see, such criticism has focused upon a range of specific points, but the unifying idea behind the majority of this criticism has been concern over the apparent turn away from humanism, which is held to be (by both proponents and critics) at the heart of ecocentrism. Coupled with this critique have been attempts on the part of these thinkers to generate a humanist (sometimes labelled ‘new humanist’) alternative to

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ecocentrism, i.e. an ecological political theory which restructures the human/nature relationship and offers convincing reasons for the preservation of non-human nature, but does not stray from the path of a humanist ethics. Why, when all these thinkers are in general terms ‘batting for the same side’ has battle broken out over the presuppositions, nature, and effects of different theories about the human/nature relationship? How is this battle manifested? Furthermore, although this argument is often cast in somewhat hyperbolic, personalized, and rhetorical terms, can we distil from it points of genuine concern for theory building in political ecology? Which criticisms of ecocentrism appear well founded, and how do the humanist alternatives fare when similar critical analyses are applied to them? In this and the following chapter I will consider two broadly ‘humanist’ versions of political ecology. With each I will examine the critique of ecocentrism put forward, and the alternative political ecology on offer, from which we will build up a morphological picture of both alternative ideational systems. This analysis of the ideational morphology of competing green theories will allow us to examine how, exactly, that which is criticized in ecocentric literature is reconstructed in the ‘humanist’ accounts. We shall see that a simple anthropocentric–ecocentric dichotomy is insufficient to capture the nuanced differences in accounts of human flourishing and human-interest based arguments for nature preservation, and that actually what we are dealing with is a variety of humanisms, some of which are articulated from within an ecocentric account, some of which are intended to stand alone as foundations for humanist ecologism. We may find one set of humanist arguments more appealing than another, but what we are not faced with is a choice between humanism and something else. The first humanist political ecology I will examine is the (politically) anarchistic doctrine of ‘Social Ecology’, as developed mainly by Murray Bookchin, but also by followers such as John Clark and Janet Biehl. Any assessment of ‘Social Ecology’ will inevitably focus mainly upon Bookchin's own oeuvre. He coined the term and started the ‘movement’, but, although social ecology has a journal of its own227 there is not yet a great deal in the way of substantive or original theoretical work in social ecology that does not emanate from Bookchin himself.228 He has engaged in

227

Democracy and Nature (formerly Society and Nature ).

228

This situation is now beginning to change, as John Clark in particular seeks to take social ecology in new directions (see Clark, 1997 ). Bookchin seems prepared to go to some lengths to protect the creed from heresy. John Clark's attempts to foster a theoretical rapprochement between deep and social ecology led to a personal denunciation by Bookchin and removal from the editorial board of Democracy and Nature. On this see Light, 1997 .

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the most sustained and comprehensive polemic with advocates of deep ecology, and a systematic critique of ecocentrism (or ‘biocentrism’ as he labels it) can be reconstructed from his work once the rhetoric and polemical fireworks have been stripped away. As we shall see, he argues that the conventional opposition of ‘anthropocentrism v. biocentrism’ has to be overcome in the politics of a ‘new humanism’. In this new humanism, despite the acceptance of the idea of an ontological divide between humanity and nature, the conceptualized dualism between these two elements is allegedly transcended. In this aim I would argue that Bookchin is right, and had he successfully followed this agenda then this book might already have been written. However, rather than incorporate biocentrism into a synthesis with humanist arguments, Bookchin and social ecologists have engaged in a sustained polemic against ecocentrism, describing it as ‘anti-humanist’ and portraying it as a pernicious influence on the ecology movement. In the process social ecology has developed an important critique of deep ecology, which will be examined below. The problem with this critique, however, is that the humanist elements in ecocentrism are resolutely ignored, and the potential for a genuine synthesis of humanist and ecocentric principles stands dissipated.

Social Ecology (1): The Critique of Ecocentrism Murray Bookchin has maintained a steady attack upon the tenets of ecocentrism from the mid-1980s onwards.229 As we shall see, he construes it as a socially naïve set of mystificatory ideas which apportions ‘blame’ for ecological problems indiscriminately and which denigrates the potential human beings have to act in a rational, constructive manner. Despite such grave ideological defects, however, deep ecology and biocentrism are seen by Bookchin to have been worryingly influential in terms of their effect upon the way that ecological thinking has been popularized, and are for this reason worth taking seriously. The propagation of biocentric views, he writes, ‘has raised serious questions about where the ecology movement is

229

Beginning, as far as I am aware, with ‘Social Ecology versus “Deep Ecology”’, Green Perspectives , Summer, 1987: 2. A number of authors have suggested that Bookchin is almost congenitally confrontational and polemical in his writings. See e.g. Kovel, 1997 , and Purchase, 1993 . The latter contends that Bookchin has an ‘insatiable appetite for controversy’.

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going and the kind of influence it can have’.230 It can take what he interprets as a socially progressive, rational form, infused with hope for a transcendence of the traditionally conceived opposition between humanity and nature. Or, it might take any one of a number of reactionary, mystificatory forms, in which the human ability to exert reason is denigrated and a ‘wilderness cult’ elevates ‘Nature’ to ‘sacred’ status. Bookchin is ‘deeply disturbed’ by what he calls a new ‘pseudo-radical’ literature that ‘“disenchants” us with our humanity, indeed, that summons us to regard ourselves as an ugly, destructive excrescence of natural evolution’.231 Now, this may not seem a credo that, prima facie, one would expect to carry much persuasive force with humanity, but it has ‘sedimented into our culture’.232 Indeed: A multitude of intuitions and irrational belief systems are returning to the foreground in the closing years of this century . . . these belief systems have grave implications for the future of modern society and the way people view reality. That deep ecology has contributed to this regressive trend with hortatory claims that are strictly subjective, even personalistic, and often reactionary cannot be ignored—and must be seriously probed.233 Why, on Bookchin's analysis, has this situation arisen? Why the turn away from reason? According to Bookchin the biggest single factor was the decline in the New Left after the 1960s. Elements which had always existed in 1960s counter-culture—such as a fascination with Asian mysticism—but had been weighed down with a rationalistic leftwing political ballast exploded freely on to the political scene with the withering away of New Left ideology.234 The social analysis brought to 1960s counter-culture by the New Left faded away, leaving a mystical, potentially antihumanist politics of the person in its place. Now, whether deep ecology really did emerge into an ideological vacuum that had opened up on the libertarian left, or whether it emerged for other reasons, it has certainly been seen as having become an influential underpinning for important elements in green political thought.235 For Bookchin this influence is more than merely unfortunate, it is politically dangerous as well as philosophically misguided. As we will see, in the ideological clash between social ecology and deep ecology, Bookchin

230

Bookchin, 1994 : 3.

231

Bookchin, 1995b : 3.

232

Ibid. 93.

233

Ibid. 98.

234

See ibid. 92. A similar argument about the ‘dislocation’ of the New Left opening an ideological space for ecological politics is made by Stavrakakis (2000).

235

See e.g. Dobson, 1989 : 41. Also Barry, 1993 : 43: ‘Deep ecology has exerted a disproportionate influence on the development of green politics.’

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insists that deep ecology has some of its fundamental concepts ‘wrong’. That is, Bookchin seeks to give reasons as to why social ecology's decontestations of certain concepts fundamental to political-ecological discourse, in particular ‘nature’, should be privileged over the decontestations offered by ecocentrists. These reasons have everything to do with the ways in which these concepts support and help determine the nature of other concepts in the morphological structures of what have become, in effect, rival green ideologies. ‘Nature’ is a reasonable place to start the analysis of social ecologism's conceptual critique of deep ecology. Beginning anywhere within the morphological structure will be an arbitrary act to some extent, as there is no ‘beginning’ or ‘end’ to the structure, but ‘nature’ is a core component of both ideologies, and a good deal of the contestation as to the meaning of other concepts is coloured by this fundamental disagreement as to the ‘nature of nature’.236 Bookchin has more than once stressed the importance of this question. Perhaps the biggest question that all wings of the radical ecology movement must satisfactorily answer is just what do we mean by ‘nature’. If we are committed to defending nature, it is important to clearly understand what we mean by this. Is nature, the real world, essentially the remnants of the Earth's prehuman and pristine biosphere that has now been vastly reduced and poisoned by the ‘alien’ presence of the human species? Is nature what we see when we look out on an unpeopled vista from a mountain? . . . Or is nature much broader in meaning? Is nature an evolutionary process which is cumulative and which includes human beings?237 Identifying the natural world as ‘wilderness’ or as a transcendental ‘Cosmos’ . . . does more than cloak dire social imperatives with a mystical pseudo-reality. It actually intensifies our alienation from the natural world, despite the fact that many deep ecology acolytes regard this very alienation as the source of our social problems.238 In the above passages, stressing the importance of the way in which ‘nature’ is decontested for ecological ideologies, Bookchin also touches upon the two ways in which, for him, this concept is actually decontested in deep ecology. That is, either in a cosmological sense, or as ‘wilderness’.

236

There is of course a long-standing ‘realist–constructionist’ debate regarding how we should understand nature, which I do not refer to directly here. This is because the discussion between ecocentrists and social ecologists takes place firmly within the ‘realist’ camp. For some notable contributions to the former literature see Evernden (1992 ), Soper (1995 ), Rolston (1997 ), and Vogel (1996 ).

237

Bookchin, in Chase, 1991 : 32.

238

Bookchin, 1994 : 16.

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Bookchin holds that there is some conceptual confusion in deep ecology, in that ‘nature’ is at times held to be one thing, at times another, and that these are clearly incompatible accounts. He claims that for deep ecologists nature usually ‘carries the very narrow and particular connotation “wilderness”’.239 However, given the importance deep ecologists attach to metaphysics as a determinant of, or substitute for, ethics, any reading of deep ecology texts will show that they are more likely to discuss nature in the ‘Cosmos’ sense than they are in the ‘wilderness’ sense. Indeed in the interests of conceptual clarity we should distinguish two different ecocentric concepts: ‘nature’ on the one hand, and ‘free nature’ on the other. These accord with Bookchin's distinction between ‘Cosmos’ and ‘wilderness’ respectively, but the fact that ecocentrists frequently prefix references to the second type of nature as ‘free’ indicates that the conceptual confusion between these two conceptions of nature that Bookchin implies is not (or at least not necessarily) prevalent in ecocentric thinking.240 This point might be somewhat otiose, as for Bookchin there are problems with both accounts of nature anyway; as we have seen they are held to intensify our (human) alienation from nature. Why this is meant to be the case is perhaps rather more obvious with ‘nature as wilderness’ than with ‘nature as cosmos’. To say that nature is being decoded as ‘wilderness’ is rather unilluminating unless we know what ‘wilderness’ is held to consist in. For deep ecologists the key element here is authenticity. Wilderness areas are those that do not show in any significant fashion the impact of human activity and thus constitute ‘free nature’ in an ‘authentic’ sense. Deep ecologists frequently call for a significant increase in the coverage of the earth by such ‘wild’ areas. For example Devall and Sessions suggest that a ‘management implication’ of deep ecology is that ‘vast areas of the Earth should be “left wild” or restored to a natural self-organizing ecosystem state’.241 For Bookchin, we have here an inadequate conception of what nature is, and this leads to an equally inadequate conception of the human/nature relationship. What are the results of ‘privileging’ this notion of wilderness as constituting nature itself (or indeed as a privileged ‘free’ nature)? It leads to a conceptual separation of ‘humanity’ on the one hand, and ‘nature’ on the other. If nature is what is being valued and ‘defended’, then what it is being defended ‘against’ is human beings: To conceptually separate human beings and society from nature by viewing humanity as an inherently unnatural force in the world leads, philosophically,

239

Bookchin, 1991 : xx.

240

E.g. Naess, 1988a : 29.

241

Devall and Sessions, 1984 : 305.

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either to anti-nature ‘anthropocentrism’ or a misanthropic aversion to the human species . . . Even Arne Naess admits that many deep ecologists ‘talk as if they look upon humans as intruders in wonderful nature.’242 In its privileging of wilderness deep ecology is ‘merely mystical’ as it fails to give reasons as to why wilderness should be privileged in this way (a claim that ecocentrists might challenge, as should be clear from the previous chapters). Furthermore in the veneration of only that which fails to show the imprint of man we see the beginnings of ecocentrism's alleged potential for misanthropy and anti-humanism.243 The positive appraisal of only that which is independent of human influence entails the ‘deprecation of human intervention into nature as such. A blanket assumption exists among many biocentrists that human involvement in the natural world is generally bad.’244 With such complete mistrust of human activity with respect to non-human nature, all human action in this sphere becomes suspect, and human beings are made strangers in respect of the natural world. Deep ecologists develop a ‘Manichean mentality’ in this regard, by which ‘human activity is cast as evil in sharp, dualistic terms that allow for no alternatives but biocentricity or anthropocentricity’.245 This sets up a dynamic of human alienation from ‘nature’ in deep ecology whereby the value of human rationality, of our ability to know, is brought directly into question. Only human beings have the capacity to destroy ‘nature’ cast in these terms, indeed we are the only creatures that are not part of wilderness, and our abilities in this regard indicate an ability, built in turn upon our capacity to reason, for us to place ourselves ‘outside’ of nature. ‘In deep ecology's derogation of the social, the alienation of humans from the natural world (read: wilderness) was originally caused by human subjectivity.’246 Thus reason, which has long been conceived as humanity's crowning glory, as that which placed us above the rest of nature, remains in deep ecology as that which still sets us apart from nature, but now sets us below it, raising what Bookchin calls ‘first’ nature to ‘sacrosanct’ status. This may all be true of deep ecology if it really does privilege ‘wilderness’ as constituting ‘nature’ itself, but this, of course, as anybody reading

242

Bookchin, in Chase, 1991 : 32.

243

For Bookchin misanthropy does not necessarily consist in the hatred of human beings, although that would certainly constitute an example. It also lies in the denigration of human potentialities and ability to reason and problem-solve.

244

Bookchin, 1994 : 39. Emphasis in original.

245

Bookchin, 1990 : 272. I will go on to suggest that Bookchin's work does little to overcome such dualistic framing.

246

Bookchin, 1994 : 4.

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this far will realize, is not an unproblematic claim. Deep ecologists may well reject such an interpretation of their decontestation of the concept of nature as simplistic or merely wrong. A considerable part of the first two chapters of this book were devoted to expounding the ecocentric view of the unity of humanity and nature, indeed the unity of all life and/or existence. In fact, in Chapter 1 we saw Murray Bookchin insisting on the existence of an ontological divide between humanity and nature, and deep ecocentrists such as Eckersley and Fox denying it. Eckersley expresses her perplexity at Bookchin's characterization of the ecocentric position: The central concern of such deep ecologists as Arne Naess, Bill Devall, George Sessions, Warwick Fox and Alan Drengson is to cultivate a sense of identification with nature, a sense of interdependence and interconnectedness, in short, a sense of empathy for the fate of other life forms. This can hardly be interpreted as an approach that ‘reifies’ nature and sets it apart from humanity.247 Bookchin's own position will become clear in the process of analysis, but in short he does indeed affirm the idea of the ‘ontological divide’, but believes it is precisely through the use of our unique rational faculties that humanity can transcend the human/nature dualism. In addition this divide does not set us ‘apart’ from nature, because nature is an evolutionary process, which includes the natural history of the mind. As for his understanding of deep ecology, Bookchin accepts that at the level of ontology, ecocentrists affirm the unity of all existence, but holds that this belief is not manifested (indeed could not be made manifest) when it comes to conceptualizing the human/nature relationship in concrete terms, i.e. in the consideration of human activity in non-human nature. ‘For all their talk about “Humanity's” need or a sense of “Oneness” with a vaguely conceived “Nature”, they are in fact the most committed of dualists in totally misconceiving the place of human beings in the natural world.’248 This ‘misconception’ refers not only to the dualistic opposition set up between ‘free nature’ and humanity. The metaphysical holism of ecocentrism which posits a ‘unity’, somehow defined, between humanity and nature entails its own misconception of the human/nature relationship. That deep ecologists do generally mean ‘all that is’ when they discuss ‘nature’249 without the ‘free’ prefix is reasonably clear, and Naess himself is explicit enough on this, when he says that rather than discussing ‘reality’, or the ‘world’ ‘ecophilosophical thinking proceeds in terms of nature, and

247

Eckersley, 1989a : 111 n.

248

Ibid. 5.

249

Or often ‘Nature’ as if referring to some pantheistic deity.

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humanity's relation to nature’.250 Here ‘nature’ is used as an alternative concept to that of ‘reality’, or ‘the world’, but is intended to convey the same sense of ‘all things’. Mathews is clearly operating in the same vein when discussing nature as a cosmic whole.251 ‘Nature’ in this sense, is clearly intended to articulate a notion of universal existence, of all things, of which humanity is a fully incorporated element that interacts with the non-human part. Given that Bookchin is concerned to overcome a humanity/nature ‘dualism’ and, further, that it was precisely on the grounds that it was ‘resolutely’ dualist that he dismissed the equation of nature with ‘wilderness’, where, for him, lies the fault with this contrasting conception of nature as ‘reality’? Bookchin interprets this ecocentric metaphysic in the same way as Richard Sylvan (see Chapter 1), i.e. as constituting an ‘extreme’ form of holism which does not transcend the dualistic opposition of humanity and nature but rather smothers all notions of otherness in a holistic fog, or as Hegel might have suggested, in ‘a night in which all cows are black’. This for Bookchin constitutes a ‘crude reductionism’ that envisages a ‘“universal oneness” and “interconnectedness” that visualises a “whole” without meaningful differentiations’.252 Yet, if humanity could not differentiate itself from the rest of nature its life would bear no resemblance to human life as we know it. Humans would exist like the Lotus-Eaters, living ‘an unperturbable existence that consists of eating, digesting and defecating, like animals that live on a strictly day-to-day basis’.253 We have already considered Sylvan's critique of deep ecology which is based around the suggestion that it adopts an ‘extreme’ form of holism, and considered the strengths and weaknesses of it. There is no need to rehearse those arguments again here. For all the weaknesses of the ecocentric approach, I do not think any reasonable interpretation of ecocentric texts could come to the conclusion that it seeks to propagate this ‘extreme’ form of holism, even if its language tends that way occasionally. There is sufficient stress on ‘soft boundaries’ and the need to avoid the ‘sea of organicism’ to indicate at least an intention of avoiding such holistic excess. The problem lies rather in the inability of ecocentrists to articulate satisfactorily how the ‘soft’ barriers are drawn and maintained between individual entities and the wholes of which they are elements. However, that ecocentrists have some work to do in terms of ontological philosophy, explaining why the ‘middle way’ metaphysical holism that they adopt does

250

Naess, 1989b : 35.

251

Mathews, 1988 .

252

Bookchin, 1991 : xxi.

253

Ibid. xlvi.

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not result in the dissolution of human individuality into a sea of existence (and we need more than Naess's assertion that this is just ‘somehow’ never the result254) does not entail that such a middle position is untenable. Ecocentrists are also frequently at pains to point out that they do recognize that humanity has certain attributes which are unique in the natural world, (and which thus differentiate humanity) but merely insist that these are not of a kind that would constitute an ‘ontological divide’ that renders humanity more valuable than any other element in the natural world. That human beings have certain responsibilities that no other being does is accepted as an obvious proposition by Naess—‘Humans have special responsibilities because of their capacities at least to pose the problem of the longterm consequences of their behaviour.’255 Indeed Naess might suggest that Bookchin is confusing emphasis with content, because ‘Homo sapiens is in many ways unique. Unique biologically through its brain, unique physically through its hundreds of main, and bewildering manifold of lesser, but not less original, cultures. Such statements are important to make from time to time because environmentalism often, and deep ecology always, underlines what we have in common with other life forms and the ecosphere more generally.’256 Thus deep ecologists accept that human beings possess a number of attributes which are unique by comparison with other natural phenomena, but choose rather to stress the commonalities with these phenomena which they believe are frequently overlooked in conventional ethical discourse. That human beings have unique abilities, including the ability to reason, and that furthermore this entails certain responsibilities towards the rest of the natural world is not a position incompatible with the sort of ‘middle ground’ metaphysics that ecocentrists are attempting to foster. If we accept that deep ecology does not cleave to the ‘extreme’ form of holism suggested by Bookchin and Sylvan, then as an ontology there is no reason to suppose that it destroys all senses of otherness and thus would render the human species passive and quietist. The Self-realization thesis, which is intimately related to ecocentric ontology is, as I suggested at the end of the last chapter, a principle formulated to motivate environmental actions based upon feelings of identification with other life forms, not quietism and passivity. For all its myriad problems in this regard it is not a recipe for complete inaction. Bookchin's claim that deep ecologists embrace a metaphysical picture that holds that, literally, ‘all is one’ is simply a misreading of deep ecology, which renders it far cruder in this regard than it actually is.

254

Naess, 1989b : 173.

255

Naess, 1984a : 269.

256

Naess, 1989b : 169.

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The question now arises: does Bookchin's misreading of ecocentric ontology negate the rest of his critique, given the importance of the differing accounts of ‘nature’ in this discourse? From Bookchin's work we can determine, I would suggest, two further strong objections to ecocentrism, which are not themselves dependent upon his (mis-) reading of ecocentric metaphysics. These objections centre upon two elements. First, the suggestion that the unique attributes of humanity are merely one excellence amongst many fails to accord human rationality the ethical status it requires (and deserves) in order to prevent ecocentrism slipping into anti-humanism. It contrasts strongly with Bookchin's own conception of human rationality as the furthest point so far reached in the unfolding evolution of subjectivity which characterizes nature. These contentions will be examined in the next section. Second, the stress on personal Selfrealization renders the ecological thinking of deep ecology too personalistic and psychological. As an ideology it fails to engage with the social causes of environmental problems, and the question of how different forms of society interact with the non-human natural world. Furthermore (and worse still), because of this failure to give either the analysis or suggested solutions to ecological problems any social content, deep ecology is open to being supplemented by virtually any social theory at all, be it progressive or reactionary, liberal, anarchistic, or fascist. In short, it still operates with an inadequate conception of the human/nature relationship, and none at all of the society/nature relationship. As our concern is with decontestations of ‘humanity’, ‘nature’, and the human/nature relationship, we will focus particularly on the first of these points. Ecocentrists, in accord with their ontological picture in which there is no valuegenerating divide between the human and non-human, do not grant special value to human reason. They may accept that it is a remarkable, indeed unique natural ability, but it is just that, a unique or remarkable ability, and we are not the only entities on earth that can be credited with such unique traits. ‘[O]ur special abilities (e.g. a highly developed consciousness, language and tool making capability) are simply one form of excellence alongside the myriad others (e.g. the navigational skills of birds, the sonar capability and playfulness of dolphins, and the intense sociality of ants) rather than the form of excellence thrown up by evolution.’257 This is the only ‘egalitarian’ interpretation that can be placed upon the inter-species comparison of differing species-specific attributes, any approach that interprets the ability to reason as particularly valuable

257

Eckersley, 1989a : 115.

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treats other species as defective humans. So, ‘just as there are many things that humans have more of or do much better than many other animals, so the reverse is also true . . . the attempt to assimilate animals as inferior humans makes as much sense as “regarding women as defective men who lack penises, or humans as defective sea mammals who lack sonar capability”.’ 258 Other species are merely different from us, we cannot imply any notion of human superiority through the invocation of our ability to reason. Given his own objections to anthropocentrism, why would Bookchin find this ‘biospherically egalitarian’ attitude objectionable? Because when ‘nature’ is conceptualized as an evolutionary process toward greater differentiation and subjectivity, then the human powers of reason are more than just different than, but equivalent to, the specific abilities of other species. In Bookchin's own words: [B]iocentrism, with its downplaying of human potentialities and capabilities as products of evolutionary development barely goes beyond the level of moral piety. Deep ecology tends to see nature not as a development but as a scenic view in which human beings—granted certain ‘unique’ traits—are fixtures in a virginal habitat rather than products of a complex evolution. . . . To regard mind, the very source of the normative arguments so essential to deep ecology itself, as comparable to ‘the navigational skills of birds [etc.]’ . . . flies in the face of all evolutionary experience.259 It is here that the morphological approach to the study of ideologies is particularly useful in explaining differences between these two differing conceptions of rationality. As we have seen, an absolutely crucial core component of both strands of ecologism is the decontestation of the concept ‘nature’. We can now see that from these rival accounts of what nature is, are derived differing decontestations of the adjacent concept of human reason. It might not be immediately apparent that an account of what human reason consists in can be almost directly derived from an account of the ‘nature of nature’. However, the crucial point from Bookchin's perspective is that, stemming from their misguided decontestation of ‘nature’, deep ecologists are unable to grasp the significance, in evolutionary terms, of the emergence of human rationality and what Bookchin calls ‘second nature’. The ecocentric conception of nature as an interconnected, holistic, symbiotic, and non-hierarchical ‘web’ entails a resultant sense of equality. All autopoietic entities or life-forms are mere ‘knots’, or ‘strands’ in this web, and no one strand is intrinsically more valuable than any other. This

258

Fox, 1995 : 15.

259

Bookchin, 1990 : 274.

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results in the conception of ‘biospherical egalitarianism’,260 and the denial of a value-imparting ontological divide. This is, it has to be said, a rather static conception of nature, but it results in the ecocentric account of human reason expounded here. It is taken by ecocentrists as a logical consequence of their ontology that human reason can be no more valuable than any other speciated attribute. Furthermore (although this is a further assumption based on the idea of epistemic limits rather than a deduction about the nature of reason) there is no reason to suppose that this particular species attribute is capable of managing the world, and ecological processes in it, in any ‘rational’ way. Things appear very different when nature is viewed as evolutionary process, and Bookchin's alternative, rather more optimistic conception of human reason will be considered below. What matters for now is the connection he makes in his critique of ecocentrism between this alleged misconception of the status and nature of human reason and the potential antihumanism of the ecocentric outlook. The problem here, as far as Bookchin is concerned, lies with the supposedly ‘egalitarian’ aspect of ecocentrism, its refusal to attach value to the human ability to reason, at least no more value than is attached to the abilities of other species to do whatever it is they do; to draw, in the language of Marx, no axiological distinction between different forms of species-being. Bear in mind that there we are discussing the value of a particular ability, not the value of humanity itself. It is not conceptually incoherent to assert that the possession of a particularly valuable ability does not render the possessor of that ability intrinsically more valuable than other life forms.261 Even if it did, it requires yet a further step of reasoning to get from there to anthropocentrism, whereby not only would human beings be the only possessor of, or possess the greatest amount of, ‘intrinsic value’, but furthermore the appropriate criterion motivating policy making is the instrumental value of different policies to them. Exactly why the ability to reason should be privileged we will come on to in our discussion of social ecology. The question to consider here is why refusal to so privilege it renders ecocentrism vulnerable to the charge of misanthropy. In Bookchin's own work this particular step is not entirely clear, but it appears to proceed along the following lines. Crucially, an

260

Or the rather weaker notion of ‘biospherical impartiality’.

261

For example, it may be disputed, but it is certainly not incoherent, to argue the following: Two human beings are trapped in a burning house, one of whom has a fantastic talent for piano playing, the other of whom is a completely talentless individual. We can only save one. This ability gives us no reason to save the pianist in preference to the other. Both are human beings and thus of equal inherent worth, whatever their differences in natural endowments. This despite the fact that we value one individual's piano playing ability.

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insistence that human reasoning power is merely equivalent to the ability of birds to navigate or dolphins to hunt with sonar is held to entail a corresponding lack of faith in humankind's ability to render any beneficial effects in the world through the use of this reasoning ability. Reason is not set apart from other speciated abilities, and does not endow us with any ability to ‘seize the helm’ of nature. Our reason, insofar as ecocentrists wish to see us use it at all, can tell us no more than that we are dependent upon the non-human natural world for our survival as a species and as individuals, and that therefore we should, as far as possible, ‘let things be’, and seek to make as little environmental impact on the world as we can. We can no more solve the problems created by human activity in the world than any other species could; therefore the only alternative is to stop our environmental impacts insofar as this be achieved. As Eckersley writes ‘Our empathy toward other beings should therefore naturally lead us to practice humility in the face of complexity and to acknowledge how little we know of our rapidly changing and crisis ridden world. The wisest course of action . . . is, wherever practicable, simply to let things be.’262 For Bookchin this amounts to a: deprecation of human potentialities, of the capacity of the human mind and spirit to reach beyond the given reality and conceive—indeed, strive for—a social and ecological dispensation that is creative and cooperative, ethical and visionary. The misanthropic denial of these human potentialities, which permeates mystical and deep ecology, removes the very heart from any truly radical movement.263 A further implication is held to be that when humans are placed upon an egalitarian par with other species, and the value of our capacity to reason is treated in the same way, then problems emerge when we come to consider the treatment of human as against non-human interests, should the two come into conflict. If we refuse to accept that human capacities exist at some ‘higher’ level than the behavioural attributes of other creatures, then we have no more reason for human life to exist, or for us to value its existence, than there are similar reasons to value any other species. We should value the bird for its navigational skills, the dolphin for its sonar, the ant for its ‘intense sociality’, as much as humans for their reason. Once again, however, a more nuanced understanding of the ecocentric account of humanity and its place in nature suggests that Bookchin misunderstands the account of human reason and its perceived consequences

262

Eckersley, 1989a : 116. A desire to ‘let things be’ in this sense does not entail that ecocentrism is quietist in relation to stopping human activities which impact on the environment.

263

Bookchin, 1994 : 18.

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according to ecocentrism. Furthermore an improved understanding of ecocentrism here demonstrates that the ideational distance between ecocentrism and social ecology on this point is not as far as suggested, and that the protagonists' tendencies to operate with a dichotomous anthropocentric–ecocentric framework distorts their interpretation of the conceptual structures of the rival ideology. First, Bookchin appears to confuse an axiological statement about human reason with an empirical claim about what human reason is capable of. That is, the claims being made above by both Eckersley and Fox, to the effect that the human ability to reason was just one speciated ability, and did not in itself endow human beings with a unique value in nature, entails no claim in itself that humans do not have the potential to ‘reach beyond a given reality’ and strive for ‘an ecological dispensation’. The former in no way entails the latter as a matter of logic. One could hold that human beings were perfectly capable of controlling nature through reason to the nth degree, and of creating an ecological paradise on Earth, and still not hold that this created an axiological divide between human and non-human nature. Now of course ecocentrists do not believe this, but their empirical claims about the relationship between reason and nature are distinct from their axiology. What ecocentrists do stress is that reason may never, or even will never, be able to grasp the complexities of nature sufficiently for us to be able to control it. The extraordinary complexity of nature, with multiple feedback loops operating over variable lengths of time make such an ambition hubristic. Indeed if our reason tells us anything it should tell us this, and this is what grounds our ‘humility’ in the face of complexity, not any axiological assertions. To hold, in this way, that reason can make statements about the limits of reason does not necessarily entail that reason is being denigrated. To argue furthermore that these limits have been ignored in the history of industrial civilization is not to offer the criticism that human societies have been over-rational but rather that they have been insufficiently rational. Indeed this perspective is not far from Bookchin's own view. Bookchin also argues, and again with some justification, that he has been misunderstood by his ecocentric critics, in that they accuse him of wanting humanity to ‘control’ nature, and ‘seize the helm of evolution’, which he has never in fact advocated. The work that represents his main exposition of the principles of social ecology—The Ecology of Freedom—develops comprehensively the idea that the actual domination of nature is impossible, but that the idea and intention of dominating nature develops from the practice, in hierarchical societies, of the domination of one set of human beings by

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another. Bookchin has also said elsewhere that ‘the natural world . . . is much too complex to be “controlled” by human ingenuity, science, and technology’264 and that ‘I also don't believe that humans should ’dominate' nature—the ultimate impossibility of this is a key idea in social ecology'.265 Bookchin also holds that humanity has not developed its relationship with nature along ‘rational’ lines, and that ‘second nature’ has undergone ‘warped’ development,266 something we will come back to in our assessment of social ecology itself. This leaves him holding a position that has broad conceptual similarities with that of the ecocentrists considered above. Human reason is insufficient to render us in ‘control’ of nature. As a result, we have to learn ‘profound respect for the biosphere [and make] a conscious effort to function within its parameters.’267 Furthermore, in both cases this will be done through the development of a new ecological sensibility or ecological consciousness, for the development of which the process of socialization is taken to be crucial. This is not to deny all differences. Bookchin, as we shall see, insists that the human/nature relationship has to be an ethical one, something most deep ecologists would dispute. Nonetheless, if we move away from the simplistic ecocentric—anthropocentric divide, and study what ecocentrism has to say about human beings, we see that in terms of an underlying account of how humans and nature should interact a number of alleged distinctions between ecocentrism and social ecology shrink to vanishing point. Putting aside, for the moment, these flaws in Bookchin's account of ecocentrism, there are for him two serious consequences that follow from the refusal to grant an elevated axiological status to human beings. The first of these consequences is that premature human death becomes morally acceptable, the second is that human intervention in nature comes to be seen as a bad in itself. The first of these is, clearly, a claim about as damning as possible from a conventional ethical viewpoint, so we are obliged to ask what support is offered for this conclusion. Ecocentrism is held to resurrect the old doctrine of Malthusianism, but with a new ‘wrinkle’. Not only are human beings now held (because their reason is not a sufficiently powerful tool to help them escape it) to breed to the limit of the Earth's ‘carrying capacity’, but they are not morally more important

264

In Chase, 1991 : 35.

265

Ibid. 128.

266

Bookchin, 1990 : 258.

267

Ibid. 96. Bookchin here accepts that ecocentrists' attempt to foster a ‘new sensibility’ towards the natural world is not ‘the problem’. It is rather, for him, the way in which they seek to foster this new sensibility that leads him to accuse them of being anti-humanist, irrational, and so on. What I am arguing is that even here, for all the problems with the ecocentric position, Bookchin ignores strong humanistic elements in ecocentric thought because he is operating with a simple humanist v. ecocentric lens.

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(have no greater value) than any other species in the same predicament; thus if it is morally acceptable to let rats, mice, or whatever have their numbers controlled by ‘natural’ factors such as starvation and disease, it ceases to be clear why this should not also be the case for human beings. Indeed to the extent that ‘Gaia’, or the Earth is seen as ‘more basic, more fundamental than our species in isolation’268 then human ‘death may even be biologically desirable in the “cosmic” scheme of things—that is, in order to keep “Gaia” on course and happy’.269 Thus the ‘natural’ checks on population growth become acceptable forms of control. Again, however, Bookchin appears to be losing sight of a distinction that has to be made between an axiological statement about human reason and empirical claims about its scope or abilities. A refusal to grant value privilege to human reason is just not identical to denigrating its empirical abilities to solve problems facing the human race. It certainly does not have to entail a belief that human beings are incapable of preventing themselves from breeding to the limits of the biosphere's ability to sustain human life. Indeed Arne Naess's calls for human beings to reduce their own numbers on Earth to one-tenth of the present population could hardly make sense without a belief in humanity's ability to control its own reproductive rate through the use of reason.270 That said, precisely because the refusal of ecocentrists to privilege reason is axiological, the social ecologists' concerns regarding the implied moral acceptability of the control of human numbers through ‘natural’ factors such as famine and disease has more intellectual purchase. Indeed some of the popularizers and activists influenced by deep ecology have made public statements to the effect that this is what they do believe. More dangerous still have been the published statements by prominent deep ecologists associated with Earth First! calling AIDS–which has been particularly devastating in the black and gay communities–an environmentalist's dream come true, or dealing with famines in Ethiopia as a sad but presumably necessary means of controlling third world population, or viewing Latin American Hispanics as ‘culturally-morally-generically’ inferior people who should be barred from emigrating to the United States and using up ‘our’ resources.271

268

Rothenberg, in Naess, 1989b : 12. Also Naess, 1988b : 7: ‘For us it is the whole ecosphere, the whole planet, Gaia, that's the basic unit and every living being has an intrinsic value.’

269

Bookchin, 1994 : 17.

270

Naess, 1984a : 268.

271

Bookchin, in Chase, 1991 : 96. Elsewhere Bookchin quotes this as ‘genetically’, not ‘generically’, and I assume the quoted text contains a misprint. Naess has contended that those who made these statements (in particular Dave Foreman) were not deep ecology theorists, nor ‘in practice a supporter of the deep ecology movement’ (Naess, in Light 1997 ). Even if this is so, it does not negate Bookchin's point that theorists should be thoughtful of likely popularizations of their work.

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This brings us back to Bookchin's point as to the responsibility of ecological philosophers to think through the ways in which their ideas might be developed.272 The second conclusion is that human intervention, as mentioned above, comes to be seen as a bad in itself. If ‘nature knows best’ as Commoner's third law of ecology has it, then human beings must know worse, and therefore have no reason to intervene in spontaneous natural processes. This combination of the moral acceptability of human death, the denigration of the human power of reason and the projected sanctity of wilderness against human intervention together constitute what Bookchin labels the ‘anti-humanism’ of ecocentrism. However, as we have seen, a more reasoned assessment of the statements and conceptual decontestations made by ecocentrists about the nature of humanity and the construction of the human–nature relationship render the picture far more complex and challenges the usefulness of a simple humanist/anti-humanist or ecocentric/anthropocentric divide for the analysis of different ecological ideologies. We turn next to social ecology's other main critique of ecocentrism. It is held, in its suggested reconciliation of human and non-human nature, to be too personalistic and psychological, lacking any social dimension to its analysis of ecological problems. It actually places responsibility for ecological dislocations on humanity as such, ignoring social differentiations between groups in society in terms of the attribution of responsibility. A poor peasant farmer in the third world is as responsible for violating ‘free’ nature as the head of an oil company or a timber company. The problem here is not merely one of a missing element in deep ecological thinking, which can be plugged by a little environmental sociology. It is rather structural to the very philosophical approach of ecocentrism, which is highly personalized and psychologically orientated. It has no social philosophy integral to it, and for Bookchin this leaves it open to co-optation by any social theory that can accommodate itself to nature reverence and individual Selfrealization. What this means is that there are a whole range of ways in which the basic tenets of ecocentrism can be logically unfolded into the social sphere, and placed in logical adjacency to particular social theories. As a

272

This is not to claim that any thinker could be logically held responsible for every possible interpretation or misunderstanding involved in the popularization of their work, which might take any one of myriad directions. Nonetheless it will also undoubtedly be the case that certain developments are more logical or obvious than others and I presume it is an awareness of these that Bookchin has in mind.

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committed left-wing libertarian, Bookchin is concerned that this potential includes attachment to reactionary right wing, even fascistic, social philosophies. He complains that ecocentrism lacks a clearly developed social analysis and ethics. It thus provides a ‘tolerant’ home to profoundly conflicting ideas and sensibilities, from humanist naturalists in the tradition of Thoreau to barely disguised racists.273 Bookchin claims that examples of the latter have littered publications associated with the popularization of deep ecological doctrine. Bookchin would not be inclined to accept a defence along the lines that ecocentric thinkers are not responsible for the ways in which their ideas are picked up and popularized by others; that, for example, they might just as easily be (and have been) adopted by socially progressive, non-racist movements as by people with views such as those recounted above. This is because he believes that the process of popularization is crucially important, as a part of the process whereby political and philosophical ideas are transformed into human action,274 Bookchin also holds that intellectuals have a social responsibility to think through the ways in which their ideas might, or at least are likely to, be developed by others, and, at least by implication, to look to close off certain interpretations of their work at the outset. Thus, whilst not claiming that ‘all ecomystics are necessarily misanthropes’,275 or that a ‘liberal’ such as Naess, a ‘genial mystic’ like Satish Kumar or a ‘basically social democratic’ demographer like Paul Ehrlich are politically racist, ‘what I am arguing for is the need to closely examine the premises of one's views, and the ways they could potentially unfold if they are not critically examined and subjected to rational evaluation. This problem becomes all the more urgent when rationality itself is denigrated and intuitive vagaries are hypostatized.’276 The only way in which deep ecologists can prevent the logical unfolding of their views in politically reactionary ways is to integrate their ideas into a political sociology and economics, but by doing this

273

See e.g. Bookchin, 1994 : Introduction.

274

The most explicit account of this comes in Bookchin's discussion of the influence of often arcane post-modern philosophy: ‘However distant many of the authors I have discussed may be from popular culture, Nietzche, Heidegger, Foucault and Derrida speak to millions of people today through the impresarios of widely viewed television documentaries, such as Bill Moyers, David Suzuki and Desmond Morris . . . in an era of dark pessimism, the public appetite for antihumanistic messages is growing rapidly.’ ‘Shoddy antihumanistic journalists who may never have read a line of Nietzche, Heidegger, Foucault or Derrida regale us with books that define human beings as mere “dwellers” on the planet who must recover their primal “authenticity” by “deconstructing” civilization, denying putative “myths” of progress, and “decentering” human claims to uniqueness. We are derided for our “logocentricity”, “ethnocentricity”, “anthropocentricity”, “Eurocentricity”, or, for white males—“phallocentricity”.’ (Both quotes, 1995: 232.)

275

Bookchin, 1995b : 87.

276

Bookchin, 1994 : 8–9. Emphasis in original.

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(for Bookchin) they would begin to turn it into something beginning to resemble social ecology. There are two particular consequences of ecocentrism's alleged anti-humanism to which Bookchin wants to draw attention, as both logically entailed by its premises and likely to be inferred by its popularizers. These are the ‘abolition of history’ and the ‘denial of progress’. These two elements are run together in Bookchin's account. It is because history is rendered ‘meaningless’ by ecocentrism's static, non-developmental worldview that there can be no conception of ‘progress’ in morality, the arts, science or any other sphere of human activity. The abolition of history is constituted by a ‘denial of history's reality, importance, unity, and meaning’.277 In its place we get a Rousseauvian story of a ‘Fall’ from an Edenic golden age and a ‘corruption of our hominid sensibilities’.278 By this account the ‘succession of ages represents not history in the sense of a progressive development away from primality but an atrophying, a steady erosion, a regressive undoing of our “inner nature”.’279 This process removes us by an ever increasing distance from our primal sense of ‘oneness’ with nature. At best here history is just rendered meaningless, at worst it tells the story of the fall of man until the moment of environmental apocalypse. In the place of progress we get regress. A corrupted humanity's layers of cultural accretions endowed by civilization have divorced us from any sense of our unity with non-human nature and have placed its in its stead an arrogant sense of superiority with regard to the rest of nature. Again, for Bookchin, these ideational elements of deep ecology render it incapable of comprehending the importance of humankind's evolutionary development, and the role humanity has to play in overcoming the perceived ecological crises. Thus we have social ecology's critique of the conceptual structure of ecocentrism. From a misguided conception of ‘nature’ in which wilderness is privileged, or in which all natural phenomena are indistinguishable, coupled with a disvaluation of human rationality insofar as it is considered incapable of ever being able to transcend the human/ nature dualism and a neglect of the social, ecocentrism renders itself normatively invalid as an ideology. It is easily rendered a reactionary, anti-humanist doctrine in terms of its application to human affairs and it seeks a return to an innocent, utopian golden age that is inconceivable given humanity's highly reflexive starting point. If we believe that we can never understand nature, never rationally comprehend its myriad workings, we instead mystify it,

277

Bookchin, 1995b : 230.

278

Ibid. 231.

279

Ibid.

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and place it in a realm beyond human understanding. In this we engender a new ‘primitivism’ as we recapitulate earlier modes of human ‘understandings’ of nature and abandon reason as a tool of knowledge. This leads Bookchin to claim that ecocentrism has a fundamental contradiction at its heart, but his account of this illustrates quite well the distortions imposed through operating with a simple ‘humanist–antihumanist’ framework. The urge to return to an ‘innocent’ age leaves deep ecology embracing a contradiction with regard to human rationality and moral agency. Ecocentrists deny, or deny the value of, humanity's ability to act as a moral agent and deny that this sets the human being apart from the rest of nature. Yet if this is so, on what grounds should man behave ethically and refuse to plunder the planet? If reason is not of use in determining our relationship with nature, why should or would we be ‘reasonable’ in the use which we make of it?280 Deep ecologists might retort that the sense of Self-identification through which human beings come to identify with the non-human natural world is not based upon or reason or morality but intuition and empathetic fellow-feeling—for the very reason that morality and reason are untrustworthy bases of behaviour, prone to being contravened when people think their interests are best served that way. Better to bring people to a new understanding of what their interests consist in. Even this ‘intuitive’ level of discourse, for Bookchin, surreptitiously reintroduces human reason at its base. Without employing our ability to reason we could never decide upon the merits of one approach over another, never communicate what Self-realization consists in, and so on. ‘My point is that antihumanists unthinkingly presuppose the very exceptional rational faculties human beings alone possess, even as they denounce these faculties as the source of human “hubris” and “arrogance”.’281 Thus even when ecocentrists are communicating their ‘denigration’ of human reason they are simultaneously dependent on exactly the same faculty in

280

1991: lii.

281

1995b : 18. He continues: ‘Indeed, even as they belittle “faith in the power of human reason and human capabilities” . . . they implicitly rely on reason to criticize that seemingly sinister “faith”. That antihumanists can even communicate with other human beings on morally and religiously charged issues—that would be utterly meaningless to animals, indeed completely beyond their understanding—reveals the unstated presupposition of their denunciations of humanism. Moreover if they denounce reason as a “power” supported by a misplaced “faith”, their alternative cognitive faculties—intuition?—would also require the “power of reason” to explain why an intuitive “faith” has any validity at all. That is to say, they must turn to reason to wriggle their way toward a belief system or any eminently human form of knowledge, with all its evident or concealed ways of thinking—be it faith, belief, or insight’ (ibid. 18–19).

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order to render this denunciation meaningful to the audience with whom they are communicating. From the above analysis, however, it should be clear that, because ecocentrism is not simply ‘anti-humanist’ (in that ecocentrists are quite willing to appeal to human interests), no analysis of its potential contradictions can be quite so straightforward. Refusing to value reason above other speciated attributes is not the same as denigrating it or ‘denouncing’ it, or claiming that we cannot use it to determine our relations with nature. Claiming that it has become a source of ‘hubris’ and ‘arrogance’ is not so very different from Bookchin's own claim that the three Enlightenment tools for escaping mystification—reason, science, and technics have been corrupted into rationality, scientism, and modern technology which allow the claim to authority of a bureaucratic elite.282 Bookchin may have the more subtle account of how, exactly, human reason is supposed to have been subverted, leading to a ‘warped’ development of second nature, but ecocentrists are clearly articulating a similar idea. Their suggestion that the human race has overestimated the power of reason to control nature does not of itself imply misanthropy, it merely implies a different account of what human well-being requires as far as our relations with non-human nature are concerned. This in turn is something, as we have seen, of which ecocentrists do indeed give us an account.

Social Ecology (2): The Alternative–Nature as Evolution We have seen in the previous section the importance that Murray Bookchin attaches to the question of what we actually conceive nature to be. What, then of his own, of social ecology's, decontestation of this term? Bookchin is explicit that for social ecology nature is neither ‘all that is’, nor ‘static wilderness’, but rather a developmental process, and that process is evolution. Nature is ‘a cumulative evolutionary process from the inanimate to the animate and ultimately the social’.283 Understanding nature to be this, rather than something else, such as ‘all there is’, entails that ‘Nature becomes more than a metaphor for mere “Being”, an abstract existence.’284

282

Bookchin, 1991 : 268.

283

Ibid. xx. Precisely the same wording (‘a cumulative evolutionary process ’) in 1995b : 23.

284

Bookchin, 1995b : 16.

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As for nature as ‘wilderness’; if we accept that nature is a cumulative, directional process, then also ‘we have to view nature in a more graded way than the romantic image of a mere vista’.285 Nature is not an entity that exists in a static balance, ‘Nature is not only dynamic at every moment of the day, but above all, is highly developmental . . . what we call Nature is continually evolving: plants and animals vary within the same species and mutate into new life-forms. They are continually transforming themselves.’286 Rather, then, than decontesting nature as either all existence or wilderness, we have nature become a cumulative, directional evolutionary process. This is, remember, not something that nature does, it is what it is. This is an ontological statement on Bookchin's part.287 In order, then, to understand social ecology's account of humanity and its place in nature, we have to understand ‘evolution’, which is itself not an incontestable concept. Take, for example, explanatory accounts of the evolutionary process. On a quasi-Aristotelian, teleological understanding evolution would be thought to be animated by entelechia, the final cause, the movement of the being to what it will be. Evolution could also be understood as a purely probabilistic, stochastic process, which is completely devoid of anything resembling ‘directionality’. Blind chance throws up various genetic variations, the majority of which only lessen a being's chances of survival. However, genetic variations will upon occasion emerge which enhance survival chances and so might become newly established in subsequent generations, or cause a new speciation altogether. All this, however, would be mere ‘luck of the draw’. Given that the concept of evolution can itself be decontested in a number of ways, nature as evolution only takes us part of the way to understanding Bookchin's decontestation of nature; thus, the next question is, what does he understand ‘evolution’ to be? Teleological? Blind chance? Or as a process of a different sort entirely? Given that Bookchin wants to suggest, as we have seen, that there is something called ‘directionality’ in nature, he could hardly adopt the view of evolution as ‘blind chance’. Precisely what a process defined in such a way would lack would be ‘direction’ in any sense other than that it merely happens to go from a randomly determined starting point to an equally random subsequent point. This is ‘directionality’ of a sort, but hardly the

285

Bookchin, 1995b : 17.

286

Ibid. 16.

287

This relates to Bookchin's underlying philosophical approach of ‘dialectical naturalism’, by which natural phenomena are ontologically defined as the process in which they are engaged. That said, he is not always entirely consistent in his conceptual usage, and sometimes he describes nature as something that evolves, rather than as evolution.

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sort that one requires when attempting to construct an axiological theory regarding the value of evolution's products. A teleological account of evolution would certainly endow directionality of the right sort, but only at a very high price in terms of the ‘fit’ of the theory with current scientific understandings, and, indeed, any secular mind-set. If, on a strictly teleological theory, one was to hold that human beings were the end point of evolutionary development (a statement which would simply not make sense on a ‘blind chance’ understanding of evolution) then this would have to be a claim that the evolution of human beings was definitively predetermined in the evolutionary process. Such a claim would be difficult (to say the least) to maintain without the invocation of a theistic hand in the process. We need not however detain ourselves with this problem as neither of these understandings of evolution are what social ecology is urging upon us. They are relevant, however, as the way in which Bookchin does want to decontest nature as ‘evolution’ is to steer a ‘middle course’ between these two understandings of evolution. To have direction without teleology; to reject teleology without adopting a ‘random walk’. Bookchin makes this very clear in his reply to criticism from the ecocentric political philosopher Robyn Eckersley: Eckersley claims that my ‘philosophy of nature is predicated upon the intuition that there must be a telos’. . . . This is a misstatement of my thesis. What I contend is that there is directionality in nature, not an unyielding telos in any customary sense of the term. . . . I am always careful to distinguish between directionality and the traditional teleology of Aristotle and Hegel.288 And again: Between a strictly nominalistic conception of evolution and a strictly teleological one, there is a middle and more plausible ground that is worth examining. If we think about how certain, specific evolutionary attributes developed, our image of their development becomes both less nominalistic and less teleological.289 Thus dialectic is not wayward motion, the mere kinetics of change. There is a rational ‘end in view’—not one that is pre-ordained, to state this viewpoint from an ecological view rather than a theological one, but that actualizes what is implicit in the potential.290 I will not belabour this ‘middle way’ approach here, as it represents social ecology's ontology and so was analysed in some detail in chapter one.

288

Bookchin, 1990 : 267.

289

Bookchin, 1995b : 20.

290

Bookchin, 1996 : 126.

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Suffice to say that the best analogy might be the development of the human foetus—Bookchin uses the analogy himself on more than one occasion.291 Eckersley suggests that this approach confuses ontogenetic and phylogenetic development. The acorn, or the human foetus, clearly, in their ontogenetic development have a predetermined ‘end’ to which they will, if their environment remains within certain tolerances, ultimately achieve. This end is genetically encoded in their DNA from the moment of conception (although, with humans especially, where to draw boundaries between developmental phenomena caused by genetic endowment, and those due to environmental circumstance is of course not entirely clear). There is no reason, according to Eckersley, to assume that there is any phenomenon carrying out the functional equivalent of genetic encoding in the phylogenetic evolution of nature more widely.292 Bookchin looks to resist this line of criticism through a claim that Eckersley fails to correctly comprehend the underlying philosophical method of social ecology—dialectical naturalism. This draws on but adapts the ‘organismic thread’ of western ontological philosophy running through Aristotle, Hegel, and Marx, to name but three. Dialectical naturalism operates with, as its name suggests, the concept of a dialectic but one allegedly divested of the hard teleology of Aristotle, the idealism of Hegel, or the mechanistic materialism of Marx. How then, could such a philosophy defend the proposition that human subjectivity emerged from the process of natural evolution in the same way that a mature oak tree will have ‘emerged’ from an acorn, given the suggestion that this collapses phylogenetic development into what is properly an account only of ontogenetic development? To understand this we need to understand ‘dialectical naturalism’, as Bookchin develops it. This ontological philosophy is outlined in The Ecology of Freedom, The Philosophy of Social Ecology, and, most succinctly, in Bookchin's ‘reply to Eckersley and Fox’ Recovering Evolution.293 Crucially, according to dialectical naturalism it is not only genetically pre-programmed entities such as acorns or foetuses that are endowed with directional development, all living natural entities, indeed ‘nature’ itself possess the same characteristic. Even this is somewhat misleading, in that according to dialectical naturalism these are

291

See e.g. 1990: 268.

292

Eckersley, 1989a : 106. Eckersley actually writes: ‘The analogy is both telling and problematic. In drawing a parallel between the developmental path of an acorn, a human embryo, nature, and finally society—as if all have an equally discernible objective standard of fulfilment—Bookchin is collapsing ontogenetic development . . . into phylogenetic evolution.’

293

Bookchin, 1990 : 253–74.

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not ‘natural things’ that ‘possess’ a directioned process, natural things are that process. The point I wish to stress is that, viewed from the standpoint of dialectical naturalism, phenomena are defined as their development, their history, and their directionality. . . . To capture a phenomenon as a becoming, to evaluate it in all its specificity, history, transformations, and direction is a basic aim of dialectical naturalism.294 To understand the nature of being in terms of ‘specificity, history, transformations, and directionality’ is to delimit the questions that can be asked of, and the statements that can be made about, natural phenomena if they are to make sense. Dialectical naturalism sets a range on these questions and statements, and those at any remove from that range are rendered meaningless, in an ontological rather than linguistic sense. This is because reality as process has a logic to it (‘logic’ here decoded as that which is immanent in the developmental process; ergo that which can reasonably be expected under normal conditions). Questions and statements that fall outside of the logic of process are rendered illogical and therefore senseless. Dialectical philosophy asks us to evaluate the ‘what is’ in terms of what it is potentially constituted to become, not to drift in every direction with ad hoc puzzlement over the infinite number of things it ‘might’ become ‘if ’ an endless number of hypothetical factors deflected an entity from the logic of its development.295 Bookchin is here comparing his own approach to the analytical, ‘Humean’ approach he takes Eckersley to be employing, which ‘is marked by fixity and epistemological skepticism, an outlook that has no vital sense of history, continuity, and immanent directionality.’296 This latter approach lacks any discriminatory power with regard to the range of questions and statements that it makes sense to ask or make. Without a grounding in a sense of progression, there are no conceptual barriers to a completely indiscriminate account of that which becoming might consist in. Thus it ‘makes sense’ for the Humean philosopher to ask ‘why can't a pebble turn into a bird?’297 in that this question has communicable linguistic meaning, it does not make sense for a dialectical naturalist because the question is not contained in the logic of natural development, which is discernible from the study of nature itself.

294

Ibid. 271.

295

Ibid. 268.

296

Ibid. 271. Cf. Bookchin's earlier strictures on ecocentrism's attempt to ‘deny’ both history and progress.

297

Ibid. 266.

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What this example drives at it is that in just the same way as we can expect a ‘normal’ chimpanzee embryo, undergoing normal development to become an adult chimpanzee, we can expect natural phenomena generally to become what they will be, given certain tolerances, and it matters not whether that development is ontogenetic or phylogenetic. Once nature is understood ontologically as directional process, this just has to be the case. So, what is the form of development that nature is taking? If nature is a directional process, where is it coming from, and where is it going to? For Bookchin the answer is clear, the directional process that is nature is one of increasing and unfolding subjectivity. The long process of development that is nature has gone from the inanimate, to the animate, to the reflexive animate. Furthermore this conception of nature makes human beings the furthest point in the evolutionary story to date. This process, it is important to remember, constitutes the achievement of a specific potential in nature, it is not the product of random chance. Subjectivity has emerged from merely objective nature in just the same way as the human adult emerges from an embryonic predecessor. This is the phenomenon of nature captured as a becoming. ‘[T]he end is not preordained but an “actualization of what is implicit in the potential”.’298 When contrasted with ecocentrism, the conception of humanity as the farthest point of evolution has significant implications for social ecology's alternative conception of the human and its place in the natural world. The human is now understood as a part of nature, in that we are clearly a product of the evolutionary process that is nature, but also as something that exists in a different way to the rest of nature's evolutionary creations. This is because of the selfreflexivity, and the ability to reflect upon others, with which nature has endowed us (and this is why the ‘ontological divide’ between us and the rest of nature is ‘very real’). We neither can nor should try to deny the unique status this gives us with regard to the rest of nature. We cannot, as deep ecologists would have it, imagine that our capacity for rationality is somehow ‘on a par’ with the ability of a swallow to find its way from Europe to Africa, or a dolphin's to hunt fish with sonar, as this ‘flies in the face of all evolutionary experience’.299 As a result of their reasoning abilities, human beings have created ‘second nature’ out of ‘first nature’, that is, they have developed a reflexive, cultural, and social evolution, which (as it is a result of powers which emerged from first nature) was also immanent in the process of evolution (and thus nature) itself. Because it was so immanent, the existence of

298

Bookchin, 1990 : 267.

299

Ibid. 274.

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socio-cultural forms does not entail a society/nature dualism. Social ecology sees first (non-human) and second (human) nature as a highly creative and shared evolution, not as a dualistic antimony.300 This movement toward increasing subjectivity is manifested in all life forms, although only in humanity does it take the form of reasoning abilities: ‘Subjectivity expresses itself in various gradations, not only as the mentalism of reason, but also as the interactivity, reactivity, and the growing purposive activity of forms.’301 Human reasoning ability is one particular manifestation, one thread, in the cord of evolution. Nonetheless although reasoning has emerged out of an evolutionary process shared with all life on Earth, it is itself of an order that fundamentally changes the relationship between humanity and the rest of nature, and creates an ontological divide between humanity and non-human nature of a valueimparting type. Our new relationship with non-human nature is one of moral responsibility. This accompanies the creation of second nature, and once realized cannot be withdrawn from. Human beings have ‘created a cultural and social evolution of their own’,302 and the existence of this self-reflexive, self-aware mode of human existence has enormous implications both for human beings themselves and for the rest of nature. It means that human beings are no longer merely following genetically programmed behaviour patterns (thus Bookchin's tirades against sociobiology) but instead, in his picture, ‘second nature’ brings free will into the field of evolutionary behaviour. This entails that second nature is something that can function well or badly, in evolutionary terms. Human beings can play an enabling role in the flourishing of both forms of nature, or they can be exterminist. Human beings now engage in practices of social choice, but, in almost Sartrean terms, with this choice comes absolute responsibility. ‘Human beings can play an appallingly destructive role for non-human life-forms, or by the same token, they can play a profoundly constructive role. This is not preordained by “natural law”. . . . They can create an ecological society, or they can easily destroy their own tenure on the planet.’303 What they cannot do is ‘wish away’ human development by invoking an ideological primitivism, ‘evoking images of a “return” to the wild Pleistocene’.304 Instead of disowning or disparaging human interaction with non-human nature, we have a social as well as ecological responsibility to ensure that this interaction is of the ‘correct’ (sustainable, ecologically inspired,

300

See Bookchin, 1991 : xxi.

301

Bookchin, 1991 : 275. Emphasis in original.

302

Bookchin, in Chase, 1991 : 126. Emphasis added.

303

Ibid.

304

Ibid. 127.

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non-dominatory) sort. This responsibility is inescapable, therefore it has to be addressed honestly. In sum: to become human is to become rational and imaginative, thoughtful and visionary, in rectifying the ills of the present society. By extension, our capacity for compassion obliges us to intervene in the evolutionary process of first and second nature and to render them a rational and ethical development. To become human, in effect, is to become Nature rendered self-conscious, to knowingly and feelingly participate as active agents in the natural and social worlds.305 Humanity's distinct powers have emerged out of eons of evolutionary development and out of centuries of cultural development. These remarkable powers present us however, with an enormous moral responsibility. We can contribute to the diversity, fecundity and richness of the natural world—what I call ‘first nature’—more consciously, perhaps, than any other animal. Or, our societies ‘second nature’—can exploit the whole web of life and tear down the planet in a rapacious, cancerous manner.306 This responsibility is held to be a moral one, and its fulfilment requires that humans construct an ethical system which will enable them to ensure that they fulfil Bookchin's desiderata rather than his disvalued outcome. This ethical responsibility can be met through ‘a new humanism based on an “ethics of complementarity”’.307 Bookchin is adamant both that what is required is an ethical framework concerning the relationship between humans and the rest of the natural world (not a new ontology from which all else will follow), and that this ethical framework must be humanist (not ecocentric). Ecocentrists would take both of these propositions as being seriously flawed, as representing not merely an inadequate response to environmental crisis, but in maintaining the very frameworks of reference for governing these relationships which have created the environmental problems that Bookchin takes them to be capable of resolving. Given this,

305

Bookchin, 1995b : 32.

306

Bookchin, in Chase, 1991 : 33.

307

Bookchin, 1995b : 6. It is worth at this point contrasting Bookchin's willingness that humankind should accept this responsibility with the fundamental misgivings of a deep ecologist considering the same problem. ‘To refuse to recognize the intrinsic worth of other beings, to fail to appreciate the subtle ways in which natural processes work, and to seek centralized control is finally to be saddled with the ultimate responsibility that was once thought to be God's. Humanism, as homocentrism, joined with the technocratic paradigm, must finally assume the overwhelming responsibility for running everything. All nature must be managed for human ends, and even these ends must be managed’ (Drengson, 1980 ). Drengson is not, of course, taking issue with Bookchin's version of humanism here, nonetheless the contrasting attitudes to this notion of responsibility for nature are interesting. From a similarly ecocentric perspective Porritt approvingly quotes Margulis in holding that any human move to take responsibility for the living earth is laughable (2000: 135).

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how does Bookchin defend his attachment to a humanist ethics as offering a resolution to ecological problems? The first point to make here is that, for Bookchin, (contra deep ecologists) only an ethical sensibility can yield the sense of concern for other species considered necessary for humans to engage in ecologically enlightened ways. After a discussion of early Homo Sapiens, and their hunting practices, in which he points out that, despite whatever ‘nature reverence’ they might have felt, stone age communities were quite capable of wreaking environmental damage308 he suggests that only ethical sensibility offers hope. ‘Only an ethical intention to behave with a sensitive concern for other life-forms and their needs . . . could yield an ecological sensibility that goes beyond the gratification of material needs. ’309 Deep ecologists reject the moral route to ecological sensibility because they hold that it is too demanding. They hold that it is too demanding because it asks people to act against their natural inclinations. Thus instead they seek to replace ethics with a new ontology, one that will ground a sense of empathy with other creatures as they are incorporated into the ‘great Self ’. This ontology grounds and motivates acts directly, without the intervention of morality. According to social ecology, however, the holistic ontology of ecocentrism stresses the ‘unity’ of the conception ‘unity in diversity’ at the complete expense of the ‘diversity’ element. Any conception of ‘diversity’ requires a sense of ‘other’ to have meaning. A question here is to what extent Bookchin's notion of ‘unity in diversity’ is equivalent to Naess's ‘unity-plurality’. I will go on to suggest that they actually represent very similar positions, but Bookchin does give a more adequate account than ecocentrists as to how ‘unity’ and ‘diversity’ might be reconciled into an ideational system that sees both as offering a fundamental account of reality. Naess could hardly have offered a less adequate account, telling us only that plurality was not lost in deep ecological holism ‘somehow’. (Bookchin on the other hand, given his inadequate conception of ecocentric metaphysics, thinks it unproblematic that it is so lost.) Social ecology stresses the need for a continued sense of ‘otherness’, and decodes the ‘unity’ element in the formulation as a ‘logic’ that ties the ‘I’ and the ‘other’ together. In his own words: A libertarian rationality raises natural ecology's tenet of unity in diversity to the level of reason itself. It invokes a logic of unity between the ‘I’ and the ‘other’ that recognizes the stabilizing and integrative function of diversity. 310

308

A point made at length by Diamond, 1992 .

309

Bookchin, 1995b : 29.

310

1991: 306.

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Because the sense of ‘other’ persists in social ecology, actions taken in order to protect the non-human natural environment from some human intervention cannot (as with deep ecology) be ideologically defended as a form of ‘self-defence’, as clearly here the ‘other’ is precisely that which is external to the ‘self ’. This is why ethics are needed, as our dealings with the other have to take place within a framework of virtue.311 It is such a framework that will allegedly allow us to advance a notion of ‘other’ which is not conflictual or confrontational. The ethic that is required here is the ‘ethic of ’complementarity'.312 We should add here that Bookchin is not arguing, contra deep ecology, that ontology is completely unimportant, or unrelated to one's ethics. What he does do is present a more satisfying account of the relationship between ontology and morality than deep ecology's simple deterministic model by which ontology determines ethical thought, seeing instead (and surely far more realistically) complex interrelations between ontology and morality. Why should it be any more the case that we choose our moral framework as a result of our metaphysical understanding of the nature of being than it is the case that we choose an account of how the world is on the strength of our ethical convictions? So, although according to social ecology the central matters are ethical, this does not render worldviews unimportant.313 Indeed our conceptions of the nature of an object's existence are of course crucially important ideologically, and this does not apply only to ‘things-in-the-world’ such as ecosystems, but also to normative concepts such as reason, justice and freedom. In Bookchin's case, as the above quote demonstrates, reason itself is held to consist in the comprehension of the underlying unity in the diversity of life, and this is ‘libertarian’ reason. The ‘ethics of complementarity’ are held to capture this reason in its ethical connotation, conceiving of the ‘other’ in nonoppositional terms. ‘The “other” is still not us [cf. deep ecology] but this otherness need not be antagonistic. We can rather think in terms of “unity in diversity”.’314 What libertarian rationality and its accompanying ‘ethics of complementarity’ can do is provide the ethical framework of virtue in which human activity, and in particular our use of our ability to manipulate nature as ‘other’ (which is, under the right circumstances, a ‘desideratum’315), ceases to be manifested in terms of an attempt to control,

311

Bookchin complains of the displacement of a notion of public virtue by claims for individual rights–which themselves destroy the very notion of personhood that gave rise to rights claims–in 1991: 37. See also Barry, 1999 , for a conception of ecological virtue ethics.

312

See e.g. 1991: lvi; 1994: 3; Chase, 1991 : 34.

313

‘[W]e must carefully advance to a worldview that has a complementary notion of “otherness” rather than a conflictual one’ (Bookchin, 1991 : lvi).

314

Bookchin, 1991 : 304.

315

Ibid. 307.

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manipulate and dominate, and instead is motivated by a desire for ecological symbiosis. The above description of Bookchin's social ecology is no more than a broad conceptual sketch, and we need to examine this notion of ‘complementarity’ more rigorously if we are to understand fully social ecology's ethics. In the morphology of social ecology, ‘complementarity’ is decoded as a counterpoint to, and in contrast to, ‘domination’.316 The ‘ethics’ of complementarity refer to a way of interacting with nature that eschews notions of domination and control (it does the same for inter-human relations). The ethics of complementarity are held by Bookchin to be constructed from ‘Mutualism, self-organization, freedom, and subjectivity, together with social ecology's principles of unity in diversity, informed spontaneity and non-hierarchical relationships’,317 and to consist in (insofar as it relates to our relations with the rest of nature) human beings maintaining a ‘rational, ecological society [and] playing the role of “nature” rendered self-conscious’. Or in ‘a new sensibility that respects other forms of life for their own sake and that responds actively in the form of a creative, loving, and supportive symbiosis’.318 Or in conditions whereby ‘human beings—themselves products of natural evolution, with naturally as well as culturally endowed capacities that no other life form possesses—can play an actively creative role in evolution to the benefit of life generally’.319 So, the positive agenda of social ecology holds that through the ethics of complementarity human beings will maintain a rational, ecological society. As we have seen, ‘rationality’ here consists in the idea that the human individuals living in this society will understand the underlying ‘unity’ in the (nonetheless real) diversity of the living world, and their actions in the world will be informed by this understanding. The society will, as a result, be ‘ecological’. In Bookchin's work ecology plays a role as both an input to and an output of the ethical system. Ecology, as a natural science, plays an ontological role for social ecology, just as it does for ecocentrism. From ecology as a science is derived a similar account of the interconnectedness of all things, as well as (and especially importantly for social ecology) a message that in natural relationships the dominant and most important mode of interaction between organisms is one of symbiosis, and that all natural inter- and intra-species relationships are non-hierarchical. Ecology ‘provides strong philosophical underpinnings for a non-hierarchical view of reality’.320 As we saw above, ‘non-hierarchical relationships’ was indeed

316

See Bookchin, in Chase, 1991 : 34.

317

Bookchin, 1994 : 74.

318

Bookchin, in Chase, 1991 : 34.

319

Bookchin, 1994 : 3.

320

Bookchin, 1991 : 25. This is a view with which the Chicago School of Ecology, to whom Goldsmith looks for inspiration, would have wholeheartedly agreed. See Mitman, 1992 .

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one of the principles of social ecology from which the ethics of complementarity were held to be constructed. That both the deep ecologist Goldsmith and the social ecologist Bookchin are both able to ‘read off ’ the same message from ecology is symptomatic of Norton's contention that the one thing all branches of ecological political thought share is a common reading of the science of ecology.321 Ecology also appears as an output. With the ethics of complementarity, society will be ‘ecological’. So it itself will have non-hierarchical internal relationships, and will be non-dominatory in its attitude towards and actions with respect to non-human nature.322 Furthermore the society will be, in a slightly more conventional understanding of ‘ecological’, sustainable over the long run, because it will exist in a symbiotic relationship with the rest of nature. This presumably means that notions of a ‘conflict of interest’ existing between human and non-human entities will cease to exist with the final fruition of dialectical naturalism. In the same way that Marx suggested that resolution of the conflicts of dialectical materialism lay in the communist society, so the resolution of the conflicts of dialectical naturalism lay in the ecological society. It is widely perceived, by philosophers of a more ‘analytic’ bent, that there are considerable problems in using the natural science of ecology in the way Bookchin does here, and others such as Edward Goldsmith do in their work.323 The two most important problems are first, that there is more than one branch of scientific ecology, and the one that stresses holism, interrelatedness, and symbiosis is now very much the minority one, with a far more mechanistic, reductionist variant now dominating scientific ecology research and training.324 Second, that even if there was an agreed interpretation of scientific ecology, this would be of no avail as reading an ethics from this science constitutes a version of the naturalistic

321

See Norton, 1991 . As stated in the introduction, however, this does not entail that ecological scientists offer us a unified view of the earth's ecology.

322

‘Hierarchy’, i.e. formalized structures of domination and power, constitutes the central disvalued concept in the ideological morphology of social ecology. It is that which is presented as the root cause of the non-ecological nature of current society, and for the existence of human oppression both of other humans and of non-human nature. This is closely related to Bookchin's controversial contention that the idea of the domination of nature (something that is held to be impossible to achieve in practice ) stems directly from the (actual, practised) domination of certain humans by others. The suggested history of these interconnections is recounted in Bookchin, 1991 .

323

This criticism is most elegantly and effectively put by Andrew Brennan, 1988 . Goldsmith (1996 ) has a similar reading and employment of ecology to Bookchin.

324

For a full account of the history of the science of ecology, and its bifurcation along these lines, see Donald Worster, 1994 .

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fallacy. Thus writers such as Bookchin and Goldsmith are drawing upon what is now a minority branch of a science upon which they heavily reliant for their theoretical constructions (Goldsmith acknowledges this, and berates the direction that scientific ecology has taken). Contemporary ecology even challenges Bookchin's and ecocentrism's cherished notions of ‘stability in diversity’. The long-held ecological belief that complex ecosystems were more stable, more resistant to external shocks, than simple ecosystems has been utilized, particularly by Bookchin, to suggest that the same thing is true of human societies. Thus a broadly ‘progressive’ message can be read into ecology, that multiethnic, multicultural societies, as they are more ‘diverse’, will be more stable than relatively homogeneous societies What renders such stability a desideratum is the rather obvious implication that such ‘stability’ in social terms suggests an ability to exist in peace, and even mutual harmony. Contemporary research, however, in suggesting that singlespecies ecosystems such as marsh grasslands are far more resilient to external shocks than complex, multi-specied areas such as tropical rainforests, has dealt a blow to this parallel. Should we draw from this a ‘reactionary’ lesson that homogeneous societies are ‘more stable’ than heterogeneous ones?325 This last consideration points to a more fundamental disagreement over the validity of drawing such inferences. Even if the holistic version of scientific ecology was indisputably correct, and the natural world was composed of wholes which had ontological status independently of their ‘parts’, and ecological relationships were overwhelmingly symbiotic and completely non-hierarchical, this gives no reason to suppose that this is how society ought to be constructed, or that these facts about nature should inform human ethics. This of course allegedly is to fall foul of Hume's is/ought distinction, or Moore's insistence that if we infer values merely from the existence of things we are committing the ‘naturalistic fallacy’.326

325

On the greater stability of marsh grasslands, see Worster's account of Robert May's work, 1994: 408–9. However, on James Lovelock's computer-generated models of ‘Daisyworld’, the more complex and diverse the Daisyworld species distribution, the more resistant it was to changes in the heat output of its sun. See Capra, 1996 : 110.

326

See in particular Kerr's (2000 ) article on this. Kerr analyses the attempts of a number of ecocentric and biocentric writers' attempts to circumvent the problem of the naturalistic fallacy, but concludes that none of them are successful. He does not consider Bookchin, presumably because the latter is not an ecocentric theorist, nor Goldsmith, who has also made an explicit attempt to deny the fallacy. Kerr suggests that the remaining possibility for a valid naturalistic morality is an ‘ethics grounded in metaphysics’. It is of course my contention that most ecocentric authors under consideration here give us precisely this.

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Bookchin, Goldsmith, or indeed other writers whose normative ideas about society are inspired by ecology, are not of course so naïve as to be unaware of the suggested is/ought problem, and they have their own stock of responses. These normally operate by attacking the very notion that any distinctions can be drawn between ‘is’ and ‘ought’ of the type that would render inferences from ecology to social theory invalid. Bookchin's own rejoinder is unexceptional in this respect. ‘Dialectical naturalism’ does not recognize any distinction between ‘is’ and ‘ought’. Bookchin suggests that within the setting of analytical philosophy, in which understanding reality is ‘not a problem of probing a becoming’, the is/ought distinction appears to make some sense. But ‘from a dialectical point of view it is simply meaningless. The “ought”, or the “what should be”, in fact, is even more “real” than the existential “is” if it expresses the logical implications of the potential.’327 This is Bookchin at his most Hegelian, where the ‘actual’ consists in the realization of potential, and is thus ‘the rational’. Thus the question of what should be becomes inseparable from the question of what is, precisely because ‘phenomena are defined as their development’.328 Thus Bookchin looks to escape the ‘is/ought’ trap, and simultaneously discredit the ‘narrow’ analytic concept of Being. However, it is far from clear that his argument, even with its strong reliance on dialectical method, can really do the work that he wants it to do. We can perhaps best address this by asking, how, according to social ecology, dialectical naturalism and ecology itself are supposed to inform human behaviour with respect to nature. Even if we accept that ‘being’ is a developmental process, as social ecology suggests, and that all things have an end which is constituted by an actualization of potential, toward which they will strive under normal circumstances, how far does this take us? We can accept that this gives us ‘will come to be ’x' under normal circumstances', but this is still just an ontological statement about the nature of being. Can this be construed as the same type of statement as an ‘ought’ statement in the normative, ethically important sense? Bookchin is surely here conflating two subtly different meanings of the word ‘ought’. The expression ‘this sapling ought to (or should) become a magnificent oak tree’ uses the word ‘ought’ to express an expectation, an anticipated development, and nothing more. It does not of itself encode any normative expectations. If you tell me that this sapling will never become a mature oak tree because it is about to be eaten by a herbivore, then even if I regret that it would simply be bizarre to use this information to make a normative judgement about

327

Bookchin, 1990 : 270. Emphasis in original.

328

Ibid. 271.

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the sapling's predator. Bookchin wants to imply that we can derive ‘ought’ in the normative sense from the process of becoming, thus overcoming the ought/is distinction. That much is clear from the following: Let me emphasize that dialectical naturalism not only grasps reality as an existentially unfolding continuum, but it also forms an objective framework for making ethical judgements. The ‘what-should-be’ becomes an ethical criterion for judging the truth or validity of an objective ‘what-is’. Thus ethics is not merely a matter of personal taste and values; it is factually anchored in the world itself as an objective standard of self-realization.329 The best way I can reconstruct his account here is to suggest that ‘x ought to become y’ in the sense described above entails ‘human beings ought to let x become y’ because ‘x ought to become y’. This is the conflation of oughts. It may be true that human beings ‘ought to let x become y’, but this cannot be merely for the reason that ‘x ought to become y’, which is no more than the existential ‘is’ cast in developmental form. That tapeworm eggs ‘ought’ to become tapeworms in the ontological sense does not give me any obvious moral imperative to play host to them. Bookchin's ethics are evolutionary. Nature is seen as a process that moves toward ever-greater levels of subjectivity and diversity. Human are conceived as being the current furthest point in this evolutionary development. This makes humans more valuable creatures than other living beings in terms of their intrinsic worth.330 Thus we certainly can discriminate between the interests of a human being and those of another creature on the grounds of the human's greater intrinsic worth. This does not, however, entail that human beings can shape their interactions with non-human nature merely for their own benefit, and Bookchin consistently denies that social ecology is ‘anthropocentric’ in this way. This is an ethical constraint in social ecology. If we value evolution as a process, because it is striving toward an end, then we value the products that emanate from that process, and not only the one product that displays subjectivity in its most advanced form. We recognize all life as a product of a valued process, and so we ‘respect other forms of life for their own sake’ and seek a ‘symbiotic’, ‘loving’, and ‘creative’ relationship with the rest of nature, according to the ethics of complementarity. Putting this slightly differently, the ‘ecological sensibility’ that will foster and make possible the ethics of complementarity ‘deeply respects that natural world and the

329

Bookchin, 1996 : 24.

330

See e.g. 1994: 7. Passim throughout that work, and in Bookchin's sections of Chase, 1991 .

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creative thrust of natural evolution’.331 This constraint is ethical precisely because the development of second nature has endowed us with free will, and so, unless our actions are constrained by the relevant ethical system, we are perfectly capable of ‘tearing down the planet’. As final questions, given the focus of this book, of social ecology, we can ask what forms of human behaviour are demanded by the ethical system of social ecology, and what demands it appears to make in terms of nature preservation? Furthermore how do these compare with ecocentrism's positions on these questions analysed in Chapter 2? To take the latter question first, Bookchin has been criticized by ecocentrists for envisioning a world in which human beings have ‘seized the helm’ of evolution and seek to direct it in chosen ways, thus displaying precisely the attitude of ‘domination of nature’ that Bookchin so vehemently criticizes. Who decides in which direction ‘evolution’ should go? ‘Should we enlist the aid of computers and the latest biotechnology and step up the selective breeding of plants and animals so as to foster the development of more complex ecosystems and more intelligent species?’332 Eckersley also holds that Bookchin has had very little to say about ‘wilderness preservation’, and assumes this will not find favour with Bookchin as it is too ‘passive’, and appears to deny humans their right to intervene in the evolutionary process. In writings that have appeared in the period after Eckersley wrote this, Bookchin has discussed the implications of social ecology for wilderness preservation, and the role that human beings are envisaged to play in the evolutionary process—what it means precisely for humans to ‘actively participate’ in evolution. Wilderness areas will be necessary precisely because we value evolution as a creative process. Evolution, which is nature, can only pursue its developmental course if it is allowed its creativity, and creativity here is interpreted as being dependent upon spontaneity. This spontaneity is apparently something that would be sacrificed if humanity did indeed attempt to ‘seize the helm of evolution’. ‘Natural evolution cannot be denied its own spontaneity and fecundity. That is why one part of our struggle should always be to protect and expand wilderness areas.’333 Bookchin also rightly stresses the extent to which almost all areas of the Earth are now subjected to human interference, with even the polar regions showing signs of ecological stress as a result of global pollution. This brings into the question the whole concept

331

Bookchin, in Chase, 1991 : 57.

332

Eckersley, 1989a : 112.

333

Bookchin, in Chase, 1991 : 35.

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of ‘wilderness’ if it is cast in terms of ‘authenticity’, i.e. in terms of a lack of human impact. The widespread nature of this damage entails that many of the early tasks of any putative future ecological society would be to use technologies at their disposal to carry out ‘ecological restoration’, rather than preserving areas of wilderness. That said, not all wilderness areas are valued equally by Bookchin. ‘Would it really be “anthropocentric”, for example, to turn the Canadian barrens—a realm that is still suspended ecologically between the highly destructive glacial world of the ice ages and the richly variegated, life-sustaining world of temperate forest zones—into an area supporting a rich variety of biota?’334 A ‘prudent’, ‘nonexploitative’, and ‘ecologically guided’ change would apparently be acceptable. Bookchin is here surely following the logic of his own argument. The Canadian barrens do not apparently display ‘rich’ diversity of life forms, nor are they ‘rich’ in complex life forms that display high degrees of subjectivity. A human ‘helping hand’ in evolutionary terms, is therefore acceptable here—at least to a social ecologist. The points raised by Eckersley are not fully answered, however. The question she is in effect asking is one of both scope and scale. How much human intervention in natural processes, what sort of scale of human intervention is acceptable according to the ethics of complementarity, and how wide would be its scope? Do we, whilst not seeking to ‘control’ nature, (impossible due to its complexity335) nonetheless do everything we can to increase diversity and subjectivity? Do we look to make the Sahara bloom, fill the Australian interior with biotic diversity? Is it acceptable that ‘simple’ native species might be depleted in the process? What forms of human behaviour, in more specific terms than ‘symbiosis with nature’ are demanded by the ethics of complementarity? What constitutes the ‘good’ relationship between the human and nonhuman? Bookchin has repeatedly stressed that he does not consider human intervention in the non-human natural world a desideratum in all its potential forms and under all circumstances, ‘only in an ecological society can we hope that human ingenuity and technology will play an ecologically creative role’.336 How is this to be manifested? How is the ‘transcendence’ of the anthropocentric-biocentric dichotomy to be realized within an ideological framework that repeatedly dismisses ecocentrism as anti-humanist? Dialectical naturalism and the ethics of complementarity would be

334

Bookchin, 1990 : 272.

335

Bookchin, in Chase, 1991 : 35.

336

Bookchin, 1990 : 272 n.

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manifested in eco-communities Bookchin tells us, which will employ a new ‘eco-technology.’ These eco-communities will be non-hierarchical and anarchistic, and use non-polluting, sustainable technologies. This is a fairly typical green political vision of small-scale independent communities existing in an ecologically sustainable way through the use of ‘appropriate’, ‘soft’ technologies.337 In its lack of specifics, however, this still leaves us with the above questions as to what constitutes the dividing line between desirable and undesirable forms of human behaviour according to the ‘ethics of complementarity’.

Conclusion. Social Ecology, Ecocentrism, and Dichotomized Difference We can perhaps best address these problems through an assessment of the comparative ideological morphologies of social ecology and ecocentrism at certain crucial nodal points where their differences have been taken by the opposing political theorists as marking crucial distinctions between the two camps. These nodal points are taken to mark, to militarize the spatial metaphor, points of engagement along the ideological frontline between anthropocentrism and ecocentrism (from the ecocentric perspective) or humanism and anti-humanism (from social ecology's). I will again maintain that dispensing with these dichotomizing filters, and viewing these different ecological theories as constituting a range of humanisms, some embedded in a wider ecocentric discourse, some not, offers a more fruitful way of framing and understanding the differences at these nodal points, and results in appreciation of a number of underlying similarities that do not seem to be immediately apparent to the various protagonists. The ‘nodal point’ I want to focus upon here, as it illustrates my point clearly, is a return to the crucial question of the correct account of the content and role of human reason. ‘Crucial’ because all ecological messages are obviously aimed at human beings and their actions in the world, and the conceptions of, and demands made upon, humanity's powers of reason are crucial in determining the nature of green politics' ideological ‘bridge’ between theory and action. As we have seen, ecocentrists accuse social ecologists of having an ‘anthropocentric’ faith in the ability of human

337

See Bookchin, 1995a , for an account of his ‘confederal municipalist’ politics.

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reason to control nature and direct evolution, beliefs which they hold have in fact been the cause of the very environmental problems humanity is facing. Social ecologists, on the other hand, see ecocentrism as denigrating human reason and denying the usefulness or purpose of the one and only faculty that exists in the whole of nature that might be capable of solving these very same ecological threats. We have seen, however, that both parties confuse axiological and empirical statements about human reason. As each party digs in on their side of the ecocentric/humanist trenches, they fail to see both the subtleties and certain similarities of the other's perspective (certainly Bookchin's selfproclaimed commitment to a ‘non-antagonistic view of the other’ does not seem to apply to deep ecologists). These differing axiological accounts of human reason stem from the two different decontestations of the core concept of nature. Whilst both deep ecology and social ecology use the ‘web’ metaphor derived from ecology to stress the interrelatedness of all natural phenomena, deep ecologists use a static conception of nature, usually in a cosmological sense, or (usually prefixed by ‘free’) as ‘authentic’ wilderness (this of course does not have to entail a denial of evolution as a process manifested in nature, it merely entails that this is not particularly relevant from this point of view). In this perspective all species have certain species-specific attributes, and there is no way of axiologically delineating one as being somehow ‘more valuable’ than another (because the ontological grounds for doing this do not exist). Reason just happens to be that species-specific attribute possessed by humanity. From the perspective of social ecology, however, the natural web is described in dynamic, developmental terms, in accord with dialectical naturalism. Here reason is discerned as the point of greatest natural subjectivity and complexity to date, and therefore it does have a privileged axiological status. There is, nonetheless, and this is a crucial point, no reason as to why these contrasting axiological claims necessarily entail that the conception of the role human nature can play has to be diametrically opposed in a parallel fashion. We are dealing here with two different ideologies, both of which offer an account of a possible reconciliation of human and non-human nature. This is arguably more important than any stance on the question of the ‘ontological divide’. What we have here are different humanisms, not a humanism and an anti-humanism. Thus when it comes to their contentions as to the empirical capabilities of human reason, both social ecology and deep ecology, despite their protagonists' assertions, tell us a similar story. Human reason is insufficient to control nature, but a mistaken belief that it is so sufficient has played a large role in creating

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contemporary ecological difficulties. Both also hold that we need to move to a new ecological sensibility if humanity is to begin to deal rationally with these problems, and that this sensibility will be informed by an ecological ontology which conveys being as ‘unity-in-diversity’, or ‘unity-plurality.’ From this ecological perspective humans will appreciate the underlying unity of all life and will respect biospherical limits and other life forms ‘for their own sake’. Thus despite contrasting axiologies we have a substantive, but usually ignored, common agenda for the role of human reason in the human–nonhuman relationship. This is not, of course to deny all differences between social ecology and ecocentrism in this field. Bookchin, for example, stands on solid ground when complaining that a refusal to accord human beings higher value on account of their possession of reason at least opens doors to misanthropic popularization of the ecocentric message. From axiological beginnings axiological consequences will follow (although ‘misanthropy’, in Bookchin's sense, is not of course an inevitable particular popularization). Furthermore Bookchin's insistence that only an ethics can overcome our ecological problems indicates another genuine point of difference, at least with those deep ecologists such as Fox who hold ethics to be superfluous. Finally, most ecocentrists would certainly be hostile to the idea of transforming the socalled ‘Canadian wastes’ into a biotically diverse eco-region. Their more static decontestation of nature, whilst not, as Bookchin claims, leading to a denigration of human reason, does lead to at least one contrasting message as to what reason should actually tell us. Ecocentrism has a message that ‘nature knows best’, and what our reason should therefore tell us is that we upset large-scale natural processes at our peril, and thus as a general policy we should ‘let things be’.338 Social ecology warns us that we cannot uninvent reason. Our age of innocence is over, nature will now always be managed, always be subject to human influence, and thus we have to ensure that these influences are driven by ecological considerations. In particular diversity and complexity are ecologically valuable, and thus these attributes should be encouraged.

338

Of course the idea the ‘nature knows best’ might itself be considered to denigrate the empirical abilities of human reason as by implication human beings must know worse. However, human beings are very much a part of nature in ecocentrism's cosmological use of the term, which implies that we can know what is best for ourselves. It is presumably only our reasoning ability that is able to tell us that we should ‘follow nature’ where possible. This is not to suggest that these formulations are unproblematic. In what way is non-human nature an entity that can ‘know’ anything? How is humanity supposed to be able to discern when to be quietist and when to intervene in nature to its own advantage?

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Thus, to summarize, social ecology and ecocentrism do not present us with a choice between ‘humanism and antihumanism’ nor between ‘ecocentrism and anthropocentrism’. What they instead offer are rival humanisms. Differing, but in many ways similar accounts of what human reason is, and how it should be used to inform our ideas about the correct human/nature relationship. These similarities and differences do not correspond to any simplified dichotomous pattern, they rather have to be picked out through detailed comparative analysis. The morphological analysis of the decontestations of particular core concepts, and a tracing of the consequences of these for other adjacent concepts constitutes an illuminating method for examining these problems. I want, in Chapter 4, to carry this analysis over to another ideology which offers a possible mode of reconciliation of human and non-human nature—one which in the process claims to render the anthropocentric-ecocentric divide ‘a false dichotomy’ through the application of a completely different set of concepts to the problems we are considering. It should be apparent from what has gone before that I consider this division one of dubious value—thus the prospect its transcendence has appeal. The particular political philosophy that claims to do this is eco-Marxism, and so it is to this that we now turn.

4 New Marx for Old? Marxism, Humanity, and Ecology Introduction Social ecology does not of course represent the only alternative form of ecological humanism to the ecocentric version examined in Chapter 2. From the other possible contenders I will select the attempted ecological reconstruction of Marxism as an alternative ideological synthesis worthy of particularly close scrutiny. Why should eco-Marxism be considered an interesting case? There are reasons, some contingent, some structural, why Marxism (and indeed socialism more generally) might constitute an appropriate subject for conceptual reorientation at the current time. Some of these are rather obvious and will not be overlaboured, nonetheless they do go some way toward providing an explanation as to why considerable intellectual effort has been made recently by several Marxist scholars to reorientate Marxism in a broadly ecological direction. There are also, it should be said, reasons why Marxism is thought by some to be particularly unpromising material for ecological reconstruction, and these will be considered below. The first, and most obvious reason for seeking to reformulate Marxist theory lies in the collapse of actually existing socialist regimes in eastern Europe, and a perception of an accompanying discreditation of the socialist alternative in the capitalist West. One element of the reconstructive endeavour, as a consequence, is the intellectual project of maintaining socialism's ideological relevance in the contemporary world. Socialism is held by some to have failed as an ideological opponent to liberal-capitalism,339 and as a result to be intellectually moribund: As a system, socialism is dead. As a movement and an organized political force, it is on its last legs. All the goals it once proclaimed are out of date. The social forces

339

For example, and probably most famously, by Francis Fukuyama, 1989 , 1992 .

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that bore it along are disappearing. It has lost its prophetic dimension, its material base, its ‘historical subject; History . . . [has] shown its philosophy of work and history to be misconceived’.340 More examples could be given, but this sort of argument is familiar enough by now. As Leff suggests, under such suggested circumstances It might appear ‘antiparadigmatic’ today to pose the environmental question form a Marxist point of view and reformulate Marxism from an environmentalist perspective. The collapse of really existing socialism and the international consensus in favor of a strengthened new global order based on market economy have also undermined the legitimacy of the Marxist theory of history and political economy—a theory which . . . has not integrated nature (or ecological processes) into the general conditions and process of production.341 The ‘crisis of socialism’ has been traced to a number of sources, certainly not mutually exclusive, and more likely to be mutually reinforcing, including (as said) the collapse of ‘really existing socialism’ in eastern Europe, but also the onslaught of ‘New Right’ ideology in the West during the 1980s, the internationalization of capital, and the decline of the working class as a percentage of the general population in western nations and the ‘embourgoisement’ of that which remains. And yet, despite all this, what reasons are there for any political thinker who has cleaved to socialism through a perception of the apparent injustices of capitalism to change their mind about the nature of such injustices? This brings us to another, far less contingent reason as to why Marxism may still be a particularly apposite ideology for ecologically inspired reconstruction—a perceived need (especially at a time when it appears to reign globally triumphant as an economic system) for an effective critique of capitalism. To cease objecting to capitalism merely on the basis of the apparent collapse of alternatives would be to act rather like the fox in the parable of the sour grapes, i.e. to adapt one's preferences to the available possibilities.342 Thus conceding that socialism's apparent practical failings show that capitalism must be ‘the only game in town’, and alternatives to it must be unappealing, or at least less attractive than once thought. And if one accepted this position, yet still insisted on pointing out the deficiencies of capitalism, one would thereby have ‘said nothing—at least nothing of any political significance. For there is no different, transparently comprehensible, stable social system for which the real capitalist social system

340

Gorz, 1994 : vii.

341

Leff, 1993 : 44.

342

For an examination of this process of preference adaptation see Elster, 1983 .

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could be overthrown.’343 One alternative to this abandonment of hope would be to seek to reconstruct, to some degree, Marxist and socialist ideology in order to maintain relevance with potential supporters operating within the same socioeconomic and political context of contemporary capitalist society and to maintain a vision of an alternative socioeconomic system. One way of trying to accomplish this task would be to seek to incorporate current concerns about the ecological consequences of an unrestricted global capitalism into more traditional socialist discourse, and in so doing ‘contribute to a relegitimation of the language of socialism’.344 Leff answers his own doubts (quoted above) with the contention that ‘Marxism offers the theoretical basis needed to demystify the dominant neoliberal discourse and to clarify the current conflict between the conditions of sustainable capitalism . . . and those of ecological and environmental sustainability.’345 Similarly Burkett acknowledges that we ‘live under a “capitalism triumphant”’ but cautions that ‘the contradictions of capitalism's “triumph” should caution us against any simple and hasty scrapping, “updating”, or “improvement” of Marx's dialectical and holistic approach to material and social reality’.346 Finally, and with particular pertinence for this thesis, Harvey suggests that an ecologically transformed Marxism can offer a means of transcending the anthropocentric-ecocentric divide that forms the conceptual backdrop of so much writing on ecological issues. Marx . . . insisted that only by transforming the world could we transform ourselves and that it is impossible to understand the world without simultaneously changing it as well as ourselves. It is this principle that renders the duality of anthropocentrism and ecocentrism, turned into mutually exclusive principles by Eckersley (1992) into a false opposition.347 So for Harvey it is through the adoption of Marxist epistemology that we can overcome anthropocentric–ecocentric dualism, so marked in the work of authors such as Eckersley. Knowledge informed by dialectical enquiry and this notion of dual transformation will demonstrate that any supposition such that we can choose an understanding of nature based upon non-interference (which he takes as an ecocentric contention) to be false, because ‘observation of the world is . . . inevitably intervention in the world’.348

343

Gorz, 1994 : 4.

344

Dobson, 1994 : 14. In this article Dobson seeks to argue that ecology can add a new dimension to traditional socialist concerns about ‘positive’ liberty, equality and what he calls ‘sociality’.

345

Leff, 1993 : 44–5.

346

Both quotes Burkett, 1996 : 57.

347

Harvey, 1993 : 36–7.

348

Ibid. 36.

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Given the subject matter of this thesis, an important aspect of our enquiry will be into whether the Marxian epistemology of knowledge acquisition through transformative engagement really does offer such a hope.349 By contrast, the reasons why Marxism might seem particularly unsuited to such a reconfiguration we might call ideational-structural. The conceptual morphology of orthodox Marxism is such that a number of both green and orthodox Marxist commentators350 have suggested that it cannot be ‘ecologized’ without also being transformed into something not recognizably Marxist. In particular the central place occupied by its account of human flourishing as being enabled by non-alienated productive activity has been considered an important part of this problem.351 As an ideology, Marxism has been seen by many of both its proponents and critics as classically productivist in its economic aspects. The Marxian vision of the escape from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom is seen by political ecologists as part of the so-called ‘Promethean project’352 entailing the idea that human beings would achieve complete ‘mastery’ over nature and exploit at will her potential for production to the benefit of human beings. Marx's comment that in communist society labour will have ‘become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all round development of the individual, and all the springs of productive wealth flow more abundantly’353 and others like it, have been taken to indicate a vision of communist society existing in the midst of material abundance. Left out of the account, according to critics, is the excessive demand upon non-human nature that such a vision implies. Moreover Marx's attachment to a labour theory of value in which non-human nature is perceived as valueless has been interpreted as another facet of his anthropocentric outlook.354 These aspects of Marx's thought have led to the dismissal of Marxism by most political ecologists as merely the left-wing variant of an overarching ideology of industrialism, of which neo-liberalism and capitalism form the ‘right-wing’. Both Marxism/ socialism and capitalism are taken to have far more

349

In this regard John Bellamy Foster also holds that an ecological reading of Marx can help us transcend the ‘empty abstractions’ of anthropocentrism v . ecocentrism (2000: 18).

350

E.g. Clark, 1989 ; Fry, 1975 ; Porritt, 1984 ; Tolman, 1981 .

351

Other suggested reasons for Marxism's non-transmutability into an ecological doctrine will also be considered, for example the epistemological criteria suggested for garnering knowledge of nature.

352

See Grundmann, 1991a .

353

Marx, in Marx and Engels, 1969 : iii. 49.

354

‘The material of nature alone, in so far as no human labour is embodied in it, in so far as it is mere material and exists independently of human labour, has no value, since value is only embodied labour . . . ’ (Marx, quoted in Schmidt, 1971 : 30). Marx was however, far from straightforward on this question–see below.

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fundamental assumptions and beliefs in common than they do separating them, and these have everything to do with an anti-ecological conception of the human/nature relationship and a lingering Enlightenment faith in humanity's ability to find technological solutions to any problem it faces.355 Thus there is no consensus on the value of any attempt to reconstruct Marxism in an ecological direction. However, the possibilities elucidated by writers such as Harvey suggest that the effort, if successful, will bring significant theoretical rewards and this is, I would argue, sufficient to make the attempt worthwhile. The ideational-structural problems discussed above are nonetheless real enough, and I will go on to propose that they are sufficiently insuperable to prevent the eco-Marxist project working in the way its protagonists suggest it might.

Eco-Marxism: Ideological Formulations So much for the motivations of eco-Marxists, what of the content of their arguments? There are two general approaches taken in the literature. The first, epitomized in recent publications from Paul Burkett, John Bellamy Foster, and Jonathan Hughes, seek to recover an ‘ecological Marx’ from the original corpus of work by Marx and Engels. The second seeks to reconstruct a new, ecological version of Marxism through the de-emphasis of some traditional elements of orthodox Marxism and the introduction of some new ones, such as James O'Connor's ‘second contradiction’ thesis. As we shall see, there is indeed a proliferating literature that seeks to construct a feasible and attractive synthesis of socialist and ecological concerns (eco-socialism and eco-Marxism), which has developed over the past fifteen years or so, including the launch of a specialist academic journal Capitalism, Nature, Socialism in 1988. This attempted reconstruction has centred around a rethinking of two of the central themes of orthodox Marxism. The first of these is the Marxian theory of production, and the requirement that a conceptualization of what is necessary for the reproduction of natural conditions of production be incorporated into this theory. The second is the theory of human ecology in Marx. The Marxian view of the relationship between humanity and nature, precisely the area of thinking that we are addressing in this book, is at question here.

355

See e.g. Porritt, 1984 : ch. 4.

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Marx's own conception of nature has come under particular scrutiny, as has his account of the interaction (or ‘metabolism’) between humanity and nature and his account of nature as ‘man's inorganic body’.356 Crucial to the ecoMarxist project is the conceptual reworking and morphological movement (from adjacency to the core) of the concept of ‘nature’ in the reconstruction of Marxism. In the theory of production of the eco-variant of Marxism nature is granted an ontological status that is independent of, but which feeds into, the mode of production. The Marxian epistemology remains—we can only come to know nature through our interactions with it. But the character and consequences of these interactions inform those with the eyes to see that natural ecological cycles set up an array of external constraints upon material productive capacities. We shall see both that (a) the validation of this approach as a legitimate variant of Marxism is attempted through an appeal to the work of the early Marx on the metabolic interchange between ‘man’ and nature, and (b) that the new account of the externally constrained productive process is used to open up a second, and more contemporarily relevant, ideological front against capitalism. Along with this rethinking of particular Marxist concepts, eco-socialists have also developed their own critiques of orthodox Marxism, ecocentrism, and green political thought more generally. These will be analysed in order to delineate the particular mode of reconciliation between humanity and non-human nature eco-Marxists are developing in opposition to these other suggested reconciliations. The critique of conventional Marxism demonstrates the perceived lacunae in the orthodox Marxist account of production and the new theoretical-conceptual elements ecoMarxists employ in order to incorporate the necessity of reproducing the natural conditions of production, and different ‘socio-environmental formations’ into such a theory. As for the critique of ecocentrism, we shall see that, along with those authors cleaving to social ecology, eco-Marxists understand themselves to be proffering a humanist alternative to the anti-humanist tenets of ecocentrism. In the analysis of this critique I will indicate the ways in which the eco-Marxist understanding of ecocentrism is also (as with social ecology) constrained by the use of the dichotomizing humanist/anti-humanist framework. I will suggest that what eco-Marxism actually offers is another account of how human interests can best be served by a particular configuration of the human/nature relationship. That is, eco-Marxists are offering another variant of humanism to that

356

Foster notes that the concept of co-evolution is ‘embedded’ in Marx's account of the human–nature metabolism (2000: 11).

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proffered by social ecology and ecocentrism. It constitutes an alternative humanism, not the humanist alternative to anti-humanism. Part of its alternative nature with respect to ecocentrism lies in the ecological critique of capitalism (as opposed to ‘industrialism’) that it offers, and the development of the idea of the ‘second contradiction’ of capitalism. As said, an important element in the eco-Marxist project is to develop and reorientate the concept of ‘nature’ in Marxist discourse. In order to develop an analysis of this we will examine the conception of nature at work in Marx's account of the ‘metabolism’ that takes place between humanity and nature and the recent work that has gone into reconstructing (or defending) this conception in eco-Marxist literature. In this analysis we will examine the eco-Marxist accounts of human flourishing and need fulfilment, human rationality, and the posited relationship between all these and demands for nature preservation. From this we will move on to a more general assessment of the attempt to construct an ecological interpretation (or alternatively an ecological reconstruction) of Marx, and the problems involved in so doing. Central here are Marx's conceptions of ‘species being’ and the ‘humanization of nature’. Does Marx's account of the interaction between humanity and nature offer material for a genuinely ecological variant of the ideology that bears his name? Or does any ecological theory have to be either ‘non’, or ‘post’ Marxist? This is, I think, more than a question of mere semantics. Marxism has been one of the dominant political ideologies of the twentieth century. Its morphology contains a number of key conceptual elements which have been articulated, historically, as a complete package of ideas; these include the critique of capitalism, the theory of production, and the philosophy of human ecology, as well as the idea of human fulfilment through unalienated labour. If people think in what we might call ‘gestalt ways’ about ideologies—i.e. see them as whole packages rather than as a collection of isolated conceptual components, then whether an ideology is recognized as a legitimate variant of Marxism may matter.

Marx and the Concept of Nature Disagreement has long existed amongst scholars of Marx as to precisely how Marx conceptualized ‘nature’, how central this category was in his overall theory of socio-economic history, and also as to Marx's vision of

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the human/nature ‘metabolism’ under communist society. One eminent contemporary analytical Marxist has questioned the value of enquiring into any of these matters. ‘This is a topic on which not much of interest can be said, even though much has been claimed for it’357—thus Jon Elster in the section of his Making Sense of Marx that covers Marx's views on ‘man and nature’. As we shall see, much indeed has been claimed for this topic by those seeking to construct an ‘eco-Marxism’ through an ecological interpretation of Marx's writings. Whilst it is true that some reconstructions of Marx's position will have to be rejected as simply implausible attempts to render Marx ‘green’, there are still certain elements of Marx's conception of nature that are worth retaining. He is not as bleakly uninformative as Elster suggests. Indeed on the particular topic of humanity's transformation of non-human nature Marx is importantly right precisely where Elster argues that he is at his most misguided and trivial. Much of what Marx had to say explicitly about nature is contained in his early work,358 and this certainly applies to those remarks about nature that have been interpreted as being in some way proto-ecological. Lee, for example, states that Marxism is highly environmentally destructive unless ameliorated by the humanism of the early Marx.359 There is a certain utopian, quasi-romantic theme (cast in rather Hegelian terms) in the early Marx concerning the potential harmony between ‘man’ and nature under communist society that he moved away from, or at least became less explicit about (I would suggest the latter), in his later writings. For example: This communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man—the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution.360 When Marx uses the concept of ‘nature’, in passages such as this, how are we to understand him? Alfred Schmidt tells us that ‘Nature was for Marx both an element of human practice and the totality of everything that exists.’361 It is the latter of these definitions that we will consider first. To

357

Elster, 1985 : 55.

358

Or so I would hold, but cf. Foster, 2000 for an alternative view.

359

Lee, 1980 : 4.

360

Marx, 1975 : 296–7.

361

1971: 27. Obviously the first of Schmidt's two conceptions is the one used in the quotation, where a contrast is drawn between ‘man’ and ‘nature’. As an example of man being included as part of a universal nature we have the following: ‘Man’, Marx tells us in vol. 1 of Capital , ‘confronts nature as one of her own forces ’ (1930: 169. Emphasis added).

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argue that nature is a universal category, i.e. all that exists, may in part reflect Marx's naturalization and materialization of Hegel's (or Leibniz's)362 God, a part of which is ‘Marx's transfer of the features of Hegel's God onto Man’.363 The argument that material nature is all that exists entails that nothing exists outside of nature, or transcendently ‘beyond’ nature, that can somehow deny humanity its realization of a ‘realm of freedom’ under communism. Within this particular conception of what nature is it ought to be clear that mankind is a part of a greater nature. Thus Marx says, ‘To say that Man's physical and mental life is linked to nature simply means that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.’364 This may, be, as Clark suggests, no more than an assertion of a basic materialist tenet,365 nonetheless it is at least conducive to a possible ecological reading of Marx. Given the clear statement above from Marx that ‘man is a part of nature’, it is at first slightly perplexing that a contemporary Marxist geographer should claim that ‘The Marxist concept is then at once the concept of human reality not as in the classical view (or for that matter in the view of recent ’cosmic' ecology) that man is a part of nature.‘366 How do we reconcile this with Schmidt's assertion that nature is (in one of Marx's formulations) the ’whole of reality', which would surely seem to imply that humanity, as part of this ‘reality’ is therefore also part of nature? In order to answer this question we have to examine Burgess' justification for his statement. ‘Marx's concept of nature’, Burgess argues, ‘rests on the philosophical platform of man's self-creation; reality is not a fixed, eternal datum but on the contrary is man made.’367 However this ‘man-made’ reality is cast in materialist rather than idealist terms, it is not merely an expression of consciousness—‘there exists a material substratum which is a necessary precondition for the activity of consciousness. This enabled Marx to move away from the realms of speculative philosophy into the area of praxis, for cognition now becomes the historical process of changing and developing reality.’368 So we can see that for Burgess to state that ‘man is merely a part of nature’ would be an insufficiently active or dialectical notion of the process by which ‘reality’ comes to be. Man is a shaper of nature and only comes to cognize what nature is through his interaction with the rest of the world. The form that this interaction takes

362

It is Val Routley's contention that Marx secularized Hegel. Elster refutes the interpretation of ‘Spirit’ or ‘Mind’ (Geist) as references to a deity and thus places the secularization one step back in the chain; i.e. Hegel ‘disastrously’ securalizes Leibniz (1985: 109). In either event in his secular account of historical development Marx, according to Elster, is left with verbs groping in vain for a recognizable subject.

363

Val Routley (1981 ): 239.

364

Marx, 1975 : 276. See also Schmidt, 1971 : 27; and Lee, 1980 : 8.

365

Clark, 1989 : 244.

366

Rod Burgess, 1978 : 1. Emphasis added.

367

Ibid.

368

Ibid.

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will vary historically with the forces of production at mankind's disposal, thus humanity's conception of what nature is is historically variable. Through the development of the forces of production humanity changes the character of the nature that surrounds it, and in so doing changes its own nature. This demonstrates the stress placed in Marxism upon the epistemological aspects of the problem of how humanity comes to understand what nature is, by contrast with the ontological stress of both deep and social ecology. These two elements are, inevitably, intimately entwined in any serious consideration of the question as to what nature is, and thus this distinction revolves around emphasis rather than substance. Nonetheless the difference is sufficiently marked to be worthy of note. Ecocentrists have, as we saw in Chapter 1, a well-developed, if controversial, ontological picture in answer to the question ‘what is nature?’ The question of human access to the knowledge of what nature is, by contrast, is rather underdeveloped in ecocentric thought. The epistemic question is generally resolved through rather vague appeals to intuition and feeling, although one or two authors (Mathews, Eckersley) place some emphasis on our rational faculties. In social ecology there is a rather more fully developed epistemology, based upon the dialectical interaction of human and non-human nature (unsurprisingly, given Murray Bookchin's Marxist background). However, great emphasis is still placed upon an ontological portrait as to nature's manner of being—nature is, we will recall, the evolutionary process for social ecologists. In social ecology dialectical naturalism has replaced Marx's historical materialism, that is, the dialect-ical development being attested to in social ecology is that of nature as a whole (including humanity) rather than the development of humankind through a particular transformative relationship with non-human nature. With Marx (and Marxists such as Burgess) however, the stress is placed upon the human cognitive process, the ways in which human beings come to acquire knowledge of the external world—indeed what nature is for them will be crucially determined by this process of knowledge acquisition. The passage from Burgess is quite useful in that we can see within it three different elements of Marx's discourse on nature being run together, which between them span both ontology and epistemology. First, there is the conception of nature (which Burgess mistakenly rejects as ‘non-Marxist’) as the totality of existence, as ‘reality’. In terms of this cosmological perspective humanity is of course part of nature, although this has no more than trivial significance because by definition there is nothing that exists that can be ‘not-nature’. This conception only becomes problematic

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when it is conflated with the second conception of nature as ‘an element in human practice’. Schmidt expands on this second conceptualization as follows: ‘Marx defined nature (the material of human activity) as that which is not particular to the subject, not incorporated in the modes of human appropriation, and not identical with men in general.’369 This then is nature as the non-human nature with which man comes into contact in his existence and practice as a transformative being. It is the ‘material substratum’ which is the precondition for all human labour. This substratum is something that humanity is and always will be dependent upon, in all forms of society: it is, crucially, a transhistorical phenomenon. ‘Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilized man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production.’370 It is this non-human nature, insofar as it comes into contact with humanity and becomes a part of humanity's practical and transformative activity that interested Marx, and it is that to which we will return below. The third reference to nature contained in Burgess's piece pertains to conceptualizations of nature themselves. This is germane to Marx's theory of knowledge, in that how men and women come to conceptualize nature depends upon the forces of production at their disposal, as well as the accompanying relations of production, and thus what mankind imagines nature to be will vary from epoch to epoch, and indeed place to place. This development of conceptions of nature has been suggested by Howard L. Parsons: Neolithic mode of production: nature as a mother, sacred and with power to dispense good and evil to the ‘child’, which is society. Slave-owning: nature as a supernatural despot arbitrarily disposing of people and things of the lower orders and rewarding and punishing servants. Feudal: nature as a compact hierarchical chain of being, where each link is interdependent; organically changing but maintaining the hierarchy. Capitalist: nature as an atomic mechanistic system devoid of innate value, purpose and spirit–its value being controlled by the laws of exchange.371 Whatever one may think of this as a chronology of conceptions of nature in western society, it does explicitly demonstrate the historical materialist view of how our perceptions of nature are grounded. We come

369

Schmidt, 1971 : 27.

370

Marx, quoted in Elster, 1985 : 85. Again in Capital the requirement that man labours through transforming nature is ‘a condition perennially imposed by nature upon human life, and is therefore independent of the forms of social life’ (1930: i. 177).

371

In Pepper, 1993b : 70.

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to an understanding of nature through our interactions with it. As Schmidt puts it, in emphasizing the difference between Marx and ‘naïve’ materialists such as Feuerbach, ‘The fundamental materialist tenet could be summed up as follows: the laws of nature exist independently of and outside of the consciousness and will of men. Dialectical materialism also holds to this tenet, but with the following supplement: men can only become certain of the operation of the laws of nature through the forms provided by their labour-process.’372 It is in the process of production, in the attempt to alter the form of a particular manifestation of nature that humanity comes to understand what nature is. We can illustrate this point with an eco-Marxist account of the mechanisms by which the capitalist mode of production is held to generate a particular conception of nature, as David Pepper takes up this point in his Eco-Socialism.373 Marxist analysis, he tells us, ‘enables us to see how attitudes to nature are shaped specifically in capitalist development in such a way as to facilitate exploitation’.374 He then goes on to discuss the first stage of this as consisting in the removal of people from the land into newly developed urban conurbations. The problem here (bearing in mind the conflict with ecocentrists over categories) is that while this may indeed be a prerequisite of industrialism, it is not at all clear that it is a feature peculiar to capitalism, as any developing industrial society would require an influx of population to manufacturing districts, and this is only likely to come from the surrounding countryside. Furthermore, through arrangements such as the ‘putting-out’ system, capitalism existed in (for example) Great Britain before the country underwent industrialization. Pepper then adds a claim about the comodification of land and of the products of the land under capitalism, as nature is now being used to create exchange as well as use-value. These tendencies, he argues, served both to objectify ‘the land’ and alienate society from nature. Certainly one would expect the separation of urban and rural spheres that occurs under industrialism to have some effect on perceptions of nature, but there is a question about the specific role of capitalism, according to Marx, in these developments.375

372

Schmidt, 1971 : 98.

373

Pepper, 1993b .

374

Pepper, 1993b : 91. Pepper is thus suggesting here that the concept ‘nature’ is decontested in capitalist societies in an ideological manner. ‘Ideological’ in the ‘traditional’ Marxist sense; i.e. functionally, in support of the power of the dominant class (to ‘facilitate exploitation’).

375

For example Marx tells us that in a society where money is the medium of exchange everything becomes purchasable, whether it originally exists in commodity form or not: ‘Not even the bones of the saints are able to withstand this alchemy’ (1930: 112–13). Even here, however, the capitalist mode of production may not be as distinctive as Pepper argues. In a discussion of private property in land, Marx says ‘In the first place, feudal [i.e. pre-capitalist] landed property is already by its very nature huckstered land–the earth which is estranged from man and hence confronts him in the shape of a few great lords. The domination of the land as an alien power over men is already inherent in feudal landed property’ (1975: 266).

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To conclude this section, we can see that the dichotomy Rod Burgess constructed in the form ‘man is either a shaper of nature or a part of nature, but not both’, is clearly a false one within the terms of Marx's discourse, as it neglects the fact that ‘nature’ had more than one meaning for Marx. Man is clearly seen by Marx as a part of nature that comes into awareness of, and a relationship with, itself. In arguing this one does not have to deny that humanity to some (increasing) extent creates its own reality. This is not however, God-like creation in vacuo, it is transformation of natural objects (the material substratum) by a natural, developing consciousness of both self and other. Furthermore, whatever conception of nature may be derived from the forces of productive power in use in any historical epoch, along with the concomitant relations of production, this material substratum is always that upon which labour and human consciousness are dependent. This nature is ontologically independent from, but a crucial element (along with the mode of and relations of production) in, the formation of the conceptions of nature that are formed in the human mind. (It is this that offers the possibility of an account of ‘natural limits to growth’ that stays within the Marxist tradition.) In any attempt to write into his theory of production a new conception of nature, we have to maintain a sensitivity to the different connotations that accompany the use of the word ‘nature’ in Marx's own writings. Marx had an account of nature in which humans grasp the ontology of nature insofar as it can be understood by humans, but he also alluded to a nature ‘in-itself ’, beyond this epistemic level which is not comprehended by human understanding at this particular historical moment but which forms the essential backdrop to the ‘nature’ that we do understand.

Ecological Interpretations of Marx's Philosophy of the Human/Nature Metabolism: Proponents and Critics Now that we have clearly identified three different strands of thinking about nature in Marx—nature as the totality of existence, nature as

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‘material substratum’, human conceptions of nature—we can return to his main concern in this regard. ‘Nature interested Marx mainly as a constituent element in human practice376 . . . As long as nature remains unworked it is economically valueless, or rather, to be more precise, has a purely potential value which awaits its realization.’377 It is precisely in this regard that there has been contention between those who take an ‘ecological’ perspective on Marx, and green critics of this perspective. We can begin by examining the ‘ecological interpretation’ of Marx. There are two broad positions on Marx and ecology, each of which can of course be broken down further according to various criteria. First, there are the schools of thought which argue that Marxism and ecologism are reconcilable, either because Marx and Engels were themselves ecologically minded or because certain categories and concepts in the Marxist canon can be usefully reworked toward ecological ends. Then there are non-Marxists (both ‘anti-’, and ‘post-’, such as Eckersley, Fry, the contemporary Bookchin) and conventional Marxists, who all, from their very different perspectives, but usually for similar reasons, argue that Marxism and ecology are fundamentally incompatible given the assumptions Marx

376

Foster, despite his critique of Schmidt, endorses this view–claiming that Marx ‘tended to deal with nature only to the extent to which it was brought within human history’ (2000: 114).

377

Schmidt, 1971 : 30. Marx's position on nature as that which imparts value is not entirely clear. To take two of several apparently contradictory quotes. ‘The material of nature, in so far as no human labour is embodied in it, in so far as it is mere material and exists independently of human labour, has no value, since value is only embodied labour . . . ’ (Marx, in Schmidt, 1971 : 30). ‘Labour is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labour, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature . . . ’ (Marx, in Marx and Engels, 1969 : iii. 13). On the one hand we are told in the Grundrisse that ‘value is only embodied labour’, and in the Critique of the Gotha Programme that ‘labour is not the source of all wealth’, because nature is as well. Grundmann argues that there is no contradiction here, making a sharp distinction between wealth and value. Although Marx accepts that man can create nothing without non-human nature, ‘Marx holds that it is important to analyse the social forms in which value is produced; value—in contrast to wealth–is not immediately given or transhistorical, it is the economic form which material wealth takes under specific conditions.’ (1991a : 93). Foster endorses a very similar view (2000: 167–8). The problem here is that it does not appear that Marx is making such a sharp distinction between wealth and value. We are told that nature has ‘no value’ and then that it is a ‘source of use value’, so the distinction, if there is any, seems to be between being a value and being a source of value. This can be mapped on to Marx's distinction between exchange value and use value. Whilst nature contributes to use values, only labour contributes to exchange value, although labour is still of course ‘only the manifestation of a force of nature’ etc. So Marx tells us that ‘When the use-values of commodities are left out of the reckoning, there remains but one property common to then all, that of being products of labour’ (1930: 6, emphasis added). He also discusses ‘the wearisome and absurd dispute concerning the part played by nature in the creation of exchange value. Since exchange value is nothing more than a specific social way of expressing the labour that has been applied to a thing, it cannot contain any more natural (material) substance than does, for instance, the rate of exchange’ (1930: 57).

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made about the human/nature relationship and the central place of the ‘mastery’ of nature and maximal production in the vision of communist society. The readings of Marx's theory that purport to find an ‘ecological’ content themselves fall into two categories. On the one hand there are those, such as Howard L. Parsons, John Bellamy Foster, Paul Burkett, and Jean-Guy Vaillancourt, who argue that Marx and Engels directly expressed a concern for matters ecological, and had a conception of nature such that they conceived mankind as dependent upon non-human nature—to the extent that it led them to challenge the prevailing productivist ideology of the day.378 Whilst in certain texts both Marx and Engels did express explicit concern about the environmental consequences of capitalism, the sort of approach to past thinkers such as that of Parsons, which in this case treats Marx as if he was addressing a contemporary debate about the consequences of industrialism, seems to me anachronistic in the worst sense; requiring us, as it does, to reinvent a rather typical Victorian-era technological optimist, who looked forward to a period of material abundance based on industrial production, as an ‘environmental hero’, to use Val Routley's term. A second, and for our purposes more interesting strand of thought seeks to re-examine Marxian theorizing about nature and the human/nature relationship in order to see whether this theory contains insights and conceptualizations such that it can be reapplied in the light of current awareness of environmental concerns. Thus by ‘shuffling around the conceptual furniture’, emphasizing previously neglected elements of the Marxian oeuvre (in this case his philosophy of nature), de-emphasizing others (e.g. his productivism), and adding new elements, a new form of Marxism might be constructed that is legitimated through its relevance to the political problems of the late twentieth century. Proponents of this latter approach would presumably accept Tim Hayward's contention that ‘one cannot attribute to him [i.e. Marx] an ecological perspective which he did not (and could not necessarily be expected to) have, nor . . . criticize him simply because he didn't’. Instead one has to ‘rethink the relevance of his critique of political economy in the light of ecological developments’.379 A number of ecological interrogations of Marx's work take as their starting point the passage from The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (part of which has already been quoted above) in

378

Parsons, 1977 ; Foster, 2000 ; Vaillancourt, 1992 ; Burkett, 1999 .

379

Hayward, 1990 : 8.

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which nature is described as man's ‘inorganic body’, so it is worth quoting this section at length: The life of the species, both in man and in animals, consists physically in the fact that man (like the animal) lives on inorganic nature; and the more universal man (or the animal) is, the more universal is the sphere of inorganic nature on which he lives . . . The universality of man appears in practice precisely in the universality which makes all nature his inorganic body—both inasmuch as nature is (1) his direct means of life, and (2) the material, the object, and the instrument of his life activity. Nature is man's inorganic body—nature, that is in so far as it is not itself human body. Man lives in nature—means that nature is his body, with which he must remain in continuous interchange if he is not to die. That man's physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.380 Can we accept Benton's argument with respect to this passage that ‘Marx is by no means stating a merely shallowecological, enlightened self-interest of the species. The view of communism which structures the whole of the Manuscripts gives a central place to a proper ethical, aesthetic and cognitive relationship to nature as inseparable from true human fulfilment’?381 Before we can we have to address a number of potential problems with this interpretation. The first I want to consider is Marx's use of the term ‘inorganic nature’ (unorganische Natur). What does this tell us of Marx's understanding of non-human nature? Benton recognizes a potential problem here: ‘But what is the rest of nature? Does it include animals? Marx's use of the metaphor “inorganic body” suggests not. On the other hand, nothing Marx said in connection with that metaphor can be sustained unless animals are included. A human life dependent upon the forces and mechanisms of inorganic nature, unmediated by other forms of life, is impossible.’382 For social ecologist John Clark, Marx's language at this point suggests precisely the ‘shallow ecological’ instrumental view of nature that Benton sees Marx as transcending. The ‘inorganic’ quality of ‘external nature’ signifies its instrumental character in relation to an abstracted humanity, which is taken to be the source of all value . . . Estrangement of nature is in no way taken to mean nonrecognition of intrinsic value throughout nature or of the interrelatedness between human value and the larger unfolding of value over the course of natural history; rather it

380

Marx, 1975 : 275–6.

381

Benton, 1988 : 4.

382

Ibid. 4–5.

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means the failure of ‘man’ to utilize nature self-consciously and collectively in productivity, that is, in ‘the objectification of man's species life’.383 Clark indeed claims that for those attempting the ecological resurrection of Marxism it is a ‘perplexing and embarrassing fact that the evidence for a reality being “organic” is that it is described as being “inorganic”!’384 If we take Marx's use of the term ‘inorganic’ literally (which of course we could do whilst still accepting the idea that nature is ‘man's . . . body’ as metaphor) and in the conventional sense of ‘not organic’, it would appear to imply a very odd outlook on the part of Marx, which it is frankly difficult to conceive of anybody embracing. It would suggest a vision of mankind as dependent only upon those inorganic elements of nature which seem essential to us—air, light, minerals, whilst denying our dependence upon organic nature for sustenance. This is so counter-intuitive as to make it a highly implausible account of Marx's position, and indeed Marx at times explicitly includes animals as part of man's ‘inorganic body’.385 I believe that the above commentators are mistakenly using a different conception of ‘inorganic’ to Marx. For Marx this nature upon which mankind is always dependent is external to man's bodily organs and organism, and is only in this sense ‘inorganic’. Marx merely means that this is nature that is external to the physical human body, rather than ‘inorganic’ in the sense of referring to light, air, stones, etc., but not, say, animals and plants. Interpreted in this light the use of the term becomes far less problematic, and merely serves to reinforce the Marxian ‘material

383

Clark, 1989 : 251. It has to be said that Clark never adequately explains why the depiction of non-human nature as ‘inorganic’ should entail an ‘instrumental’ approach to nature on the part of Marx. Clark fails to address the question of what, exactly, Marx means by ‘inorganic’ in this context.

384

Ibid. 244. There are of course other points of contention between social ecology and eco-Marxism beyond Marx's use of the term ‘inorganic body’. Particularly important here is ‘anthropocentric’ contention that nature had to be mastered and made to serve human ends. For Clark the only really ecological tendencies in Marx's thought lie in his philosophical method ‘to the degree to which it maintains the teleological and dialectical perspective’ (1989: 249). Other than that, the best that can be said for Marx and Engels is that they were arguing for sensible resource management (ibid. 249). What underlies Marx's views is a ‘non-ecological humanism’. ‘Marx's identification of ecological practice with rational mastery of nature for the good of the human species most definitely preserves the ’dichotomy' that reduces nature to an instrument of human development' (ibid. 247). Charles Tolman, from the perspective of orthodox Marxism, conveys a similar critique. ‘Upon the development of this ability [to influence and modify nature] rests not only the satisfaction of [humanity's] basic survival needs, but also his entire cultural and spiritual life’ (1981: 69). Tolman ends by asserting that ‘it should be clear why Marxists should continue to support the development of science and technology, and why they should continue to assert the ultimate unity of science, technology, the mastery of nature, and humanism’ (ibid. 73).

385

1975: 275.

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substratum’ thesis (i.e. the contention that the human organism is dependent for its fulfilment upon the nature which exists externally to it). A second potential problem is Marx's apparent ‘instrumentalism’, which Clark (above) believes renders illegitimate any apparently ‘ecological’ interpretation of Marx. Eco-socialist writer David Pepper also claims that Marx is speaking instrumentally in his discussion of the human/nature relationship, but seeks to distinguish this from the merely economic instrumentalism that he sees as typical of capitalist attitudes to nature. ‘Marx did see nature's value as “instrumental” to humans, but to him instrumental value did not mean merely economic or material. It included nature as a source of aesthetic, scientific and moral value.’386 This last view seems to me a reasonable interpretation of the early Marx's position in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844.387 We will come to examine its implication later in the chapter. Unlike Benton I would suggest that Marx is, in the Manuscripts of 1844, making an appeal to an ‘enlightened sense of self-interest’ on the part of humanity, but I do not believe that Marx's use of the term ‘inorganic’ presents the problems that Benton thinks it does—for the reasons given above. That said, I nonetheless do think that Benton's general interpretation of Marx is correct, Marx is indeed arguing for a ‘proper ethical, aesthetic and cognitive relationship to nature’. The question is, what, for Marx, does such a satisfactory set of relationships consist in? If, as both Benton and Pepper suggest, our ability to flourish, indeed our very humanity is somehow linked to our relationship with nature for Marx, how is this actually manifested, and what are the implications of this relationship for the fate of this non-human nature? One strand of eco-Marxist thought concentrates on the ‘conscious control’ that humanity will exert over its own productive processes under communism, claiming this as the prerequisite for human fulfilment in its relations with nature. Vaillancourt, in an analysis of a number of early works, holds that Marx and Engels were much influenced by contemporary writers on biology and the human/nature relationship; and that furthermore they used both anthropocentric and naturalist perspectives in their work.388 Whilst

386

Pepper, 1993b : 64.

387

Here Marx talks, for example, of inorganic nature serving ‘partly as objects of art–his spiritual inorganic nature, spiritual nourishment which he must first prepare to make palatable and digestible’ (Marx, 1975 : 275).

388

The ‘naturalist perspective’, for Pepper, being one which holds that the human mind is ‘dependent on material nature and not in some way prior to or more real than it’ (Pepper, 1993b : 62).

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acknowledging capitalism's ability to lift mankind out of the ‘realm of necessity’, they also held that it ‘both dehumanises man and perverts the natural world’.389 Mankind had to act in nature, but for Marx and Engels that can only be done satisfactorily through a genuine understanding of its laws, i.e. in such a way as does not threaten destruction of the very ‘substratum’ upon which humanity depends. This view is reflected in Engels's comment about domination of nature being, in reality, a form of subjection to it: ‘Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human conquests over nature. For each such conquest takes its revenge on us . . . all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to know and correctly apply its laws.’390 Grundmann, in his discussion of the ‘inorganic body’ metaphor, makes a similar point: ‘Domination does not imply violation: as Bacon put it in the Novum organon “nature to be commanded must be obeyed . . . man, being the servant and interpreter on Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature, beyond this he neither knows anything nor can he do anything”.’391 Foster makes a similar point with respect to Marx and Engels's views on the human/nature metabolism, i.e. that they believed that the human relationship with nature would have to remain within bounds set by the laws of nature.392 Communism, for Grundmann, is by definition a social order that dominates nature without violating her. It just is a self-aware, environmentally benign social order; any other socio-environmental relationship would simply not be communism. This claim that a social system of production that is not environmentally benign could not be communist is something of an exercise in definitional dexterity, and means little without being fleshed out in a number of ways. It should be noted that the main line of attack on Marxism from a green perspective is upon the epistemological assumptions that it is necessary to maintain in order to believe in the idea of ‘domination through subjection’ (see below), and this is not something Grundmann deals with adequately. Whilst all of these conceptions of the human/nature relationship stress the importance of non-violation and of operating within the ‘laws of nature’ their shared problem, from a green perspective, is precisely that they are so obviously heirs to the Enlightenment understanding of what humanity can know about nature's laws. The epistemological barriers to

389

Vaillancourt, 1992 : 34.

390

Engels, in Merchant, 1994 : 42.

391

Grundmann, 1991a : 62.

392

Foster, 2000 .

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gaining a complete understanding of the consequences of our interactions with nature appear immense, and yet that is what these conceptions call for if we are ever to achieve a truly ‘communist’ society. It is a persistent contention on the part of ecocentrists such as Robyn Eckersley, Bill Devall, and Arne Naess (as we have seen) that nature may be more complex than we can know. This claim should sensitize us to the practical improbability of achieving a ‘true’ domination of nature through a complete understanding of all natural processes. Indeed from the perspective of the ecologist the very fact that Grundmann can invoke Bacon in defence of his position would be symptomatic of the problem of Marx—that both share assumptions about the ability of humanity to dominate nature which is representative of a strand of thought associated closely with the Enlightenment era. It was the very fact that mankind thought it understood how nature worked which played a great part in the development of our present ecological problems, from the perspective of political ecology. The very history of industrial pollution is in large part a history of the unintended consequences of the application of partial knowledge of the workings of nature; these have provided precisely some of the clearest examples of environmentally malign technology. Chlorofluorocarbons, PCBs, and DDT would be three examples of chemicals developed whose functions were understood within a specifically limited term of reference (‘DDT exterminates the anopheles mosquito effectively and relatively cheaply’), the wider and environmentally deleterious consequences of which were only discovered after a considerable time, in which severe damage had apparently been done which may (such as in the case of CFCs and ozone depletion) be difficult, expensive, and slow to reverse. There is nothing within the conception of ‘domination through subjection’ arguments put forward above to suggest that, under different relations of production, technologies with similarly damaging longterm consequences would not be developed under the mistaken assumption that the workings of nature were being ‘correctly understood’. In short both Marx and Bacon share in Ehrenfeld's ‘arrogance of humanism’393 with respect to potential understandings of non-human nature. Given our current knowledge of the workings of the natural world such green criticisms of calls for ‘domination through complete understanding’ surely carry some weight. To the point that this is a merely contingent

393

This is an ‘arrogance’ which I would of course argue is concomitant only with those particular forms of humanism which assume that a complete human understanding of the workings of nature is possible.

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criticism, from which it follows that if humankind were to gain perfect understanding of the consequences of its actions the criticism would thereby fall one can respond that: (a) yes, it is only contingent, but it is nonetheless a valid point and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future and (b) this is also not the only form the critique of ‘domination through understanding’ can take. To take up this latter point, we should remember that on Benton's interpretation of Marx, humanity is dependent on ‘nature’ in order for any individual to achieve fulfilment as a human being, and this ‘fulfilment’ is cast in terms of ethicism, aesthetic sensibilities, and self-fulfilment. It is this project of achieving human fulfilment that can bring into question the very project of ‘domination’, even ‘domination as subjection’ à la Grundmann and Engels, on the grounds that the latter over-emphasize the material aspects of human well-being. As versions of humanism they fall because they fail to capture the complex, multi-dimensional character of human well-being. They completely fail to address the suggestions, put forward by writers such as Goodin, McKibben, and Benton, that humanity may actually need access to an ‘undominated’ nature in order to flourish. This in turn brings us back to the general question of human fulfilment. Addressing this question in terms of Marxian discourse requires a further examination of Marx's ideas about what does lead to human fulfilment and what the determinants are that ‘make’ humanity what it is. To recover Burgess's terminology, it is to return to ‘the philosophical platform of man's self-creation’, and the crucial organizing concept of this particular discourse is that of ‘species-being’.

Species Being and the Humanization of Nature What does ‘human flourishing’ consist in for Marx? A first, and well-known point to make is that there is no fixed ‘human nature’ to provide a naturalistic template for the derivation of human fulfilment. Lee, in his attempt to draw an ecological ethic from Marx, tells us that ‘there is no man–nature dichotomy in Marxism; the human being is part of nature and interacts with nature in such a way that in his productive activity he creates both himself and nature. And nature, the material body, is the

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limiting condition which shapes man.’394 This idea of self-creation through the medium of interaction and co-evolution with non-human nature is crucial to Marx's attempt to argue that there is no fixed, immutable thing to be called ‘human nature’ that rigidly determines our needs and activities. Rather, to the extent that we have a ‘human nature’ this is expressed in our general activity as Homo Faber—tool using, productive being. This still leaves the content of our natures in the fuller sense—how we perceive things, act, etc., as an open matter, subject to variation in accord with the way in which we engage in social productive activity. In fact Marx's philosophy of historical development seems to depend on the idea that there are many different ways of being Homo Faber.395 A number of questions now arise—by what mechanism do we ‘make’ ourselves and nature; why is it that our productive activities are crucial (rather than say, as romantics might have it, our aesthetic sensibilities); and what are the implied consequences for non-human nature of this view? In answering these questions we arrive at those aspects of Marxist views that ‘mainstream greens’ find most objectionable of all. For Marx, although there is no fixed datum that we can call ‘human nature’ (the way that people think, perceive and act, as noted above, is historically variable), there are nonetheless distinctive, species-specific qualities that mark humanity off from the rest of nature and endow us with the quality of being a unique part of it. The ‘ontological divide’ that writers such as Eckersley and Fox object to appears as a central tenet of Marx's account of human ecology.396 Crucially, mankind has a unique species being. This concept was taken from Feuerbach's work and given a ‘new and richer philosophical meaning’397 by Marx, and is used in order to construct a distinction between humanity and the rest of nature. The productive activity of humans is potentially ‘universal’, which is to say that humans ‘know how to produce in accordance with the standard of every species, only truly produce in freedom from immediate physical need, and take the

394

Lee, 1980 : 8. Emphasis added.

395

On this see also Tolman, 1981 : 67, for the view that Marx does not operate with any conception of human nature, even the minimal one defended in this interpretation.

396

It would be appropriate to remind ourselves at this point that affirmation of the ‘ontological divide’ in question consists in the attribution of certain qualities to humankind that render its mode of being unique with respect to the rest of nature, and moreover do so in such a way as to render the human a being of at least greater value than any other being in nature. Therefore not just any attribution of a unique quality to humankind will serve to confirm this ontological divide. It will be clear from what follows in the main text that Marx's attribution of unique qualities to the human does confirm this divide.

397

Benton, 1988 : 5.

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whole world of nature as the object of their practical, aesthetic and cognitive powers’.398 This is closely linked by Marx to humanity's ability to formulate mental conceptions of its own activities, and thus to bring the results of actual, practical activity into consonance with the preconceived mental image. By contrast the non-human animal is thought only to transform the natural world around it in an unthinking way, merely ‘in accordance’ with the instinctual behaviour of their own species, and only under the direct stimulus of immediate physical need. When we combine these ideas of Marx with his theory of cognition referred to above—whereby mankind only comes to know itself and nature through productive activity, and the materialist conception of mankind's historical development we can see why it is that it is ‘man's’ productive and transformative activities that define what ‘he’ is at any particular epoch. To the extent that humanity is at any one time constrained to produce for the satisfaction of immediate material wants it has not yet emerged from ‘natural history’ into the ‘realm of freedom’ and lacks a sufficiently developed self-cognition. However, as humanity comes to understand more about the ‘natural’ world and itself through its transformative material activities, it is embarked upon a historical journey through higher levels of development. It finally emerges from the capitalist phase to realize, under communist social relations, the full potential of its species-being from which it has been ‘estranged’ through the institution of private property and the process of production for profit under capitalism. It then engages in free productive activity, and thus does humanity achieve its condition of flourishing for Marx. In the process of realizing its species being, humanity transforms non-human nature, which itself becomes ‘humanized’.399 What does Marx imply by this? How can it be reconciled with Marx's affirmation of non-human nature as the independent ‘material substratum’ upon which mankind will be dependent whatever historical epoch he exists in? For some commentators, the concept of a ‘humanized nature’ suggests that ‘Nature as an external, threatening and constraining power is to be

398

Benton, 1988 : 5.

399

This is not unproblematic. Under the condition of production prior to communism, such as capitalism, man is in an alienated condition. So whilst nature undoubtedly undergoes transformation under these modes of production this could be taking place in a deformed way, nature is as likely to be being ‘dehumanized’ as ‘humanized’. Presumably Marx would have an appropriately dialectical attitude to this process. Just as the ‘deformation’ of capitalism is a necessary stage in the historical development of humanity towards communism, so perhaps the accompanying ‘deformed’ development of nature is necessary for it to be fully ‘humanized’ under communism.

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overcome in the course of a long drawn out historical process of collective transformation. The world thoroughly transformed by human activity will be a world upon which human identity itself has been impressed, and so no longer a world which is experienced as external or estranged.’400 As a first point it is, I think, important to realize that Marx perceived this transformation of nature as already taking place in his own lifetime and indeed before. Nature does not become ‘humanized’ merely under communism, rather the communist phase of society is where a process that has been taking place for centuries becomes properly grasped by a humanity that has finally achieved its potential. As Marx and Engels stated, in a critique of Feuerbach's version of materialism: He does not see how the sensuous world around him is, not a thing given direct from all eternity, remaining ever the same, but the product of industry and of the state of society; and, indeed, in the sense that it is an historical product, the result of the activity of a whole succession of generations, each standing on the shoulders of the preceding one, developing its industry and its intercourse, modifying its social system according to the changed needs. Even the objects of the simplest ‘sensuous certainty’ are only given him through social development, industry, and commercial intercourse. The cherry tree, like almost all fruit trees, was, as is well known, only a few centuries ago transplanted by commerce into our zone, and therefore only by this action of a definite society in a definite age it has become a ‘sensuous certainty’ for Feuerbach.401 For that matter, nature, the nature that preceded human history, is not by any means the nature in which Feuerbach lives, it is nature which today no longer exists anywhere (except perhaps on a few Australian coral-islands of recent origin) and which therefore, does not exist for Feuerbach.402 Engels sustained this line in a separate work: There is devilishly little left of ‘nature’ as it was in Germany at the time when the Germanic peoples immigrated into it. The earth's surface, climate, vegetation, fauna, and the human beings themselves have infinitely changed, and all this owing to human activity, while the changes of nature in Germany which have occurred in this period of time without human interference are incalculably small.403 It is precisely the vision, and crucially the value attached to it, of a ‘humanized nature’ in Marx that generates some of the most trenchant criticism of the attempt to articulate an environmentally acceptable ethic

400

Benton, 1988 : 7.

401

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1969 : i. 28.

402

Ibid. 29.

403

Engels, in Merchant, 1994 : 33.

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from the material of Marxian discourse. One complaint is there is no space in Marx's vision for any ‘independent’ nature—thus: ‘Marx appears to be envisaging, as truly unified, a world in which there is no truly independent nature left, in which nature is entirely unified and transformed’, 404 and ‘The conflict between humans and nature is overcome in favour of an incorporation of the natural into the human without residue.’405 Routley adds that such a conception as this would actually undermine the efforts of wilderness preservationists in countries such as the United States and those working to conserve the tropical rain forests which perhaps embody nature at its most independent of mankind's influence. ‘There is little comfort in short for the environmentalist view that such wilderness areas are often specially valuable precisely because they are “other”, because they are to a large extent independent of man and not made over into his or her expression.’406 Ted Benton also complains that nature is seen by Marx as ‘An acceptable partner for humanity only insofar as it has been divested of all that constitutes its otherness.’407 He considers this an example of ‘species-narcissism’, which leaves no way open to value nature because of its ‘intrinsic qualities’. Even John Bellamy Foster, who sees Marx as very much an ecological thinker, accepts—in an exemplar of understatement–that Marx and Engels's advocation that humanity engage in the ‘clearing of whole continents for cultivation’ indicates that ‘the preservation of wilderness was not Marx and Engels's primary concern’ (2000: 139).408 These critiques of Marx do raise interesting problems for the eco-Marxist project. Does Marx's desire that mankind should ‘humanize’ nature defeat the possibility of grounding a defence of nature in terms of Marxian conceptualizations, as Routley ultimately claims?

A Marxian Ecology? We should be careful not to dismiss ecological readings of Marx, if we are to, on the wrong grounds. For one, there is a sense in which he is surely

404

Routley, 1981 : 238.

405

Benton, 1988 : 7. Emphasis added.

406

Routley, 1981 : 238.

407

Benton, 1988 : 7.

408

Foster claims later in the same work that Marx and Engels's position would not ‘preclude the preservation of wilderness areas . . . maintained for their intrinsic value’ (2000: 176). This is remarkable, given Foster's earlier castigation of intrinsic value theory and green political philosophy more generally as hopelessly idealist (ibid. 11).

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right about the condition of non-human nature—indeed his thoughts on this are more germane now than they were in the mid-nineteenth century. It is no accident that the deep ecology movement, with its stress on the protection of, and value of, wilderness has its intellectual roots in the USA, Australia, and Scandinavia—all these being areas of the world that still have significant areas of natural habitat relatively unaffected by the influence of homo sapiens. However, in terms of constructing a generalizable nature-protection ethic, valuing ‘nature’ qua wilderness clearly won't do. Very little of the landscape of Great Britain, for example, if any, would be considered worthy of protection if the criterion of judgement was some notion of ‘authenticity’ cast in terms of non-interference by mankind.409 Britain was ‘naturally’ largely covered in forest, much of which had been cleared by the late stone age. Does this mean, in terms of Routley's ecologism, that it became from then on ‘valueless’ because it was ‘unnatural’? We have to accept Marx's point410 that ‘nature’, as it may have existed in its ‘pre-human’ form, is effectively extinct for most of us.411 Even those areas that are preserved as wilderness only have that status by the grace of mankind—including even the Antarctic, subject of a fiftyyear non-exploitation agreement. There is a real question as to what the idea of ‘wilderness’ means in the context of an area of land whose very borders are themselves delineated by mankind, and which is, regardless of its status, likely to show some (possibly deleterious, such as the effects of acid rain) sign of the impact of our activities as a species. Routley suggests a response to such a position. Even if we accept the idea that the influence of humanity extends to every part of the globe, it does not follow that nature should therefore be perceived as man's ‘creation’: which brings us back (according to Routley) to the transference of the functions of the Hegelian God onto the Marxian ‘man’. ‘Because there is human influence, do we therefore have to see the natural world as a human artifact? It does not follow normally from the fact that A influences or

409

If anywhere perhaps only the remaining parts of the Caledonian Forest and the Flow Country in Scotland.

410

A point also made by Bill McKibben, 1990 .

411

It is precisely on this point that Elster thinks Marx is hyperbolic as well as simply wrong. ‘Marx had rather extreme as well as exaggerated views on the extent to which nature had become humanized as a result of human labour’ (1985: 56). He then quotes the same passages from The German Ideology as I do, before asking ‘And what about the millions of solar systems existing outside the reach of man? Marx's emphasis on the extent to which nature is transformed by man is both exaggerated and pointless’ (ibid. 57). On the contrary, Marx's beliefs are even more apposite today than they were at the time of writing. Furthermore, as Marx (and we) are concerned with human interests, it is the invocation of distant astral bodies as somehow relevant to this discussion that is completely pointless. It is precisely terrestrial nature that is important to man, as it is only this nature with which mankind in any real sense interacts.

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interacts with B that B is A's artifact or creation.’412 Despite Routley's clear, and correct, statement earlier in this article that ‘creation’ in Marx's terms means ‘transformation’, she appears here to be sliding into a reference to God-like creation in vacuo. Otherwise it is difficult to understand why ‘human influence’ should not be of sufficient magnitude to ‘create’ (i.e. form by transformation) one entity from another; additionally we should note that creation in this sense need not imply deliberate, conscious control. If this is so then Routley's objection only has force if she is allowed to use the concept of ‘creation’ inconsistently. As long as we think of ‘creation’ in terms of ‘alteration’ (which of course is all that humanity can do when it comes to energy/matter) then any non-pristine landscape can be considered a human creation. Again looking around the English landscape with an awareness of what it was once like, it would be somewhat bizarre to deny that this landscape was ‘created’ by man in the Marxian sense. Accepting this, however, according to Routley, ‘deprives us of a distinction which is not only useful but essential for many environmental purposes’,413 i.e. a distinction between the ‘natural’ and the ‘non-natural’, which in turn deprives us of the foundation we need to defend the one against the other. If we accept the argument that there is no longer ‘nature which preceded human society’, how can we hope to develop philosophical grounds to defend something called ‘nature’ against development, despoliation, etc.? Robert Goodin414 is correct in the claim that any ecological politics, whether ‘ecocentric’ or not, will have as one of its foundational features a defence of the ‘natural’ (see above, Chapter 2). Thus how the concept of the ‘natural’ is decontested is of crucial importance—and a crucial element in this decontestation is whether ‘natural’ is characterized as an antonym of ‘artificial’ or as a universal category. If ‘nature’ is to be defended then this implies either a defence against a ‘not-nature’ or a clear differentiation of different categories of nature such that one part is to be ‘defended’ against another part. The Marxian discourse on nature can, through its simultaneous use of the concept as both a universal category and the non-human ‘material substratum’ part of that category, quite easily lose sight of this useful and important distinction. Benton claims

412

Routley, 1981 : 239. O'Neill (1994 : 23–4) makes a similar point to Routley's: ‘The claim, sometimes imputed to Marx, that “nature is socially constructed”, is likewise false. While it is undoubtedly true that humans have had an enormous influence on the natural world . . . it does not follow that nature is a human construction. That A influences B does not entail that A is B's construction.’ My point is that even if we accept this attribution to Marx, it is unproblematic if we realize that Marx uses the concept of ‘creation’ in terms of a transformation of the material substratum.

413

Routley, 1981 : 239.

414

1992.

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that there is a clear contradiction between the desire to ‘humanize’ nature, and the proposition that nature constitutes a material substratum that is prior to the human and which human consciousness will be dependent upon in any and every phase of social organization. The ‘historical vision [of man's coming to self-fulfilment through the humanization of nature] is clearly incompatible with the content of Marx's metaphor, elsewhere in the same text, of nature as “man's inorganic body”, the insistence upon the permanent necessity of the “metabolism” between humans and their natural environment as a condition of survival’.415 Benton is arguing (rightly), that Marxists cannot consistently cleave to both of these tenets simultaneously—or at least if they do then an explanation is owed. In assessing this claim we have to be clear regarding what Marx means by ‘humanized nature’. It would clearly be absurd to claim that Marx thought mankind would ever cease to be dependent upon a nature that was ‘other’ to man, which would imply man would not have to eat etc., and this is not, one imagines, Benton's claim. ‘Humanized nature’ implies nature that has come under conscious, human, control. We may—and I have argued that we should—want to dispense with the idea of ‘full control’ (i.e. as in ‘domination’, see above) but we still have to acknowledge the massive impact of human activities on non-human nature. What Marxists such as Grundmann would point to here is that these impacts are by-products of both capitalism and a distorted form of communism; they are, crucially, unexpected, unintended, and often poorly understood. A nature which reacts upon humanity in such unexpected ways has not been ‘dominated’, and thus, insofar as this is synonymous with domination, nor has it been ‘humanized’. ‘Humanization’ is not, however, merely a synonym for domination, it also implies a transformation of nature from its pre-humanized to its humanized form. Another crucial question eco-Marxists have to deal with concerns the value that Marx apparently placed on man's physically transforming nature. As we have seen, in Marx humanity is conceived as ‘nature confronting itself ’, and as man's capabilities as a tool-making animal are completely natural, the tools that man produces become nature embodied in a ‘higher’ form. ‘By releasing the “slumbering powers” of the material of nature, men “redeem it”: changing the dead “in-itself ” into a living “for-itself”, they so to speak lengthen the series of objects brought forth in the course of the history of nature, and continue it at a qualitatively higher level. Nature propels forward its process of creation by the agency of

415

Benton, 1988 : 7.

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human labour.’ ‘While natural processes independent of men are essentially transformations of material and energy, human production itself does not fall outside the sphere of nature.’416 Not only do we have here the collapse of any distinction between the ‘natural’ and the products of humanity (the latter are merely nature in a higher form—Grundmann's ‘nature ’ from ‘nature ’)417 but also the products of human labour are considered by Marx to be 2 1 of more value to mankind than non-transformed nature. And the reasons for this are arguably such a crucial part of Marx's theory of human development that one has to agree with Clark that ‘To develop the submerged ecological dimension of Marx would mean the negation of key aspects of his philosophy of history, his theory of human nature, and his view of social transformation.’418 Marx has to value the material419 transformation of nature as it is through this very process that humanity comes to fulfil its potential as a species, comes to arrive at a complete self awareness. ‘The more human beings have transformed nature into nature —so goes Marx's claim—the more they are able to 1 2 understand the world, the more they are able to avoid “enslaving effects” which stem from natural or social processes. ’420 It would seem to follow from this that the more mankind transforms nature the more perfect will be our understanding of the world and the higher the level of human development will be. To come back to Benton's point that the ‘humanized’ and ‘material substratum’ conceptions of nature are incompatible, it seems that Marxist writers see a humanized nature as subsuming within it the material substratum. So a farm can provide the arena for the struggle between human beings and nature better than a wilderness ever could. This seems to suggest that the creation of a coherent eco-Marxist ideology through a reworking and repositioning of certain conceptual elements, such as the status of ‘nature’ runs into difficulties when we consider some other core elements of Marx's thought. Human development is a crucial core component for Marx, and if this can only be achieved through the transformation of nature then this, at first sight, seems impossible to reconcile with an ecological perspective which looks to defend, as

416

Both Schmidt, 1971 : 77.

417

1991a : 94–5. Cf. Bookchin on first and second nature–see ch. 3.

418

Clark, 1989 : 250.

419

Marx's materialism appears to rule out an argument along the lines that a protected natural area has been ‘transformed’ through the changes in human perception that are generated by the very act of providing legal protection.

420

Grundmann, 1991a : 98. Whilst this is one way of distinguishing humanized (2) from non-humanized (1) nature, we might note that it implies no reasons for ‘protecting’ any areas of ‘nature ’ and so preventing it from becoming ‘nature ’. 1

2

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referred to above, some conception of the ‘natural’ against human interference. Yet to move away from this account of human development would entail significant conceptual reworking of a number of Marxist categories (including the account of the transition from capitalism to communism, which is intimately connected, for Marx, to ‘the all round development of the individual’421). After such transformation it would be questionable as to what the epithet ‘Marxist’ actually referred. Even if, however, we do not conclude that a truly ‘ecological’ Marxism is likely to be conceptually coherent, this does not entail that nothing of the eco-Marxists' theoretical work can inform the critique of the ecocentric v. humanist debate we are calling into question in this book. Given this, it will be useful at this stage to delineate more clearly the points of difference between, on the one hand, eco-Marxism and orthodox Marxism; and on the other, eco-Marxism and ecocentrism. This will be done over the following two sections.

Eco-Marxism: The Critique of Orthodox Marxism What distinguishes this self-proclaimed eco-Marxism from the ‘orthodox’ version of Marxism? Two main elements of Marxist theory are redeveloped by eco-Marxists, first, the theory of production, and second, the philosophy of human ecology. We can pick up on the first of these through the work of Enrique Leff. According to Leff there are ‘three fundamental environmental elements’ to eco-Marxism. These elements are three different facets of one general phenomenon—the attempt to incorporate environmental considerations into a Marxist account of production which has (on this view) conventionally left them unaddressed. The first of these is the ‘constitution of socio-environmental formations as units of production’.422 This involves the sensitization of Marxist theory to the importance of the fact that there are a number of possible modes of organization for the human/nature relationship, each of which can have different implica-tions for the possibility of ecologically sustainable productive practices. Leff is claiming a theoretical task for eco-Marxism in assessing the

421

Marx, 1969 : iii. 19.

422

Leff, 1993 : 58.

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relationship between different socio-environmental formations with possible processes of production, both capitalist and non-capitalist. The second element is a ‘social analysis of the global nature of, and interconnection among, socio-environmental processes’.423 Here Leff seeks to distinguish eco-Marxism from both orthodox Marxism and political ecology. Unlike the latter it avoids basing an analysis of social problems on generalized ecology or systems theory thinking. On the other hand it moves beyond study of just the capital/labour relationship ‘to the study of complex socio-environmental systems’424 which incorporate the question of ecological productivity into their calculations. This ‘in order to study the coevolutionary processes between the economy and geo-environmental systems.’425 Finally, eco-Marxism calls for ‘a change in the productive paradigm that includes nature and culture as productive forces’.426 This again distinguishes eco-Marxism from its orthodox twin. The implication is that both of these factors are left out of the productive reckoning in the conventional Marxian theory of production, and are seen at best as ‘mediating processes’ in a labour-driven theory, when in fact they ‘act as social labour and direct productive forces’ in a global economy which is ‘ecologically normative’.427 Eco-Marxists are proposing an ‘ecotechnological paradigm’ for the lasting management of natural resources. Leff is not intending here to give a comprehensive account of the range and scope of eco-Marxism, but rather to affirm three ‘crucial’ ways in which Marxism might be ‘enriched’ through the incorporation of a notion of ecological constraints, in order to develop a ‘critical analysis of production’.428 In more general terms eco-Marxism seeks to combine the conventional Marxist critique of capitalism with a reconstructed Marxist theory of economic production which includes a conception of natural limits on production. Through this capitalism can be shown to contain a ‘second contradiction’. According to the second contradiction thesis, capitalism not only undermines itself in the process of its own development through the immiseration of the working class, but it also undermines its own natural resource base through the over-exploitation of nature.429 As Benton

423

Leff, 1993 : 58.

424

Ibid. 59.

425

Ibid.

426

Ibid. 60.

427

Ibid. 61.

428

Ibid. 58.

429

In the process capitalism generates social groups (New Social Movements) that oppose the destruction of non-human nature and who will join hands with the working class in the fight against capitalist exploitation. As prediction this may well eventually stand discredited, as capitalism successfully absorbs or marginalizes environmental protests through ameliorative activity. Nonetheless, in terms of political ideology it provides a good illustration of the way in which Marxist thinkers have sought ideologically to integrate environmental concerns into their own worldview. For the original version of the second contradiction argument, see O'Connor, 1988 . It should also be noted that O'Connor stresses the global reach of capitalism and suggests that once capitalism is seen on a global scale the ‘first’ contradiction can be seen to be still operative, and that ‘immiseration’ is now also a global phenomenon. See e.g. O'Connor, 1991: esp. 5–7.

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suggests, in this project Marx's work can be no more than ‘conceptual raw material’ because ‘Marx under-represents the significance of non-manipulable natural conditions’.430 Conventionally, Marxist writers have been very sceptical of the idea that ‘non-manipulable natural conditions’ can act as an external constraint upon production. They are so for much the same reasons as Marx and Engels were themselves scathing about Malthus. Any notions of absolute limits to growth, taken as external impositions upon productive processes have been interpreted by Marxists as both ahistorical and as an ideological discourse that surreptitiously defends the privileges of the bourgeoisie over and against the working class through the maintenance of levels of production below that necessary for an adequate distribution of wealth to that class.431 Instead, any limits to production that might exist are taken to be relative, and to vary with the mode of production. So Perelman, for example, reminds us that ‘Marx does not treat scarcity as an independent category, but in relation to the mode of production.’432 Burgess argues in the same vein: ‘Much of the alarmist nonsense currently being purveyed about resource-depletion conveniently ignores the universal, human, and hence historical definition of productive forces, and reverts back to an analysis based solely on their natural, objective attributes.’433 Both of these authors are arguing contra non-Marxist ecologism, and the question arises as to whether the eco-Marxist account of natural limits to growth differs from the conventional ecological account. The answer is that there is a difference to the extent that eco-Marxists dehomogenize the catch-all ecological category of ‘industrialism’. There is considerable debate between eco-Marxists and political ecologists as to whether the use of the concept ‘industrialism’ as an object of critique in ecologism is misconceived, and whether the traditional socialist concern with the consequences of capitalism provides a more adequate insight into the causes of ecological problems. The justification offered for using ‘industrialism’ as an organizing concept and object of critique is straightforward enough—nonmarket industrialism, as manifested in Eastern Bloc nations, appears

430

Benton, 1989 : 64.

431

For a good example see Enzensberger, 1974 .

432

Perelman, 1979 : 84.

433

Burgess, 1978 : 3.

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to have performed far worse than industrial-capitalism in terms of the environmental degradation it has caused. There is nothing in the comparative ecological history of eastern and western Europe to suggest that non-market industrialism would be in any way preferable to capitalism, in ecological terms, and thus ‘industrialism’ itself is clearly what lies at the root of the problems of resource depletion and pollution. There are two different responses from those seeking to rebut the claim about non-market industrialism, whilst accepting the empirical claim about environmental problems in former communist states. Enzensberger434 claims that Marxists placed too much emphasis on ownership of the means of production, whereas in actuality capitalism is best conceived as a system of production, relying on extensive division of labour, which thrived in eastern Europe throughout ‘communist’ rule—eastern Europe simply never stopped being ‘capitalist’. It would indeed be possible to refer back to texts by Marx in which he does appear to equate extensive division of labour with private property and capitalism, and look forward to an end to division of labour under communism, but this approach appears merely to collapse any distinction between ‘capitalism’ as criticized by socialists and ‘industrialism’ as criticized by greens. The other argument is that socialism in one country, or even one part of the world, was never feasible, and so the cold war, combined with pressures to compete economically with the West, distorted the incentive structure of socialist economies. There may be something in this argument, although it ignores the underlying productivism of the form of Marxist ideology abroad in the east European communist system. We might further add the point that ecological considerations just simply were never of serious interest to planners in the Soviet-style systems, although this of course begs the question why, which again brings us back to the productivist elements in Marxism–Leninism. Despite the acknowledgement of severe environmental degradation in eastern Europe, political ecology's employment of ‘industrialism’ as an object of critique has come under sustained attack from socialists who insist that capitalism has to be seen as the root of our current ecological problems. For them there is little purpose in criticizing the ‘values’ of industrial society without addressing the question of where these values come from. David Pepper, more forcefully than most, has taken greens to task on this account. Green attacks on the ‘values’ of industrialism—social Darwinism, instrumental rationality, the right to private ownership of land etc. are considered redundant without also asking why these values

434

1974.

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hold an entrenched place in our society whilst others are marginalized. These questions cannot be isolated from ‘the economics of the epoch’. Owners of capital stand to gain materially from these beliefs, which entail the push for economic growth, and the acceptance of the practice of externalizing costs and internalizing benefits. ‘But I think a socialist would say that none of these practices stems simply from “industrialization” or production of itself.’ Rather it is ‘Inherent features of the capitalist organization of production which are going to produce such practices: they certainly do result from capitalist industry.’435 He returns to this theme in a later publication, arguing that ecologists are mistaken in considering the category of industrialism as more important than the form (i.e. capitalism) that it takes. He further argues that a socialist industrialism would be environmentally benign, because the actual form taken by industrial technology is a function of the structural incentives of the economic system. ‘The non-exploitative technology of ecological socialism would be a different technology from that of the capitalist mode of production. It is not just liberals, but many on the left who fail to grasp this.’436 David Pepper is not alone in making this sort of claim. To give one other example, Martin Ryle attacks the green assertion that the underlying ideas of industrialism are ‘false’ as too simplistic. They are not only false in that economic life can be organized in other ways, they are also importantly true in that ‘they reflect, because they institutionalize, the exigencies of capitalism.’437 If greens want to confront the ideas of industrialism they will also have to confront the institutions, and for Ryle this means that greens will have to accept the requirement of a non-market economy. This presumably is because the market is held to structure incentives in such a way as to encourage environmental degradation.438 In assessing such claims the crucial question is whether it is possible to separate out the ecological effects of the structural characteristics of industrial capitalism that are specific to industrialism in that form. Is there anything specific about the capitalist form of industrialism that may make it uniquely problematic in environmental terms? The most immediately obvious candidate as salient feature of capitalism vis-à-vis ‘socialist’ industrialism has to be the profit motive, and the fact that production takes place explicitly for the profitable return on investment, within a market context.

435

In Weston, 1986 : 123.

436

1993b : 144.

437

Ryle, 1987: 43.

438

Hayward (1994b : 14) makes the point that whilst this may be true, the ecological devastation seen in socialist states still requires some explanation, ‘it does not suffice, I believe, to see this as the pure result of socialist states having to compete with capitalists’. As I suggest in the main text, some responsibility must lie with a common reading of Marx that attached zero-value to natural resources.

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As a social choice mechanism the market certainly does have weaknesses in the face of ecological problems. There is now a considerable literature on this sort of market failure,439 in which particular attention is given to the market's tendency, when left to its own devices, to underprovide public goods, and its inability to solve environmental ‘prisoner's dilemma’ style problems such as Hardin's ‘Tragedy of the Commons’. Furthermore, market capitalist systems are generally reliant on economic growth in order to contain distributional issues. Inequality provides a distinctive incentive structure which under zero- or negative-growth could become a locus of social discontent. This particular point can certainly offer support for the view that ecological concerns need to be consciously linked to a socialist politics. In a no- or very low-growth economy distributional issues are likely to come to the fore. Theories of distributional justice that consciously make allowance for inequalities (such as Rawls's difference principle) seem reliant upon these inequalities fostering economic growth in order to make the ‘worst off ’ group better off in absolute terms with the inequalities than they would be without. As Bell argues, ‘An ecologically oriented politics of limited growth must show that the sacrifices implied by such a project are bearable . . . This cannot be achieved . . . without immunising the first victims of the capitalist system, the workers, who would suffer the first consequences from a policy of zero growth.’440 Additionally, markets as they actually exist, containing large advertising industries, have the further weakness in environmental terms that they are certainly not neutral preference aggregators, but rather encourage a lifestyle of material consumption. The arguments that capitalist markets, left to their own devices, exhibit failure in terms of ‘ecological rationality’ are both correct and important; as Dryzek argues the market, if left to its own devices, simply does not have the resources to solve a prisoner's dilemma game.441 However, few people who take these problems seriously would argue for unregulated markets. There may be a further argument that the sort of regulation that might be required in order to bring markets nearer to sustainability (pollution and depletion taxes and/or quotas, for example) would be ineffective or unachievable. It remains, however, for eco-socialists to put forward a positive picture of how a vision of an environmentally benign non-market industrialism can be made convincing. Nonetheless, as we should be

439

See e.g. Dryzek, 1987 . This work includes an illuminating account of the ecological ramifications of various social choice mechanisms.

440

Bell, 1987 : 9.

441

Dryzek, 1987 : 74.

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reminded by the comments above on eastern Europe, we have yet to see how a planned economy that actually incorporated serious ecological constraints and targets would perform, so the sort of problems seen in this regard under actual Communist Party rule do not provide the conclusive argument against economic planning that some perceive. That said, the exclusive focus on capitalism as the source of environmental damage rather than industrialism is unconvincing precisely because the empirical evidence concerning widespread ecological damage in both East and West is widely available. This implies, as Dryzek suggests442 problems with both capitalist and state socialist resource use. Industrialism, capitalism, and state socialism are all categories which need to be disaggregated in order to ascertain their potential for facilitating ecologically benign productive activity. How would economic planning fare if ecological goods were given a high priority within it? Conversely, does the market's ability to convey a mass of information about relative scarcities very quickly suggest that it has, in some attenuated form, the potential to be ecologically benign? Answering these questions of detail would ultimately be a rather more rewarding exercise than apportioning blame for ecological problems between different modes of industrial production. The general point, however, is that eco-socialists and eco-Marxists seek to avoid the catch-all category of industrialism frequently employed by political ecologists. Benton, for example, in so doing argues that ‘limits to growth should not be conceptualised . . . simpliciter, but as consequences of definite forms of combination of human social activity and the natural forces and mechanisms deployed and encountered in the course of it’.443 For eco-Marxists there is no problem with this Marxist formulation itself. The statement ‘natural limits to growth will vary along with different modes of production’ is taken as true. The problem is rather that Marx under-theorized the account of how natural limits to growth would operate under different forms of production. Whilst Marx acknowledged the irrational resource use of capitalism, these ideas were never generalized into a theory concerning the relationship between natural resources and modes of production. This, according to Leff, created an ‘ideological inertia’ in Marxism, which ignored ecological limits to growth and the ecological bases of sustainable development.444 Benton makes a similar point, that Marx undertheorized or simply left out of the account a number of crucial relationships between natural resource bases and production.445 Rather than accept that there were natural constraints operative on

442

1987.

443

Benton, 1992 : 58.

444

Leff, 1993 , 47.

445

See 1989: 71–4.

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production in all its possible formulations, Marxists adopted the idea that ecological limits to growth only appeared to exist because of the irrational use of resources under capitalism. Once this mode of production was transcended and communism embarked upon, limits to growth would to all practical effect cease to exist.446 It is this truly Promethean humanist dream that self-professed ‘anti-humanists’ such as David Ehrenfeld object to. But, crucially, as this book stresses, this is only humanism in one of its many guises, and probably a version on the wane in terms of the intellectual support it receives (partly no doubt due to the efforts of David Ehrenfeld and others). The point is that Ehrenfeld writes of the ‘Arrogance of Humanism’ as if this version of humanism were all that it consisted in. It is perfectly possible for avowed humanists consistently to reject humanism in its more Promethean forms. It is precisely this form of humanism which eco-Marxists believe has become associated with orthodox Marxism, and from which they seek to distance themselves.

Eco-Marxism: A Critique of Ecocentrism Eco-Marxists attack ecocentrism and mainstream green political thought on a number of grounds, many of which are held in common with social ecology. Grundmann's attack, for example, has three main elements: ecocentrism is held to have an anthropomorphic philosophy of nature, from which are derived ‘social laws’; it claims to derive ‘from nature’ a set of values that are in reality socially constructed; and it has a constrictingly narrow view of anthropocentrism, which can be rejected.447 Another eco-Marxist writer, David Pepper, also condemns ecocentrism on a number

446

A wonderful example of this thinking comes from the Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism Manual. Here we are told that ‘It is necessary: to prolong man's life to 150–200 years on average, to wipe out infectious diseases . . . to conquer old age and fatigue, to learn to restore life in case of accidental, untimely death . . . to predict and render completely harmless natural calamities: floods, hurricanes, earthquakes; to produce in factories all the substances known on earth . . . to reduce, adapt for the needs of life and conquer unpromising areas, marshes, mountains, sea bottoms, deserts, taiga, tundra, and perhaps even the sea bottom; to learn to control the weather, regulate the wind and heat, just as rivers are regulated now, to shift clouds at will, to arrange for rain or clear weather, snow or hot weather. It goes without saying that even after coping with these magnificent and sweeping tasks, science will not have reached the limits of its potentialities. There is no limit, nor can there be any, to the inquiring human mind, to the striving of man to put the forces of nature at his service, to divine all nature's secrets’ (Dutt, n.d.: 876).

447

Grundmann, 1991a .

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of grounds. It is, he tells us, apolitical, idealist, ahistorical, capitalistic, anti-humanist, incoherent, millenarian, utopian, and bourgeois. This is a weighty catalogue of alleged faults, and an adequate account of them would have taken rather more than the eleven pages Pepper devotes to it in a 266-page book. I have neither the space for, nor the intention of, analysing each of these elements in detail. They are common to eco-socialist literature, to which I would refer any interested reader.448 Given our own focus, there are two elements in the eco-Marxist critique of ecocentrism I want to pursue further. These are the allegation that it is ‘anti-humanist’, and the idea, implicit in the first of Grundmann's points, that ecocentrism anthropomorphizes, and thus misunderstands, the concept of ‘nature’. Eco-Marxists offer a similar critique to social ecology with regard to the alleged anti-humanism of ecocentrism. Indeed Pepper quotes Bookchin approvingly in his own account of the ‘Marxist critique of ecocentrism’, despite Bookchin's own disavowal of the Marxist position.449 What Pepper fails to do in this particular text is to offer underlying reasons as to why ecocentrism has what he interprets as an anti-humanist content to its arguments (it is thus a far less welldeveloped critique of ecocentrism than that offered by social ecology). This section of his book consists merely of a collection of allegedly ‘misanthropic’ quotes given as evidence of the anti-humanistic tendency in ecocentric thought. However, despite the lack of structured argument it is still possible usefully to interrogate Pepper's account of ecocentric ‘anti-humanism’. We can do this by examining his proffered evidence and his reasons for suggesting that these are examples of ecological-philosophical misanthropy. Pepper's major target is Gaia theory as developed by James Lovelock, which is taken as a particularly transparent example of ecocentric misanthropy. Gaia theory is a common target of those alleging misanthropic tendencies in ecocentric thought (Bookchin quotes extensively from Lovelock in his own argument alleging ecocentric misanthropy) so I am here to some extent taking Pepper as representative of a general eco-socialist stance. As we shall see, such a contention rests upon a rather complacent assumption regarding the compatibility between Gaia and ecocentrism which I will argue is, at least in part, a product of Pepper's perception of

448

See e.g. Enzensberger, 1974 ; Pepper, 1984, 1993; Ryle, 1988 ; Weston, 1986 .

449

Of course to the extent that Bookchin retains concepts, categories, and argumentative structures concomitant with Marxism, Pepper's reliance upon his arguments for the support of eco-Marxism has some credence.

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ecocentrism through the simplistic and distorting humanist/anti-humanist dichotomy. ‘Misanthropy is quite explicit in Gaia theory’450 claims Pepper, and this contention is supported by an extensive selection of quotes from Lovelock's The Ages of Gaia. There is, prima facie, considerable support for Pepper's accusation in the cited paragraphs. Lovelock says here, for example: ‘It is the health of the planet that matters not some individual species . . . Gaia is as out of tune with the broader humanist world as it is with established science . . . the flabby good intentions of the humanist dream . . . our humanist concerns . . . divert the mind from our gross and excessive domination of the natural world.’451 However, before we can accept that such statements offer evidence of blanket antihumanist tendencies in ecocentric thought, there are two very important questions to ask which are left unaddressed by Pepper. First, what is the relationship between the Gaia hypothesis and ecocentrism? Why are we supposed to accept evidence that Gaia theory is ‘anti-humanist’ as sufficient evidence to tar ecocentrism with the same brush? Second, is the undoubted fact that Lovelock is critical of humanism in one of its particular forms sufficient evidence for him to be labelled ‘anti-humanist’ as if this applied to all forms of humanism? Only, I will suggest, if ‘humanism’ is interpreted as a monolithic and inflexible single system of thought rather than, as it should be, as a very diverse family of ideas connected by certain common threads. If we remember that there are many ways in which one can be humanist, we immediately have a more nuanced and satisfactory frame of reference to assess the arguments of Gaia theory, deep ecology, ecocentrism and other allegedly anti-humanistic ideologies. To take the first of these questions, what assessment can we make of the relationship between Gaia theory and ecocentrism? Gaia theory is a macroscopic explanatory theory which seeks to account for certain large-scale phenomena that have been recorded in the history of earth. In particular it seeks to explain the maintenance of conditions suitable for life on earth during a period in which the earth's own environment has undergone some considerable alterations (for example a 25 per cent increase in heat output from the sun). The explanation offered by Gaia theory for this observed phenomenon is that at the planetary level earth actually behaves as a complex adaptive system452 which can adjust the elements in its internal environment in response to changes in the

450

Pepper, 1993b : 147.

451

All cited in Pepper, ibid.

452

On complex adaptive systems see Gell-Man, 1994.

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external environment.453 Thus earth is capable of adapting to changes and disruption in such a way that the existence of life on earth is preserved through a very long-run of time. A further axiom of the Gaia argument is that the earth is also capable of responding in similar fashion to disruptions to its internal environment in such a way as to ensure the survival of life (the main example cited being the switch from a non-oxygenated to an oxygenated atmosphere in the prehistoric period). The implication drawn from this by Lovelock is that even if humankind were to succeed in making the planet uninhabitable for itself and other complex organisms, to the extent that there is a wave of mass extinction, this is very unlikely to lead to the end of life on earth. Indeed according to Gaia theory microbiotic life forms are far more essential to the continuance of life on earth than complex higher organisms, which are seen rather more as adornments to the earth's surface. What is the relationship between this theory and ecocentrism? This would be a suitable time to remind ourselves of some central ecocentric contentions, in order to see how well Gaia theory ‘fits’ with them. The posited ontological unity of human beings and the rest of the natural world is fundamental. Mere anthropocentric arguments are held insufficient to underpin the policies necessary for the preservation of the natural environment. Human beings need to take positive policy measures in order to ensure that biotic diversity and the current range of species on earth are protected and preserved, and this can only be achieved if such species are believed to be valuable independently of their utility to human beings, or if human beings achieve deep ecological Self-realization. Now, Gaia has nothing to say about the value of anything, other than instrumentally in terms of contributions to the maintenance of life on earth (and even then what are most valued in this regard are microscopic organisms). This is unsurprising given that Gaia is, as said, an explanatory theory rather than an axiological one. Intrinsically it is neither humanist, anti-humanist or ecocentric. To the extent that ecocentric thinkers are seeking to persuade people to change their behaviour in order to preserve life on earth it might even be considered anti-ecocentric. Gaia's message is that life, in some form, will almost certainly continue on earth whatever humankind may do, and so, presumably, will the evolutionary process. From a world reduced to micro-organisms speciation and movement toward increasing complexity of life forms would, one assumes, start over.

453

None of this is of course in any way meant to suggest the Earth has agency and acts as a conscious organism.

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This is why Dobson correctly claims that the only reasonable inference for political ecologists from the Gaia hypothesis is an implicitly anthropocentric one. It is humankind's survival (along with the survival of other higher species) that is at stake, and so we need to change our behaviour in order to protect ourselves.454 Gaia theory, then, can hardly be taken as conveniently representative of ecocentrism; there exists a far more complex relationship between the two schools of thought. As Dobson says, Gaia is very much a double-edged sword for green politics. If human activity is literally incapable of destroying life on earth, and if, in ecocentric fashion, human life is not considered intrinsically more valuable than any other form of life, then why not pollute and be damned? A world of micro-organisms is no less a living world than one with five and a half billion human beings. Even if, then, the Gaia hypothesis cannot be unproblematically taken to be representative of ecocentrism, is it ‘antihumanist’ in its own right? Certainly, Lovelock is critical of the ‘flabby good intentions’ of ‘the humanist dream’ and what he does indeed see as an obsession with human welfare to the exclusion of all other questions. That last rider is, however, important. In Lovelock's writings he is critical of humanism in a particular form, a form in which concern for immediate human welfare is posited at the expense of any consideration of the long-term consequences of the instantiation of such concern. Lovelock is accused of abdicating from any concern for human interests. We might more sympathetically consider him instead as thinking a ‘humanism’ that undermines its own objective (of the achievement of human well-being in the long run) to be hardly worthy of the name ‘humanism’ at all. Now, this is not to suggest that Lovelock merely wants to replace a rather short-termist concern for human welfare with another version of such concern which incorporates consideration of the long-term effects of human actions. He does plainly think that we should be morally concerned with more than just human welfare. This however, does not mean that Lovelock deserves to be labelled a misanthrope, and such a conclusion (which both Pepper and Bookchin would share) is only reached when this problem of categorization is addressed through the dichotomous humanist/anti-humanist framework. Instead, I want to suggest that along with an independent concern for the

454

Dobson, 1990 : 44. This is a suitable point at which to remind ourselves that Goldsmith's human-existentialist ecocentrism invokes Gaia theory precisely because we need to ‘protect ourselves’.

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interests of non-human entities, Lovelock does seek to articulate an alternative humanism to what he perceives to be the mainstream, shallow, short-termist version. This revised version of humanism is not itself Gaia theory, as stated that is an explanatory account of macroscopic terrestrial phenomena. It is, however, a version of humanism that is cognizant of Gaia theory. That said, this humanism is, as we shall see, a classically anthropocentric message cast in terms of the self-interest of the human species. To illustrate, we can begin by remembering Bookchin's assertion, quoted in Chapter 3, that what he calls anti-humanist ecocentrism entails a denial of history and progress, and that what we get in place of this is a Rousseauvian account of the fall of humankind from a natural state of grace to the corrupt human material of modern industrial society. Lovelock, by contrast, suggests that such stories merely serve to inculcate a sense of guilt on the part of humanity ‘a powerful but arbitrary negative feedback in human society’.455 He goes on to argue that phenomena greens would conventionally think of as examples of the degradation of modern industrial society, such as ‘pollution’ are widespread in the non-human natural world, and that the very idea of pollution is anthropocentric, and ‘may be irrelevant in the Gaian context’.456 The problems such a view would cause for ecocentric philosophy are obvious enough. Consider also the following: ‘The problem of feeding a world population of 8,000 million without seriously damaging Gaia would seem more urgent than that of industrial pollution.’457 ‘DDT will no doubt continue to be used in its lifesaving and life-enriching role as a weapon against insect borne disease, but it will probably be more carefully and economically employed.’458 ‘In the end we may achieve a sensible and economic technology and be more in harmony with the rest of Gaia. I think that we are more likely to achieve this goal by retaining but modifying technology than by a reactionary “back-to-nature campaign”.’459 ‘The exploitation of human ecology for political ends can become nihilistic, rather than a force working for reconciliation between mankind and the natural world.’460 Finally: It could be argued that a world with tens of thousands of millions of human beings on its surface is not only possible but tolerable, through the continued development of technology. The amount of regimentation, selfdiscipline and

455

Lovelock, 1987 : 107.

456

Ibid. 110.

457

Ibid. 114.

458

Ibid. 114–15. Emphasis added.

459

Ibid. 117.

460

Ibid. 129.

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sacrifice of personal freedom that would of necessity be imposed on everyone in such a crowded world must make it unacceptable to many by our present standards. We should bear in mind, however, that conditions in present day China and Britain both indicate that high-density living is neither impossible nor always unpleasant.461 More examples could be given, but this would merely demonstrate the ease with which one can engage in the practice of seeking out particularly supportive quotes for an interpretation of an author's position. Nonetheless, I trust that the above are sufficient to lead us to question the suggestion that Lovelock's work is easily dismissed as simple misanthropy. One can endorse a particular humanist doctrine without cleaving to the idea that maximization of the number of human beings on the planet is a good in itself, or that non-human nature is without value. Most of Chapter 2 was devoted to demonstrating that there is a humanistic discourse embedded within ‘ecocentrism’, and without rehearsing the same arguments I trust the above does enough to at least suggest that a version of humanism exists also in Lovelock's assessment of the implications of Gaia theory. It is a version of humanism which seeks as an overriding priority the reconciliation of human activity with the requirements of Gaia which are taken as essential if the Earth is to continue to support human and other complex forms of life. It may not contain a well-developed account of human flourishing, but it takes rather such reconciliation as a prerequisite of any sustainable human society at all. Eco-Marxists such as Pepper may object to it as an inadequate form of humanism, and they may even be right to do so, but to claim that it is ‘anti-humanist’, merely because within it human population levels are considered a threat to Gaian stability is to massively oversimplify Lovelock's argument and attach to it a derogatory label without much meaning. There are of course other key elements to the eco-Marxist critique of ecocentrism. As with social ecology, ecoMarxism conceives of ecocentrism as having an inadequate conceptualization of nature, and, similarly, a number of conceptual consequences are held to flow from this. To consider in detail the eco-Marxist critique of the ecocentric conception of nature would be to recapitulate almost identical arguments to those offered by social ecology in the previous chapter, as these two doctrines offer much the same critique for much the same reasons. The ecocentric conception of nature is taken to be too static and divorced from human

461

Lovelock, 1987 : 130.

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activity, such that humans are turned into mere ‘pollutants’ in a pristine wilderness.462 The importance of these battles over conceptual meaning is attested by the Marxist geographer David Harvey. [T]he careful analysis of the way power relations get embedded in distinctive discourses suggests that the vast conceptual muddle and cacophony of discourses is far from innocent in the reproduction of capitalism . . . If all socio-political projects are ecological projects and vice versa, then some conception of ‘nature’ and ‘environment’ are omnipresent in everything we say and do. If furthermore, concept, discourses and theories can operate . . . as ‘material forces’ that shape history . . . then the present battles being waged over the concepts of ‘nature’ and environment' are of immense importance.463 Enrique Leff also argues that ‘there is a need to establish a concept of nature that is appropriate for the building of socialism’464 and that ‘historical materialism, as a critical theory of history and economy, must rework its categories of nature and culture’.465 Burgess suggests, in an argument more conventionally Marxist than Harvey's or Leff's, that discourse concerning the concept of nature is mere rationalization of changes in the mode of production. Changes that is, in the human mode of interaction with nature change the conception of nature a society cleaves to. The conception of nature that becomes dominant will be determined by the current mode of production.466 It is precisely such materialist-determinist models concerning human thinking about nature that eco-Marxists are attempting to distance themselves from, whilst retaining a general commitment to Marx's epistemology. The main avenue for such a move has been to reformulate the Marxian account of production in such a way that material ecological constraints on productive processes stand acknowledged as existing independently of the form of production itself. Thus ecological limits stand as a constraining factor independently from (although variably with) the chosen mode of production.467

462

For good examples of this critique from the eco-Marxist perspective see Harvey, 1993 and Grundmann, 1991a .

463

Harvey, 1993 : 39.

464

Leff, 1993 : 50.

465

Ibid. 46.

466

Burgess, 1978 .

467

The question of how this view is reconciled both with Marxian epistemology and the standard Marxist critique of the idea of ‘limits to growth’ is an interesting one. The ecoMarxist conception of independent ecological limits constraining productive activity is not taken to entail that these limits rigidly determine levels of industrial output in a general sense. What the productive limits will be is something taken to vary between different modes of production, as some will be more ecologically sustainable at a given level of output than others. Indeed eco-Marxism has taken upon itself the task of analysing the effects of different modes of production with different socio-environmental formulations. See Leff, 1993 .

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Conclusion Can eco-Marxism offer the transcendence of the anthropocentric– ecocentric divide, as Harvey suggests it might? This will of course be crucially dependent upon the characterization given of the main points of contention between the ecocentric and humanist schools of thought. As we saw in Chapter 1, it is the contention of Eckersley and others that the fundamental split between anthropocentrists and ecocentrists is that anthropocentrists recognize a value-imparting ontological divide between humanity and the rest of nature, and that ecocentrists do not. That is, anthropocentrists take the nature of human being to be qualitatively distinct from that of any other entity, and because of this qualitative uniqueness are prepared to attach a higher (or sole) value to human interests and attributes vis-à-vis those of other species. This raises a preliminary question—what would the ‘transcendence’ of this divide actually entail? I think here we have to separate the axiological claims from the ontological claims upon which they are dependent. If there is a possible ‘transcendence’ of the ontological question it is far from being apparent in the theories discussed so far. The question of the nature of human existence is cast in terms of its mode of being, through comparison with the mode of being of other entities. In this the question is formulated in a dichotomous fashion—either humans exist in like manner with other living creatures, or they exist in a contrasting manner. These contrasting positions are both complete and mutually exclusive. If not a then b, if not b then a; a and b encompass the entire field of possibilities. The supposed eco-Marxist transcendence of this divide takes, at my best estimate, the following form. We can move beyond the idea that we either exist in different manner or in the same manner as the rest of nature. Marxian epistemology and anthropology informs us that through our interactions with nature we come to understand it, and can thus participate in the species being of all species, not only ourselves. The ecocentric/anthropocentric divide is transcended in the movement from ontology to epistemology: ontology no longer matters if we possess understanding. To draw a sexual parallel, it would not matter if the nature of being a woman is radically different from the nature of being a man, or whether it was fundamentally the same, if each of us really understand through some process of knowledge accumulation through interaction, what it means to be the other. This does not, however, mean that either of us

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would want eventually to become the other, a process suggested by the ‘humanization of nature’. The general Marxist claim that only in changing the world do we come to understand it seems to open to a possible objection from ecocentrists. The claimed empirical connection between ‘changing’ something and ‘understanding’ something, it could be said, simply does not hold. If I throw a watch into a furnace I undoubtedly change its form, but that act gives me no insight into how a watch works. To this, however, it might be responded that changing something is only a necessary, not a sufficient, criterion for coming to understand it. If changing the form of something is only a necessary and not a sufficient condition for coming to understand it, then there is of course no necessary connection between such change and increased understanding. It is quite possible to change elements of reality without coming to understand them, or understanding may come too late in the day, when significant damage has been rendered. So, for example, through changing the ozone layer by making it thinner we might well have a more comprehensive understanding of the nature and functions of the ozone layer. The net value of this understanding in light of the damage caused is questionable. Even if Marxism in its ecological variant fails to ‘transcend’ the ecocentric/anthropocentric divide through a move from the realm of ontology to epistemology, this does not necessarily entail that it has nothing of value to tell us. I will argue anyway in my conclusion that the debate about the ‘ontological divide’ between eco- and anthropocentrists is actually of far less consequence for arguments about nature preservation than its protagonists imagine. There are questions that can still usefully be asked of eco-Marxism concerning the way in which it frames the problem of nature preservation. First, how does this particular variant of ecological humanism seek to reconcile humanity and nonhuman nature; second, does it, and if it does how does it, articulate a demand for the preservation of non-human nature? The version of eco-Marxism that stays firmly within the Marxist framework (as exemplified in the work of Reiner Grundmann) seeks to reconcile humanity and non-human nature through, as we saw, a ‘domination through subjection’ account of the relationship between the two elements. Humanity comes to understand nature through developing its productive activity in nature. This process also teaches humanity about the limits of what it is possible to do in nature without incurring disastrous ecolo-gical feedbacks. A humanity in conscious control of its mode of production would also be in conscious control of its relationship with nature,

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exploiting her only insofar as this was ecologically sustainable. I argue that the approach of Grundmann stays within the Marxist framework because its adoption does not entail a significant conceptual reshuffling of the Marxian morphological deck. It merely requires a particular decontestation of the idea of ‘mastery of nature’ such that, as with Engels, an ima-gined domination, which in fact entailed unforeseen negative ecological feedback, would not be considered ‘mastery’. Of course the idea that we could ever gain the requisite amount of knowledge to make this feasible must be highly contentious. What is not clear is whether Marxist-inspired ecologists such as Ted Benton, who call into question the whole project of the ‘human domination of nature’ could be said to still be operating within the Marxist canon when a number of the core conceptual components of Marxism have to be removed. A Marxism without the account of human ‘speciesbeing’ is an odd Marxism: one which further opposes the ‘humanization of nature’, insists on natural limits to growth and questions the idea that communist society can exist in a realm of abundance begins to look like something else.468 The reconciliation of humanity and nature offered by eco-Marxists such as Grundmann, Leff, O'Connor et al. revolves around the incorporation of the necessary conditions for reproduction into a theory of production. That is, in terms of a notion of sustainability rather than anything more fundamental in terms of Marx's philosophy of human ecology. The fundamental ‘metabolism’ between humanity and nature remains in place. However, the current mode of production in ‘late’ capitalism is held to have demonstrated that ecological limits do exist to the capitalist mode of production, although capitalism is held an insufficiently rational mode of production to cope with them (the second contradiction). The alternative eco-Marxist theory of production has to incorporate a sub-theory concerning the reproduction of the conditions of production, i.e. it accepts the idea of general ecological limits to human productive activity, operative under all relations of production but varying between one and another. Once this principle is in place, a path is offered for human beings to realize their species-being through unalienated labour without threatening the long-term ecological sustainability of human society. This is the ‘true domination’ of nature.

468

The removal of these components would suggest, for one thing, that the core problems Marx was concerned to address were misconceived. If, for example, the ‘separateness’ of nature is acknowledged and positively valued, then ‘The problem which Marx is concerned to solve by the “humanisation of nature” is no problem at all’ (O'Neill, 1994 : 27).

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This finally, demonstrates why eco-Marxism will still be found to have very questionable ecological credentials by nonMarxist ecologists, and why even ecologists inspired by Marx's philosophy of history such as Bookchin, Clark and Benton have all finally felt the need to distance themselves from it. All of these authors are concerned that one core element of an ecologically inspired ideology should be the demand for the defence of the ‘natural’, a demand for nature preservation, and it is not obvious from whence these demands might be legitimately originated in eco-Marxism. The priorities of eco-Marxism are made clear by Leff: [W]e can begin to reconstruct a Marxist theory of production that accounts for the incorporation of natural processes in the general conditions of production and the construction of an environmental rationality based upon the principles of ecotechnological productivity, participatory environmental management, and ecological sustainable development. Whereas Marxism offers an historical, economic, and social perspective on the study of environmental problems, and a theoretical paradigm that can be reworked in a way to incorporate the environment into the productive process, the environmental perspective offers Marxism knowledge about the socioenvironmental and ecological conditions for sustainable development.469 There is little in this formulation of the eco-Marxist project for those engaged in the campaign for the ‘defence of the natural’. It is clear from Leff's account that the main concern of eco-Marxism is sustainable non-capitalist development, and here Leff's eco-Marxist theory of production connects with Grundmann's eco-Marxist philosophy of human ecology. The humanity which has achieved all-round development through unalienated productive activity and which ‘dominates’ nature in accordance with nature's own laws, is precisely the society which has incorporated the ‘reproduction of the natural conditions of production’ into its Marxian theory (and practice) of production. There are no caveats here to suggest that nature should not be ‘humanized without residue’ (as Benton phrases it) if this humanization is ecologically sustainable in the long run. There is nothing intrinsic to either the theory of production or the philosophy of human ecology in eco-Marxism that entails protection of either wilderness or any other ‘nonproductive’ areas of non-human nature.470

469

Leff, 1993 : 45.

470

This is not of course to say that such arguments could not be attached to eco-Marxism in a more contingent fashion. For example it might be taken as an empirical fact that the existing rainforests of the world must be protected in order to absorb a significant amount of the carbon dioxide from industrial activity. My argument is merely that there is no core conceptual commitment in eco-Marxism for the protection of non-human nature.

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In short, despite fairly extensive conceptual reshuffling, there is no difference of substance between orthodox Marxism and a recognizably Marxist eco-Marxism beyond a concern to place material production on an ecologically sustainable footing.471 Those theories which seek to take ecological concerns beyond this mere ecological prudentialism become, for the reasons given above, political-ecological theories with some elements drawn from Marxism, so far have they removed themselves from reliance upon Marxism's core concepts. Of the ecological-variant ideologies we have so far studied, the one that stays within the Marxist conceptual framework has the weakest articulation of demands for the preservation of non-human nature. This should not perhaps surprise us given Marxism's ideological heritage. For all that, do any elements of Marx's philosophy of man and nature, having undergone this ecological interrogation, emerge as useful and insightful in regard to constructing an ecologically benign political theory? The most important lesson with regard to the central concern of political ecology, i.e. the relationship between humanity and nature, that we can learn from Marx is the injunction to realize that conceptions of nature are socially mediated, and deeply influenced by the character of our interactions with non-human nature. This moves us away from the naïve realism of much ecocentric discourse on ‘nature’ in which a ‘correct’ perception of an unchanging natural material reality is called for. Often this takes the form of an idealization of the understandings of nature held by our hunter-gatherer forebears and a projection of this forwards into an era in which the modern (and mistaken) ‘industrialist’ perception of nature has undergone ‘metaphysical reconstruction’.472 For Marx the crucial point is that we change nature as we interact with it, and thus there can be no question of returning to a ‘correct’ understanding that existed for humanity long ago because the environment in which those people lived no longer exists. However, Marx's materialism gave him a sufficient streak of realism to formulate the ‘material substratum’ thesis that humanity would always be dependent on an external non-human nature in some way. In synthesizing the Marxian view that ‘man’ is always changing nature

471

According to the analysis of Marx offered by Foster (2000 ) or Burkett (1999 ) Marx was already eco-Marxist in this sense.

472

See ch. 2. One might suggest that this general form of argument began with Rousseau, see his ‘Discourse on the Origins of Inequality’. Diamond, 1992 , provides compelling evidence that the Rousseauesque fantasy is precisely that, and that our hunter-gatherer forebears exterminated a good deal of the large fauna that they came into contact with, in particular the first people to settle North America, and the Polynesians landing in Australasia.

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with the argument that mankind is dependent on non-human nature we can seek to retain both these (superficially contradictory) elements whilst moving away from orthodox Marxist productivism: humanity has to undertake transformative activities if it is to survive, and thus it just does transform non-human nature in its productive activities. Yet we are also reliant upon certain natural phenomena and processes that exist outside of ourselves, (which involve highly complex interactions that we do not fully comprehend)—and if these are to be maintained, then we have to introduce the crucial notion of limits—both in terms of our understanding and our actions. Were we to follow the Marxist productivist path of radical humanization of nature ‘without residue’, and without the full comprehension of natural processes so conveniently assumed by some to exist in communist society, then we stand a very high risk of interfering with the ‘material substratum’ to such an extent that we threaten our own interests. So we are warned to steer a path between the purely static conception of nature in deep ecology and the unfettered productivism of orthodox Marxism (and capitalism), with an emphasis on the need for a certain caution in our interference with nonhuman natural processes that we apparently lack in the modern industrial world. This incorporation of the idea of externally imposed, natural limits to production is what distinguishes eco-Marxism from its orthodox root. What critics like Routley suggest is that it still lacks an articulation of a demand for nature preservation. Do the conceptual tools for making this demand exist within eco-Marxism? Eco-Marxists could develop the idea that the protection of a ‘wild nature’ such as a rainforest can be conceived as an expression of our fulfilment as beings who are in a self-conscious relationship (this does not mean in fully conscious control) with nature, but this insight again has to be removed from the Marxian framework that holds to the propositions that (a) mankind can fully understand the ecological consequences of its activities, and (b) a ‘transformed’ nature is of more value than nature untransformed. The proposition that a ‘a proper ethical, aesthetic and cognitive relationship to nature’ is a necessary part of true human fulfilment can in this way form the basis of an appeal for the preservation of non-human nature. However, this assertion would hardly appear to be rooted in any component of Marxist theory, and might be considered a peripheral consideration which is at best contingently compatible with ecoMarxist thought. The problem then of course becomes one of its theoretical contingency, as there will be many other attitudes to nature that are compatible with eco-Marxian theory.

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So, we have argued that although the attempt at a full ‘ecological reconstruction’ of Marx, which would include a defence of ‘the natural’, is not in itself plausible, there are certain elements in Marx's thought on the relationship between humanity and nature that could enrich theory building in ecologically orientated politics. Where does this leave the project of eco-socialism? Eco-socialists also draw inspiration form other socialist figures, both quasi- or neoMarxist and non-Marxist; among the most important of these have been Charles Fourier, William Morris, and the school of Critical Theorists who themselves rejected the project of the ‘radical humanization’ of nature. It is however a question beyond the scope of this study as to whether these thinkers may have something more to offer to the project of synthesizing ecological and socialist concerns. I hope merely to have shown that some versions of Marxism do offer useful insights, despite remaining wedded to a productivist account of human welfare that leaves it with only the weakest of articulations of arguments for the preservation of nature.

Conclusion Framing, Irreplaceability, and the Ineliminability of Contingency

Problems With Ontology and Value This book has engaged in a detailed morphological examination of three distinctive strands of ecological thought—ecocentrism, social ecology, and eco-Marxism. The decontestations of the concepts of nature, humanity, human interest, reason, and related ideas at work in these diverse strands of ecological thought, and the ways in which they are interconnected have been analysed. Upon the understanding gained from this morphological reading a critique of the ecocentric–humanist dichotomy has been established, and this will be developed further in this chapter. I intend here to make a number of claims regarding the theories of preservation and humanity's relationship with nature that have developed within the schools of thought under consideration. I will go on to suggest, in a tentative fashion, a more profitable way forward for thinking about ecological political philosophy with regard to justifying preservation. Most of the writers discussed in this book suggest that, in thinking about the problem of nature preservation, we have a choice between two fundamentally opposed sets of guiding principles—namely humanism and ecocentrism. Ecocentrists see humanism as leaving us with inadequate arguments for nature preservation, and furthermore a whole array of reasons and justifications for exploiting nature rather than preserving it. Social ecologists, on the other hand, argue that humanism (in the particular form offered by social ecology) provides not only convincing arguments for sufficient nature preservation, but also constitutes the only form of argument capable of protecting human welfare and promoting an appropriate form of human development, both of which they believe ecocentrism is willing to sacrifice on the altar of ‘Nature’. Eco-Marxists also reject ecocentrism as anti-humanistic but, as we have seen, their attempt to ‘transcend’ the ‘ontological divide’ through appeals to Marx's account of

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human ecology fails on account of Marxism's core positive valuation of the human transformation of nature. There is a fundamental flaw in these approaches to the politics and philosophy of preservation. As we have seen they falsely dichotomize the potential choice of guiding principles around a cleavage which is determined by the alleged absence or presence of a significant ‘ontological divide’ between humanity and the rest of nature.473 These ontological stances cannot, however, do the applied philosophical work that ecocentrists, in particular, want them to do. What ecocentrists are actually engaged in is an attempt to eliminate contingency from debates about nature preservation, but in so doing they are attempting to eliminate the ineliminable. Furthermore, the elements of ecocentric and humanist argument that actually do the theoretical work of justifying preservation can be brought together, in a noncontradictory fashion, around a principle of strong irreplaceability474 in order to render argumentative support for nature preservation. As remarked upon in Chapter 1, ecocentric authors argue that there are ‘no absolute dividing lines’ between the ‘human and the non-human’. Bookchin holds by contrast that ‘the ontological divide between the non-human and the human is very real’. What is really at stake in this particular clash of apparently fundamental beliefs? What is the significance, for ecocentrists, in their insistence that human beings exist in the same way (in all important respects) as any other natural phenomenon? Clearly

473

That this divide should be transcended is a claim made with increasing frequency among environmental political theorists, and this in itself is to be welcomed. There is however, a curious tendency in these texts to claim, on the one hand, that the dichotomy must be transcended and then, on the other, to declare oneself ‘for’ one side or the other of the very same divide, thus perpetuating that which it has been claimed must be overcome. Thus Barry claims that the anthropocentric/ecocentric dichotomy is false and damaging (1999: 13), before going on to claim that ecocentrism is misguided and that what is required is a virtue based ethical anthropocentrism (ibid. 36). Conversely, Laura Westra claims that the ‘anthropocentric/ nonanthropocentric distinction presents a false dichotomy in several senses’ (1998: 87–8) but that the ‘radical change called for by the current emergencies can only be supported through an ecocentric or biocentric viewpoint’ (ibid. 92). It is not that these authors are being simply self-contradictory, for it truly does ‘transcend’ a false dichotomy if you can show that only one out of the two value positions makes any sense, the other lacking coherence or being in some other way foundationally flawed. The problem is that if both of these value positions do make sense (which I believe they do—to claim that they make sense is not, note, to claim moral correctness), then both Barry and Westra end up reinforcing one side or the other of a value dichotomy they explicitly denounce. I try to show in this chapter that two positions normally considered either anthropocentric or ecocentric can be brought together around the concept of strong irreplaceability to show valid, forceful, but not always compelling reasons to make a judgement in favour of preservation.

474

First introduced in Chapter 2 .

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this is not believed to be just a dispute as to the nature of existence per se; certain conclusions are held to follow from an adherence to this ontological belief. These implications are taken to result from the relevant similarities between the human and the non-human that the ecocentric position on the ontological divide entails. Two of these implications, one axiological, the other an empirical claim relating to interrelatedness, are of particular importance here. First, what we might call the ‘universal value postulate’: if any part (in particular humanity) of nature is considered valuable (or worthy of respect), all of nature must be valuable (or worthy of respect). This is because all of nature exists, in every relevant attribute, in the same way as that part (humanity) exists. That is, if the assumption of human value (or worthiness of respect) is granted, then the rest of the natural world is valuable (or worthy of respect) for the same reason that humanity is valuable (or worthy of respect). Second, what I will call the ‘reciprocal damage postulate’: because of this unity of existence, and the more general interconnectedness of all nature, if we damage one part of nature we damage ourselves, any damage to nature is reciprocated back to us. This belief is summarized in Naess's dictum that we must see what we do to ourselves when we think we are changing external nature only,475 as well as in the deep ecological assertion that defence of nature is a form of (expanded) Self-defence. I propose that both of these arguments are erroneous. The error involved lies in thinking that a position on ontological identity or ontological difference is determinate in either recognising interconnections in nature or in the ascription of value. The ‘interconnections’ postulate is an empirical matter, at least to a large extent, and cannot be deduced as a general principle from the suppositions of ontological identity and interconnectedness. Indeed, in a world of organic life forms which have to prey upon each other (in this sense, at least, we exist in de Maistre's world soaked in blood) we inevitably have to inflict very obvious harms on other parts of nature in order merely to ensure our own survival. This alone is sufficient to show that a proposition which informs us that ‘in harming nature I harm myself’ just cannot be true in general terms, even if it is true for specific cases. It may well be only because I exist ‘in the same way’ as a food organism that I am able to absorb it as nutrient into my own body. In the process it would be rather difficult to hold that I do not do it some ‘harm’, but nonetheless absurd to hold that in so doing I ‘harm myself’. The idea that in harming nature we harm ourselves is far from absurd in

475

Naess, 1989b : 165.

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particular cases (such as in the use of CFCs and damage to the ozone layer476), but would be if held as a universal principle. This is sufficient to show that as an ecologized version of a harm principle, the reciprocal damage postulate cannot act as a general grounding of nature preservation. The value claim is equally untenable, and depends for its plausibility on a conflation of ontological and axiological claims. That is, it implicitly assumes that value claims are fully determined by ontological understandings. If a and b exist in the same way, and a is held to be of value, then b must also be of value for the reason that it exists in the same way as a. This argument makes the illegitimate assumption that the only relevant factor in decisions about whether something is of value (irrespective of how much value) is its ontological status. However, reflection as to the nature of value judgements suggests that this is simply not true for the vast majority of questions about value. Other factors can always intervene in such judgements, factors such as capacities, behaviour, population size, functionings, and aesthetics, to name but a few. Why should any of these factors be less relevant than ontology in trying to determine the presence or absence of value? Note here I am not making the classic is/ought objection to a connection being made between ontology and value. Value judgements have to come from somewhere, and usually appeal to some existing attribute or capacity of an object to inform an axiological theory. What I am claiming is that these attributes do not have to be (merely) ontological.477 This can be illustrated through attention to some of the other factors that intrude upon value judgements. In matters of preservation: priority will normally be given to protecting rare rather than common species. If promoting a conservation area in the UK, it would be unusual, to say the least, to protect an area on the grounds that it was rat habitat and at the same time develop a site inhabited by the crested newt. Now one might respond by suggesting that this has little to do with value and everything to do with pragmatism. When faced with a choice: protect the rarer species, without making any reference to value. But this won't do, unless

476

The notion of such damage constituting ‘harm’ is not unproblematic, given the inert, non-living nature of the ozone layer. Here I would not want to attach too much weight to terminology, and I believe the people who make this argument would settle for the formulation that in damaging nature we damage ourselves, given that the notion of damage is more applicable to non-living objects.

477

In holding some ‘attributes’ of a being to be ‘ontological’ I am referring back to the central question of the ‘ontological divide’ posed by Eckersley and Bookchin. Those attributes (such as, for Bookchin, human reason) that render the nature of our being sufficiently unique to (allegedly) ground a value distinction would be ‘ontological’ ones on this reading.

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we can say why rarity in itself matters. We might construct the argument in terms of biodiversity, in that in protecting rarer species we protect diversity. But then diversity has a role in attributing value to the rarer species. It has nothing to do with the ontological status of rats and crested newts that we value the newts more highly, and everything to do with their comparative abundance or lack thereof.478 Another factor to consider here is functioning. I may share my ontological status with a smallpox virus and a salmonella bacterium. This may give me prima facie, a reason to think these things might be of value. Yet, when I examine further questions about capacities, functionings and behaviour, I find that the limited set of functions and behaviour patterns that these organisms can engage in constitute life-threatening activities as far as I am concerned, such that I might actually be inclined to attribute negative value to these entities and make efforts to destroy them. Or I may decide that the shared ontological status gives me only weak reasons to attribute value to these things, and that their functions and capacities give me far stronger reasons to disvalue them. Thus I accept Sterba's point that we can legitimately destroy that which we value, but do not base this legitimization on a bare ‘species preference’ allegedly shared by all species. This is presented as a last line of defence that can be invoked when all attempts to differentiate between values fail. When it comes down to our own vital interests as against the vital interests of another species, we win, for no better reason than that we can prefer our own. I believe it is possible to make a more reasoned case for preferring to protect human life against the HIV or Ebola virus or any similar pathogen, but in order to do so we have to accept the plurality of factors that contribute to value and move away from the strange idea that ontological status does the relevant work. We can recognize these things as having an existence value, but that does not imply that we have to feel regret if we destroy them. Their mode of functioning and reproducing themselves are just such that their existence is not even potentially compatible with the flourishing of other life-forms, and the world just is made a better place if they are destroyed. This remains true even with our recognition of their existence value. It really is not reasonable to expect us to share a world with the HIV virus or the creature from Alien. However, if we find our interests conflict with non-pathological entities, whose existence is at least potentially compatible with the flourishing of other forms of life, then we might want to ask

478

This of course merely pushes the problem back one stage—reasons for valuing diversity would have to be offered here.

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serious questions about why the conflict arises, and whether we might want to rethink the terms of the case. If it really appears that the only site available for a badly-needed community hospital is also the last breeding site of the Dartford Warbler, we might at least want to ask how this situation came to be, and perhaps rethink the choices on offer. The point is that extermination of the Dartford Warbler would raise problems of justification that the extermination of the HIV or Ebola virus just would not, and it would do this regardless of our beliefs about the ontological status of humanity and non-human nature. Where ecocentric attitudes are held to make a substantive difference to reasoning about political policies is in the field of long-term planning of preservation and population policies (Eckersley's two ‘litmus tests’). An acceptance of ecocentric principles will entail a commitment to substantially reducing human population levels, and the amount of human ‘interference’ in the non-human world. I want to suggest in the latter part of this chapter, however, that these commitments can be justified in an articulation which stands independently from any ontological position, and which thus evades the dichotomization of theoretical differences that has taken place in environmental ethics. What I will show is that one can hold good reasons for adopting a pro-preservation policy stance that reflect beliefs normally taken as humanist or ecocentric, without committing to any particular position on the ontological question. This is not, I should stress again, to claim that justification for political preferences does not matter, but rather that the appropriate level of justification is not at the level of beliefs about the fundamental nature of reality. Thinking about reasons and justifications for preservation involves judgements about relative scarcity and irreplaceability that are more relevant and more important than any position on the ontological divide. The next section sketches out the reasons why ecocentrism cannot do the work its proponents require of it, and the following section articulates reasons for preservation that are clearly agnostic on the ontological issue.

Ontology and Contingency Above all ecocentric else arguments are designed to remove the contingency from calls for the preservation of nature. This is suggested in

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the following critique of aesthetic environmental values from Robyn Eckersley: The main problem with the aesthetic argument is that it fails to provide a reliable and systematic basis for the protection of nonhuman nature. This is because the western aesthetic of wilderness and wildlife . . . does not always extend to those habitats or beings that are most in need of protection.479 On this view if nature is held to be intrinsically valuable, worthy of independent respect, valuable on ontological grounds or for any other reason independent of human benefits, then arguments for the preservation of nature become non-contingent and non-parasitic upon some account of human welfare. They are instead both ‘reliable and systematic’, and thus far more firmly rooted on theoretical soil. This desire for reliable argument motivates the ecocentric turn. The problem here is that this sort of contingency of theory is ineliminable. We may shift the argument from the level of ethics to ontology, and back again, but all we do in the process is shift the ground of contingency. Clearly, any humanist argument for nature preservation will be dependent upon some account of what contributes to human wellbeing—these arguments are undoubtedly contingent in this sense. But arguments based on ecocentric ontology are contingent at a different level—we can never escape Andrew Dobson's simple question: where does the metaphysics come from? It comes from somewhere, it is chosen, and often chosen on the basis of a set of ethical beliefs. Ontological arguments depend for their ability to convince upon people's willingness to believe that the world is a certain way. You believe that Christopher Columbus will sail off the end of the world if you believe that the world is flat. You only believe in a metaphysical unity of human and nature as long as you don't think ‘human apart’. You will cleave to this metaphysical belief for reasons (the world looks damn flat to me), once these reasons change (you show me a picture of Earth taken from your spacecraft, and convince me that this really does represent what Earth is like) then so do the metaphysics (the world is a sphere, Columbus safe after all). In this sense metaphysical beliefs are no different to ethical ones, they are held for reasons and reasons can change. Contingency is ineliminable, and furthermore humanism and ecocentrism can come to similar (contingently grounded) policy conclusions based on a common set of justificatory arguments. If this much is accepted, the intense debate between ecocentrists and humanists over the

479

Eckersley, 1998 : 178.

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ontological question begins to appear redundant for building ‘reliable’ arguments for preservation. An acceptance of contingency negates both the claim that ecocentrism is anti-humanist (ecocentrists can still use strong human-interest based arguments for preservation, and be sincere in their desire to promote human welfare) and that humanism is inherently anti-preservationist (as a humanist I can offer admittedly contingent arguments for nature preservation, and be sincere in this endeavour). Once contingency is accepted as inevitable, these differences become far less important (for theory building in political ecology) than the common agenda of trying to provide reasons for preservationist policies. What we have is a number of different visions for the reconciliation of human interests with those (somehow conceived) of the non-human world. Accepting this might help us move away from a framework of reference for problems of preservation which presents the issue as one of ‘preservation v. the people’. We have multiple contingent arguments for nature preservation, some of which are compatible with each other, some of which are not. The task of sorting one set from the other, and examining the qualities of each of the arguments, seems a rather more important task than digging in on either side of an almost irrelevant ecocentric–humanist divide. A multiplicity of contingent preservationist arguments provides a better frame than ecocentrism and humanism for these questions.

The Introduction of the Concept of ‘Strong Irreplaceability’ To the Core How, then, to best articulate inevitably contingent arguments for nature preservation which can both maintain a plausible grasp on the service of human interests and provide strong grounds for preservationist policies? I want to suggest that there are two separate sets of arguments, one ostensibly ‘human-centred’, one ‘nature-centred’, which can come together around an organizing principle of ‘strong irreplaceability’ in order to construct an argument for preservationism. This formulation escapes the problems that plague ecocentric and humanist theories and in particular it avoids framing the problem according to that particular dichotomy. This, it should be said, is not to suggest that the two arguments presented here are the only ones that could be so employed. They are rather usefully

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illustrative in that they span both the ‘human interest’ and the ‘independent of human interest’ aspects of ecological argument. We saw in Chapter 2 that the ‘context argument’ version of the co-evolution hypothesis as put forward by writers such as McKibben and Goodin can generate a set of arguments for nature preservation which are strong but, as they stand, not universalizable. The reason that people have to preserve nature, according to this argument, is that it provides a non-anthropogenic environment for human beings of the sort that endows a (psychologically beneficial) sense of ontological security in the face of the uncertainties of life in human society. The problem in this respect for the ‘context argument’ is, as we saw, that even if we accept the argument in its general form (either on McKibben's objectivist or Goodin's intersubjectivist accounts), there seemed to be no compelling reason as to why we should accept ‘nature’ as the specific and only non-anthropogenic context that can serve these ends. If religion, or gazing at the stars can serve just as well, we don't appear to have a generalizable reason for adopting public policies of nature preservation. Instead, we have a reason for those who actually believe that they have a need (or preference) which is satisfied through such provision to try to ensure it, but no prima facie reason to suppose that this could not be achieved by private means.480 Furthermore, some people may just not value a context of this sort at all. This then brings to the fore the following problem raised by Miller: ‘it is not reasonable to establish a regime of distributive justice which by privileging environmental goods assumes that people already value nature in a way when empirically we know they don't.’481 If the claim is merely that untouched nature is valuable to some people for this reason [i.e. in that it provides an appropriate context for human life], then we are right back to the central problem that we are wrestling with, namely how to set your interest in preserving certain natural features free from human interference against my interest in having land available to build a bigger and better football stadium for my team to play in, and so on with the interests of everyone else.482 I think that these are important and decisive arguments against adopting nature preservation as a public policy merely for the reasons given by

480

One alternative here would be to accept the ‘context argument’ in its general form, and then provide through public means all the accepted forms of its provision. So in our example public provision of religion, astronomy and ‘free’ nature. Indeed the view of religion as in any way a ‘private’ matter is a fairly recent and still geographically limited phenomenon.

481

Miller, 1999 : 165.

482

Ibid. 164. It should be noted that neither O'Neill nor Goodin claim that people do value nature in the relevant way, merely that (for different reasons) they should.

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writers such as Goodin and McKibben, which treat nature as being, unproblematically, the appropriate context provider.483 What I want to consider is whether there may be additional elements that can be added to the McKibben/ Goodin ‘context’ thesis which will enable it to withstand the sceptical liberal assault. These elements may enable us to reformulate this thesis in a condition more acceptable to the liberal mindset. Might there be reasons to suppose that state action to preserve non-human nature may be necessary even if the ‘nature as appropriate context’ argument is not universalizable? I want to suggest that there are two elements that could strengthen the ‘context’ thesis with respect to Miller-type attacks. Both, it should be noted, are contingent upon accepting the context argument in its general form (i.e. that human beings do want to see their lives set in some ‘extra-human’ context). First, state action may be necessary in order to ensure an adequate level of provision to satisfy the subjectively felt needs of a group of citizens. If we accept that at least a significant group of fellow citizens feel that they have a need which can only be met through the provision of a natural environment, and society believes this need to be sufficiently important (because we accept the context argument in its general form) to endow a moral imperative that, for this group, it be met, it might well be that the only way in which it can be satisfied is through the provision of a ‘critical mass’ of environmental good of the right sort—i.e. enough to provide a non-anthropogenic context of the right sort. It may further be true that the only way to ensure the provision of this in terms of quality and quantity is to ensure it by public statute. It might simply be impossible to provide a ‘context-endowing’ supply of natural environment by private means. There are clear parallels with public goods—clean air is acknowledged as an environmental good which meets a human need (although rather more straightforwardly than nature preservation), and state regulation is employed in order to overcome the collective action problem involved in ensuring its supply. That said, the bracketed ‘rather more straightforwardly’ clause is telling here. It is not difficult to see the value of reasonably unpolluted air for all living beings, human and non-human. But if we are going to use the above argument to justify supplying preserved nature rather than some other good that people claim to value, why that particular good? I might claim that living in an urban environment with a considerable amount of monumental architecture is

483

Miller is referring directly to Goodin (1992 ) and O'Neill (1993 ), but McKibben (1990 ) offers very similar reasons, and is cited by Goodin as supportive of his arguments.

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what gives me a sense of security. It is precisely the (literally) concrete demonstration of humanity's ability to control and manipulate nature, to turn it into a product of human design and ingenuity that gives me a sense that I am not subject to the vicissitudes of a random, indifferent nature but in fact secure in the care of my fellow humanity. This is what gives me a sense of ontological security—so the sooner all that wasteland is developed into something useful the better. However, adequate provision of this strongly anthropogenic environment can only be guaranteed by public planning if its supply is to be ensured. Why shouldn't we provide the means for this person to live in their preferred context rather than the nature-preference holder? This is all of course highly contingent upon a set of contestable arguments concerning human need. Although I maintain that such contingency is an ineliminable component of political-theoretical discourse, this does not mean that arguments cannot be made weaker or stronger through different formulations, or through relevant supporting arguments. Can the argument for supplying preserved nature be bolstered, or made less contingent? I want to suggest that it can through the addition of a second argumentative component, the concept of strong irreplaceability. This notion is dependent upon the concept of authenticity which is sometimes used, as we have seen, in ecocentric and some deep ecological arguments. There is no intrinsic reason, however, why it cannot be employed in the service of a humaninterest based argument, which can in turn be used to strengthen that argument's demands for the preservation of both ‘wilderness’ and (importantly for areas with little land left that could be sensibly described as wilderness) species. The ‘context argument’ makes a demand for a non-anthropogenic environment. As Goodin accepts, this is not a good which either (a) exists or (b) does not, rather it is present along a rough continuum. An environment such as central London might be considered maximally anthropogenic, and a ‘wilderness’ such as the tundra of northern Canada minimally anthropogenic; many environments in which people live would be at points between. Obviously the quality which lends an environment its non-anthropogenic status is that it has origins external to human creation. To the extent that this is true of a natural environment it is, for this argument, ‘authentic’. If it is the authenticity, in this sense, of an environment that allows it to satisfy the human need or desire for a life lived in context, then this quality is irreplaceable in a strong sense. Once transformed by human activity, an environment can never regain its authenticity, and so in order to fulfil its claimed human welfare function,

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an authentic environment would have to be preserved. The significance of this for the context argument for nature preservation is that it generates additional reasons for us to consider publicly mandated nature preservation justifiable, as discussed in Chapter 3. All public policy choices involve irrecoverable opportunity costs, but authentic natural environments are literally irreplaceable.484 That, I would argue, renders its loss more significant than the loss of general sunk costs in development projects of one sort or another. These costs are irreplaceable in what I want to call a weak sense. If I win the lottery and become chairman of a football club, I might want to follow David Miller's suggestion485 and build my club a bigger and better football stadium. Say there are two sites available. One is on the last known habitat of the Dartford Warbler, the other is a disused industrial plant. Building the stadium on the Warbler site will be considerably cheaper than building on the brownfield site. If an ecologically minded state forces me to build on the brownfield site there will be irreplaceable costs in terms of the extra resources which will have to be used in this construction. If the Warbler site is the only site, and I am not allowed to build at all, then there will be costs incurred by the club's fans who will have to endure the cramped conditions of the current stadium or perhaps not get any access at all. In the first case I want to suggest that the costs are only weakly irreplaceable because they are losses of transferable and substitutable resources. For example, the additional energy, labour power, and building materials used to build on the brownfield site may be nonrecoverable but alternative functional equivalents are generally available and many building materials are reusable. The loss of the Dartford Warbler will be permanent and irretrievable.486 Even if future generations developed a genetic reproduction of the Warbler the context thesis would consider it inauthentic, in McKibben's terms a nature of the ‘wrong sort’. The second case strikes me as more problematic, in that the lack of alternative sites means that costs would be imposed on spectators and those denied access which seem irreplaceable in a rather stronger sense—the

484

The concept of authenticity may be practically difficult to apply to specific environmental cases, but what it tries to capture is not hard to grasp, as we observe if we look at what is considered important in the fields of art history and building conservation.

485

Miller, 1999 . The Dartford Warbler example also comes from Miller's chapter.

486

I am assuming the loss of the last breeding habitat entails the loss of the species. Of course one might imagine that the species is preserved at an alternative breeding site that previously did not harbour this species, or in a zoo. It is sufficient for my argument that these are more anthropogenic, and so less authentic, states of the world than that which existed prior to the development.

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possibility of a bigger, better stadium removed permanently. This will give us reasons to weigh the football fan's preferences more heavily in the second case, but then this is as it should be. The authenticity/irreplaceability factor does not (and nor should it) entail that natural environments will always be preserved whatever other opportunities might be forgone as a result. However, strong irreplaceability would still offer reasons to weight the ‘context’ argument when making public policy decisions of this sort. The second case (or even more problematic cases such as the Warbler site being the only suitable site for a hospital)487 does not affect the general point I am making, which is that the maintenance of adequate supply and the problem of strong irreplaceability can offer support to the context argument for the public provision of nature preservation against the attack which perceives calls for nature preservation as mere private preference or judgement. An important element in the use of the context argument in this form is that it is neutral on the ecocentric–humanist dispute about the ontological divide which has plagued environmental thinking. It is clearly an argument based on human interest, but it was introduced in a chapter on embedded humanism in ecocentric thought because it is employed by ecocentric writers. The question of the precise mode of our existence vis-à-vis the rest of nature does not have any direct relevance to the problem. The context argument relies upon an account of human need, which has purchase as long as at least one group of human beings articulate such a need as felt, perhaps directly, although memberships of preservation societies, environmental pressure groups, hiking clubs, etc. might well be taken as strong indirect evidence.488 The preference (and possible need) for natural environments involves goods that are more strongly irreplaceable than most preferences (and possibly needs) based upon development. I want to suggest furthermore that the concept of irreplaceability can also be used to bolster a ‘respect for nature’ argument which can provide another justification for preservationist arguments, and which is quite compatible with, though separate from, the ‘context argument’ presented above. There are two different types of ‘respect’ arguments I want to run

487

Such cases may involve increased status for the development preference but empirically they are likely to be rare. It is always probable that alternative sites for development will exist that bring with them different degrees of difficulty and cost.

488

Alternatively it could be grounded in a ‘strong’ theory of human nature, thus divorcing this ‘need’ from a requirement of conscious articulation. I am trying, though, to suggest the context argument can work (i.e. provide weighty reasons, not provide in incontestable argument) without this.

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together here, one is the ‘autopoietic ethics’ referred to by Eckersley and Fox (see Chapter 2) the other the ‘intrinsic good’ argument of Paul Taylor.489 Despite their theoretical differences, for the purposes of a preservationist argument centred around the notion of irreplaceability we can treat them as if they were identical, as they both offer the same argumentative structure. The claim, stripped to its bare bones, of these arguments is that living entities (and perhaps ecosystems) have a good of their own, and this good is something that is worthy of human respect. Now, in itself this is a claim that one may either accept or not. It purports to offer a reason for valuing natural entities (and the matter of what ‘level’ of entity, i.e. individual organism, species, ecosystem is also at question). If one accepts it one will probably consider the argument to provide support for preservationist policies, and if not, then not. Moreover, although these are both presented as ecocentric (or biocentric in Taylor's case) arguments, their use as supporting pillars for a preservationist stance is not dependent upon holding either an ecocentric or biocentric worldview. I can believe that a cavernous gulf separates my mode of being from that of a non-human entity, and still believe that this entity has a good of its own that I should respect. On the other hand I could endorse an ecocentric metaphysic and deny that such a ‘good of its own’ is worthy of respect—there are for example plenty of humanist philosophies that deny the value of certain human ends, and there is no logical reason why ecocentrism should endorse every ‘good’ in nature.490 The respect of goods then provide reasons for a preservationist stance here, and not the ecocentric or humanist foundation. If, however, the concept of strong irreplaceability is added as an adjunct here, then the standard of evidence required in order to allow that these arguments lend support to preservationism should become weaker. To deny the value of such non-human natural goods is one thing. To act upon this denial in such a way as to destroy the entities for which the claim is made is quite another. These entities (a species being the classic example) are strongly irreplaceable in my sense. If there is reasonable doubt as to the correctness of the denial of value, then strong irreplaceability provides a reason for preservation. Instead of (at least one of these) propositions about respect having to be true, we merely have to accept that they may be true in order to allow that they can justify preservationist policies.

489

On this see Taylor, 1986 .

490

Such, as we saw above, as the pursuit of its own ends by an HIV or Ebola virus.

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This leaves us with two supporting arguments for public policies for nature preservation articulated around the single core notion of strong irreplaceability. The first is that without such public protection a significant group of people in society will not possess a contextual presupposi-tion for pursuing any conception of the good they have. This is because without it they will lack the sense of ontological security that comes from living life in a non-anthropogenic context. Whilst others may not value nature in the same way, they should respect the needs of those who do and bear the costs of an adequate supply of context-providing natural surroundings to those people. This environment is irreplaceable in the strong sense and so this need grounds an at least prima facie principle of non-destruction. The second argument is that there are reasons for ‘respecting’ natural entities, which are independent of the benefits these entities render to human beings (an argument made, I should again stress, irrespective of any position on the ontological question). Furthermore even if this argument fails to convince, it only has to be accepted that it is plausible for it to have purchase in support of arguments for publicly mandated nature preservation. This is because the argument from strong irreplaceability weakens the standard of proof required in order to justify preservation. We can draw illustrative parallels to these arguments from the world of art aesthetics, one based on an argument from human welfare, and one based on the intrinsic property of the artistic good. In the first case, there are at least a group of people who insist that their lives go significantly better knowing that they live in a world in which the Mona Lisa exists and is on public display. The public possession and preservation of what they consider the world's most beautiful painting, which represents to us Leonardo at the height of his powers serves to give their lives meaning. The argument suggests that knowing this to be true, those who see little, or even no value in the Mona Lisa, and think it would be better used as fuel, should be prepared to share in the burden of keeping the Mona Lisa in existence. It is strongly irreplaceable. Although it can be reproduced and copied, none of the copies would embody Leonardo's genius, none would be authentic, and thus have the right character to satisfy these people. These give us all good reasons (although not always trumping reasons), to engage in Mona Lisa preservation. In the second case, there are facts about the Mona Lisa itself, independently of the articulated wishes of any individuals, which give us reasons to preserve it. Say its embodiment of the genius of Leonardo is suggested to be enough to make the picture worth preserving at public expense, even if

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nobody cares about seeing it. Now, even if you either do not think it was the work of Leonardo, or deny that Leonardo had any sort of talent, the principle of strong irreplaceability suggests that you only have to accept that it is plausible that it is Leonardo's work, or that you may reasonably be mistaken in your judgement of Leonardo, in order to accept the policy of public preservation. These arguments together provide mutually supportive sets of reasons for Mona Lisa protection. A question might be asked of the above. Here we have one argument for preservation reliant upon human interests, and another based upon the ‘respect’ owed to nature in and of itself. Is this not merely resurrecting the ecocentric–humanist divide which I have been arguing throughout needs to be dispensed with? If we rely upon these ‘respect for nature’ arguments are we not merely reconstructing the ‘preservation v. the people’ frame for the problem that we are trying to escape? I would suggest that this is not the case for two reasons. First, one could cleave to either or both of these arguments whilst remaining neutral on the supposedly crucial ontological question. I can believe that the nature of human existence is importantly identical to the rest of nature, and that this is something that endows humanity and nature with equal value, whilst still believing that the accessibility of a suitably ‘natural’ context serves an important human interest. Alternatively I can take this ontological divide as very ‘real’, and also believe that certain natural entities themselves exist (although substantively differently to humans) in such a way as to be worthy of respect in their own right. Second, to the extent that the ‘preservation v. the people’ framework exists as a result of questions about preservation being presented as one of human interests versus non-human interests, the context argument moves away from that dichotomy also. It instead serves to suggest that there are a set of human interests that will be served by preservation of non-human nature, without denying that there may well be other human interests which would also be served by development instead. Thus, as with almost any policy decision, we are trading off one set of human interests off against another, not human interests against something else. The ‘respect for nature’ arguments are rather more problematic in this regard, as they do operate without any direct reference to human interests. However, I have not sought in this text to suggest that every argument for preservation must operate in terms of human interests. What I have tried to show is that there are a rich array of arguments from human interest embedded in ecocentric discourse, and also to show that arguments independent of human interest can be made from the humanist side of the

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ontological divide. There are justifications that work independently of human interests, and so the ‘nature v. people’ frame will always be present at one level as long as such arguments are used. The point is that (i) this framework has to be put in context, and separated from fundamental questions about the nature of reality; theory building in political ecology will actually be helped if it is. More importantly (ii) the protagonists in the ecocentric v. humanist debate declare that their differences revolve around a notion of the comparative ontological status of humanity and nature, and to the extent that this is true the dispute between the two schools can be shown to be both misguided and to have little practical impact on the crucial question of the justification of preservationism. So, in the case of ‘respect for nature’ arguments, these can be articulated independently of any position being taken on the ontological question, and can also be employed in support of arguments about human interests being served through life lived in a natural context, as well as in opposition to the human interests which might be served by development of one sort or another. What are the advantages of this approach to justifying nature preservation, as opposed to taking, say, the ecocentric ontological approach? In terms of advancing specific policy proposals, I have no doubt that it can fall prey to similar problems as ecocentrism or any other set of guiding principles. Smallpox viruses and salmonella bacteria are just as strongly irreplaceable as the Dartford Warbler and the crested newt, and they certainly provide elements of a nonanthropogenic context. Should we thus preserve them? The short answer is almost certainly not, given a whole set of functionings and capacities of these organisms that we certainly have good reason to disvalue. But, if all we have to do is declare certain functionings disvalued in order to override it, what is the point of the preceding argument? What that is intended to do is provide a set of reasons, which stand independent of a whole set of controversial metaphysical assumptions, in favour of nature preservation in general. They do not aspire to automatic trumping status in all preservation policy decisions. They do make an explicit appeal to human interests insofar as they rely upon the context argument, but they are not closed to other considerations, such as ‘respect for nature’. Above all they look to make people aware of the consequences of rendering situations irretrievable, and seek to appeal to people's reasoning processes regardless of their own personal view as to the nature of reality. They show that preservationist arguments can be made which are completely independent of a position on the ecocentric/humanist divide.

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CONCLUSION

Does the decision as to whether to build a funicular railway at Strathspey pit preservation against the people? On the evidence of this thesis it does so only if the question is framed in such a way that the possible human interests served by preservation are ignored, and I would suggest that the RSPB's assertion that they are serving a ‘wider human interest’ shows an awareness of that possibility. There is no guarantee that these considerations will be enough to convince a jobless Highlander that development should be foregone, nor should there be. They should nonetheless be articulated as weighty reasons in the decision-making process. Clearly there are many more issues involved in that particular case, including the decision making processes of conservation bodies with headquarters distant to the scene which appear high-handed and undemocratic to locals. We used this case to introduce ourselves to the ecocentric–humanist debate in the political philosophy of ecologism, which I suggested tends to frame the problem of preservation in the same dichotomous way. I have argued that, whilst there certainly are very different ‘humancentred’, and ‘nature-centred’ sets of reasons on offer for adopting preservationist policies, these questions do not have to be framed as constituting a choice between these sets of reasons, and additionally do not have to consist in a choice between those sets. Furthermore, the debate about the relative ontological status of humanity and the rest of nature is misguided, and has diverted intellectual energies from what would be potentially more fruitful paths. Ecocentrism is not inherently anti-humanist, humanism not inherently anti-preservationist. I have also suggested that the problem of irreplaceability should add weight to arguments for preservation and should be present as a core concept in preservationist discourse. The problem of preservation raises a whole set of very difficult questions about what human interests it may either serve or harm, as well as, inevitably, the question of whether there are reasons to consider nature for its own sake. The development of a set of completely general principles, which can determine judgement in all cases, will presumably never occur in such a complex area. I hope, however, that the argument made herein can contribute to resolving the puzzle concerning which principles are at least the appropriate ones to concern ourselves with when making judgements about these issues in particular cases.

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Index ‘aberrant conditions’ 63 ‘Allais Paradox’ 1 androcentrism 15 anthropocentric–ecocentric divide 14 anthropocentric–ecocentric dualism 130 anthropocentrism 2, 12, 15, 18, 24, 45, 47, 88, 97, 124, 130–1, 164; empty abstractions of 131; practical 47 anti-humanism 20, 165 anti-preservationist 196 arrogance of humanism 147 atomism 24 authenticity 189 autopoiesis 42–7, 84 autopoietic ethics 45–7, 52, 192 axiological principles 24 axiology 27 ‘back-to-nature campaign’ 169 Barry, J. 19, 116 behavioural barriers 18 Benton, T. 150–2, 159 biocentrism 19, 52, 88 biosphere destabilization of 33 ‘biospherical egalitarianism’ 98 ‘biospherical impartiality’ 98 ‘biotic community’ 43, 48; destabilization of 33 Bookchin, M. 17, 20, 22, 26–9, 36, 52, 87–8, 92, 114, 117 Brennan, A. 24 Buchholz, R. A. 13 Burgess, R. 159 Burkett, P. 130, 176 capitalism 129, 134, 139, 142, 150, 157, 163; deformation of 150; ecological critique of 134; injustices of 129; second contradiction of 134 Capra, F. 24, 119 Chase, S. 23, 116 Clark, J. 30, 87, 144, 156 co-evolution 73 ‘co-evolutionary hypothesis’ 54, 70–2 ‘conservation’ 30 Cohen, G. A. 30 communism 135, 146, 157 conceptual barriers 111 consumerism 62 context argument 191 ‘crisis of socialism’ 129 ‘Daisyworld’ 119 decontestations 5, 10, 60, 93, 96–7, 103; conceptual 10, 103

deep ecologists 15, 25–8, 91, 93, 104, 112 deep ecology 86, 88–9, 92, 95–7 De-Shalit, A. 4 Devall, B. 61 ‘demographic transition’ 34 dialectical naturalism 110–11, 118, 120–5 Dobson, A. 130 Dryzek, J. 162 Eckersley, R. 17, 24–5, 34, 61, 96, 109, 122 ecocentric approach 19, 33 ‘ecocentric’ arguments 22 ecocentric ethics 5, 31 ecocentric morality 42 ecocentric theorists 34 ecocentrism 2–5, 12, 17, 19, 21, 25–30, 32, 52–3, 61, 64, 81, 86, 88, 98, 101, 103, 112, 124, 130, 133, 169–70, 179, 196; ‘anti-humanism’ of 103; anti-humanist tenets of 133; eco-Marxist critique of 170; ‘egalitarian’ aspect of 98; foundations of 17; human-existentialist 169; implications of 31; metaphysics of 4; ontological concerns of 5; ontological philosophy of 27; political theory of 4 ecocentrists 5, 32, 35, 42, 54, 65, 69, 95; ‘conservative’ 32 ecofeminism 15–16 ecological arguments 30

210 ecological crises 105 ecological laws 4, 33–4; obedience of 4 ecological limits 63 ‘ecological Marx’ 132 ecological philosophy 40 ‘ecological rationality’ 162 ecological sensibility 115, 121 ecological thinking ecocentric and humanist positions in 4 ‘ecological worldview’ 26 ecologism 6, 12; Marxist 12; humanist 6 ecologists 59 ecology 117 eco-Marxism 8, 11–18, 132, 135, 164, 179 eco-socialism 132 ‘ecosystems’ as ‘entities’ 46 empirical principles 24 environmental consciousness 6 environmental degradation 35 environmental ethics 8 environmental fascism 47 environmentalism 95 enslaving effects 156 Enzensberger, H. M. 159–60, 165 epistemological barriers 146 essentialism 9 ethical principles 3 ethical rules; ecosystemic 48; holistic 48 ethical sensibility 115 ethical systems 3, 47; ecological 3 ethicism 148 ethics 43, 46; anthropocentric 46; ecosystemic 46 ethics of complementarity 7, 116–8, 121–4 evolutionary ethics 14, 29–30 ‘external context argument’ 54 Foster, J. B. 176 foundationalism 14 Fox, W. 97 Freeden, M. 8 Fukuyama, F. 128 Gaia 46, 102 Gaia hypothesis 166 ‘Gaian hierarchy’ 33 ‘Gaian laws’ 35–6 ‘gestalt’ 24 global capitalism 130 Goldsmith, E. 32–3, 40, 41 Goodin, R. 73 Gorz, A. 129–30 green ideologies 10, 53 green politics 168 Grey, W. 44 Grundmann, R. 156, 164

INDEX

Hamilton 8 Hardin, G. 63 harm 57–8 Harvey, D. 130 Hayward, T. 21 Hegel's God 136 holism 24–6, 94–5; extreme form of 94–5; moderate 26 holist ‘schools’ 25 holistic ecocentrists 25 human need 53, 60; reconceptualization of 53; nature and 60 human preservation principle 46 humanism 6–7, 38, 64, 135, 179, 196; conventional 7; ecological 7; ecologically informed 6 humanist ecologism 87 humanist ethics 18, 40 humanist morality 41 humanist naturalists 104 humanity 2, 5, 36, 83; ‘modes of reconciliation’ of 2; moral laws of 36; ecocentric conceptions of 5, 83 Humphrey, M. 68 human chauvinism 53; opposition to 53 human nature 149 ‘humanity–nature’ dualism 16 humanization of nature 155, 173 humanized nature 150–1, 155 ideational–structural problems 131–2 ideological inertia 163 individualism 38–9 industrialism 62, 139, 159–61, 163; capitalist form of 161; non-market 160; socialist 161 industrialization 161 inorganic nature 143 inorganic body 143 instrumentalism 145

INDEX

interdependencies 39 interhuman relationships 78 interpersonal relationships 77 interrelationships environmental 26 intuitionist ethics 14 ‘is/ought’ trap 120 irreplaceability 191 Jayal, N. G. 3 Kantian ethics 44 Kovel, J. 28 Leff, E. 129, 157, 171 liberal-capitalism 128 libertarian rationality 116 Light, A. 87 Lotus-Eaters 94 Malthusianism 101 man–nature dichotomy 148 Margulis, L. 19 Marx ecological interpretation of 141 Marxian ecology 152 Marxism 128–9 ‘Malthusian doctrines’ 35 ‘Manichean mentality’ 92 ‘material substratum’ thesis 176 McKibben, B. 74 McLaughlin, A. 61–2, 67, 71 metaphysics 27 Michael, M. A. 29 Miller, C. A. 1 Miller, D. 58, 79, 187 Minteer, B. A. 3 modernist morality factors of 38 moral arguments; ‘nature-centred’ 4 moral barriers 18 moral behaviour 37 moral considerability 44, 46; autopoietic 46 moral laws 36, 40, 42; ecocentric 42; ecological laws as 36 moral philosophers ethical systems of 37 moral philosophy contemporary 37–8 moral pluralism 13 moral realism foundationalist 14; rejection of 37 morality 41, 47; non-ecological 41 morphological analysis 8 morphology ideological 10 Naess, A. 27, 32, 91, 95, 102, 181 natural balance 33 naturalism 135 natural laws 32–6; human subjection to 32–6; ecological 34 nature 107–8, 148–52; a cumulative evolutionary process 107–8; directionality in 108; humanization of 148–52 ‘nature as cosmos’ 91 ‘nature as wilderness’ 91

211

‘nature knows best’ 126 nature preservation 1, 4; legitimate reasons for 4 new humanism 88, 114 ‘new humanist’ arguments 22 new ‘primitivism’ 106 ‘New Right’ ideology 129 ‘Newtonian’ science 24 Nicoll, R. 1–2 non-capitalist development 175 non-human nature preservation of 2 O'Neill, J. 74 ontological divide 28, 112, 149, 173, 180, 182, 191, 194 ontological parasitism 25 ontological principles 24 ontology 27, 31, 116; ecocentric 31 orthodox marxism critique of 157 paternalism 59 ‘people versus nature’ issue 2 Pepper, D. 36, 138, 145, 160, 165; Dialectical materialism 139 Perelman, M. 159 perfectionism 81 phylogenetic adjustment 69, 71, 74 Plumwood, V. 16 political argument 2; ineliminable contingency of 2 political ecology 35, 87; humanist 87

212

INDEX

political philosophy 1, 38, 42; ecological 1; environmental 42 ‘populationists’ 35 pragmatism environmental 12–14 preservationism 32 preservationist policies 3–6, 12, 78 primitivism ideological 113 principles of justice 39 ‘prisoner's dilemma’ 162 ‘Promethean project’ 131 pyromaniac 58 racists 104 reality holistic picture of 25 ‘realist-constructionist’ debate 90 ‘reciprocal damage postulate’ 181 ‘reductionism’ 24 reductionist ‘schools’ 25 Reitan, E. 44 relational metaphysics 39 relativism 59 Rolston, H. 3, 61 Rosenthal, S. B. 13 Routley, V. 152 Ryle, M. Sagan, D. 19 Schmidt, A. 138, 156 second nature 113 self-realization 81–3, 90, 96; concept of 54; deep ecological 83 social ecology 8, 28, 86–9, 107, 109, 115, 128 socialism 128, 130; language of 130 social justice 57 Soper, K. 58 Spinoza's doctrine 78 state socialism 163 strong irreplaceability 180, 186, 189; concept of 2 Sylvan, R. 27 ‘sensuous certainty’ 151 social ecology 85, 87 stability 33 Taylor, B. 23 technological optimism 24–5 teleology 29 ‘totalizing discourse’ 38 The Guardian 2 The Observer 2 The Selfish Gene 14 Tolman, C. 149 transparency advantages of 55 ‘unity-plurality’ 115, 126 Watson, J. 21 Weston, J. 161 wilderness 78–81, 91, 108, 153

wilderness preservation 122 Wissenburg, M. 45 Worster, D. 14, 25