Thinking through Our Place in Nature with Arne Naess

The novel, shapeshifting coronavirus continues to surge through human populations and large portions of the world exist, semi-suspended, in repeated lockdowns. Wildfires sweep the world with an unprecedented ferocity, taking with them not only human infrastructure—family homes in Australia and California, for instance—but precious wildlife and vital habitats. Ever-increasing rates of damaging human activity—from fossil fuel consumption, to gas fracking and excessive tree felling—are taking their toll on the delicate balance of the world’s ecosystem, raising temperatures and melting icecaps. Alongside this ruinous approach to the natural world, mankind’s treatment (many would say exploitation) of non-human animals only increases: intensive animal agricultural practices continue to flourish and expand in order to meet the growing demand for meat presented by increasing human populations.

To say that environmentalism and action on climate change is the issue of our generation is hardly overstating things—how we act now will have a hitherto unprecedented effect on the world our children inherit. These are issues that should concern us all and, for the most part, we are willing to alter the ways in which we live in order to make life on earth sustainable. Whilst concrete actions, like giving up meat and shunning air travel, to reduce our personal climate footprints often dominate headlines, however, comparatively less attention is paid to the way in which we view—or should view—our very relationship to nature.

This question has long preoccupied not only philosophers, but also theologians, evolutionary biologists, psychologists, and social economists, who have provided a diverse range of answers. According to one first view, typically associated with the Graeco-Christian Western tradition, humankind possesses a uniqueness which places them outside of nature. From this privileged position, humankind is not only able to utilise nature’s resources for their own ends, but such resources were in fact brought into being for our use and rule. ‘As man is made for the sake of God, namely that he may serve him’, the 12th century theologian Peter Lombard writes, ‘so is the world made for the sake of man, that it may serve him’. Such a view is born out, it is suggested, in ideas that developed of the relationship between science and technology. By the 16th century, early modern philosophers—most notably René Descartes—were putting forward conceptions of nature as ‘mechanistic’ which were widely accepted. According to such mechanistic philosophies of nature, the entirety of the natural world could be explained in terms of matter and its motion—thus no part of matter, including nonhuman animals, possessed ends or intentions. Understanding the natural world in such a fashion only encouraged perceptions of nature as a domain which should be instrumentally controlled. In the 17th century, the English philosopher Francis Bacon took this view further by proposing that progress in scientific knowledge was to be rightly understood as the honing of mankind’s power over nature, something that was born out in practice in 19th century industrialisation. 

The idea that Christianity only lends itself to such an exploitative view of the mankind-nature relationship is often challenged—and this seems right. Certainly there are numerous competing ways of reading the Old Testament. Yet the origin of the “dominion over nature” narrative is in some ways unimportant: it is plain to see that views which understand mankind as uniquely sovereign over a natural world which is seen as a passive resource for our needs have been held in various forms throughout history. Such views have had a significant impact upon the ways in which the citizens of modern societies relate to their environment. Indeed, we see the tenacity of such a worldview when people speak of harnessing the power of nature in the fight against climate change itself. Such phrases betray—albeit often accidentally—a conception of nature as a tool with which to fight ills (themselves created by mankind) for the sake of mankind. Such a view of nature, one might argue, not only fails to do justice to the intrinsic value of the environment and the non-human animals that inhabit it, but harms human beings themselves. I am thinking not only of the environmental damage that dominating attitudes to nature have reaped, but also about the psychological impact of inhabiting such a role. Has shunning an intimate connection with nature in favour of an attitude of domination produced urban spaces in which human life flourishes? Or has it produced concrete wastelands, which, more often than not, fail to meet some of our most deep-seated psychological needs? 

An alternative view of the mankind-nature relationship has been gaining ground since at least the mid 20th century. Rachel Carson’s acclaimed Silent Spring, published in the 1960s, argued that the extensive use of harmful pesticides, like DDT, were evidence of mankind’s relentless attempts to control nature, and would end in nothing but tragedy for our species. Carson exhorted her readers to reconsider their relationship to the natural world: such a relationship, she argued, should be marked by humility, wonder and harmony, and not by the arrogant desire to assert control. Carson’s book had a remarkable influence on a young Norwegian environmentalist, Arne Naess, who, greatly moved by what he had read, turned his impressive philosophical skills to focus on the environment, the ecological crisis and its solutions. In  1973, Naess presented a novel understanding of mankind’s proper relationship to nature and coined a term for it: Deep Ecology. 

Naess contrasts the Deep Ecology movement with the Shallow Ecology movement. The latter is a movement which, to its credit, takes environmental issues seriously, but does so with a problematic objective: ‘the health and affluence of people in the developed countries’ (Naess 1973, p.95). We might think that such a view encapsulates the ecological form of the traditional Graeco-Christian ‘dominion over nature’ approach: it aims to solve environmental problems, but for the sake of nature’s master alone. A flourishing planet is not, in itself, intrinsically valuable, but only instrumentally so. In contrast, the Deep Ecology movement staunchly rejects the idea that mankind is uniquely distinct from the natural environment they inhabit. Instead, Deep Ecology views ‘organisms as knots in the biospherical web’ (ibid). That is, mankind is not distinct from and above nature, but knotted deeply within it and inexplicably linked to it by intrinsic relations—we are intrinsically related to nature insofar as our ties with it belong to our very definition. Moreover, Deep Ecology promotes biospherical egalitarianism: by this, Naess intends to reject anthropocentrism in favour of applying the axiom ‘the equal right to live and die’ to all of the planet’s life (1973, p.96). The rejection of anthropocentrism does not entail a rejection of the inherent value of human life, but merely widens the net of inherent values to include non-human life: ‘richness and diversity of life-forms are also values in themselves’, Naess wrote, ‘and contribute to the flourishing of human and nonhuman life on earth’ (2016, p.111). Naess’s principle of diversity holds that the variety and richness of nonhuman life must be respected and cannot not be treated instrumentally: ‘humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs’ (ibid). 

Naess lived his life in line with his ecophilosophical values and is considered a national treasure in Norway (in fact, in a Norwegian survey of young people under twenty, a majority responded that Naess was the person they would most like to be able to talk with (2016, p.4)). As a child, Naess favoured being secluded deep in nature and spent much of his time in a cabin on the Norwegian mountain plateau of Hardangervidda, the largest alpine plateau in Europe. The landscape of Hardangervidda is dominated by the large peaks of the Hallingskarvet mountain range: Naess felt a special connection with this mountain, seeing it as a kind of ‘great, benevolent father’ who bestowed a kindness on him (Naess 1995). Here, on the mountain, a three hour hike from the nearest rail station, he built a hut that he named Tvergastein, meaning ‘crossed stones’. In this hut, surrounded by the harshness of the mountainous environment, Naess emphasised the richness and quality of life that the Hallingskarvet offered: ‘you see’, he says in an interview, ‘everything [here] has a value that is greater than in the city … [y]ou see, we are so rich here in the sense that: we get everything we really desire’ (1995). In contented retreat, in harmony with the mountain, Naess wrote many of his numerous books and articles and developed his influential theory of Deep Ecology. 

Naess’s ecophilosophy has, in some ways, seen successes. Many of us do focus on the ways in which we can alter our living practices in order to reduce mankind’s negative impact on the rest of nature: by renouncing the destruction of rainforests to make space for animal agriculture, we respect the principle of diversity; by making ethical food choices, we respect the right of all creatures to live and blossom. Of course, as activists like Greta Thunberg rightly emphasise, the bulk of the work remains ahead of us. Indeed, the ease with which many of us, despite making valuable practical commitments, can push the ecological crisis to the back of our minds when it benefits us to do so betrays the fact that we have not—yet—fully rejected what Naess calls the ‘man-in-environment image’ (1973, p.95). That is, we have not yet fully assimilated the reality of mankind as fundamentally interconnected with nature, and neither have we fully accepted nonhuman life as possessing its own, inalienable inherent value. 

 Perhaps much of the resistance to Deep Ecological practices comes down to the sheer amount of change that the movement asks of us—giving up the ‘human-first’ value system means giving up comfortable and entrenched ways of living and thinking. It means social, economic, technological and ideological change, and the psychological shift required to effect such changes may seem staggering and unattainable. At the same time, there are competing ideologies of environmentalism which may, in virtue of their simplicity, seem more appealing—what Naess calls the ‘Shallow Ecology’ movement is certainly the most popular approach and the theory of choice for today’s governments and institutions. Why should we accept Naess’s ideas about biospherical egalitarianism, the intrinsic value of nature itself, or our position as essentially within nature? What more can be said in favour of the Deep Ecological approach? 

Naess believed that it was only through cultivating a Deep Ecological sense of identification and integration with an ecological community that we could avoid living with a modern individualistic  and egotistical self and open up our possibilities for self-realisation. In Self-Realisation: An Ecological Approach to Being in the World, Naess outlines his understanding of the limited nature of the modern self and the more expansive, ecological self for which we should aim. Most of us, in modern times, ‘underestimate ourselves’, he tells us, ‘and I emphasise selves. We tend to confuse our ‘self’ with the narrow ego’ (2016, p.81). The nature of the self is a notoriously difficult and complicated topic in philosophy, with an unimaginably vast history. Naess’s discussion of self-realisation, too, is lengthy and intricate, and here I will but sketch the outlines of his theory with the aim of giving simply a sense of his account, its appeal, and how it to relates to the central tenets of Deep Ecology. 

At base, Naess understands self-realisation as the realisation not of one’s “true” inner self—whatever that might mean—but as the realisation of one’s larger self, which Naess calls the ecological self, where achieving the ideal of the ecological self enables one to identify with all other beings, human and non-human. Initially, we possess an egotistical and individualistic self-conception; when we possess such a conception, we understand what is good for us in an incredibly narrow fashion—what is good for us is what is good for the egotistical self alone.  Developing our self-conception, which Naess calls achieving maturity, involves expanding our conception of ourselves such that we identify ourselves not only with other human beings, but also with nature and ‘all living beings, beautiful or ugly, big or small, sentient or not’ (2016, p.81). This most expansive self is the ecological self. The ecological self’s ability to identify with others involves an intense empathy with other beings which instinctively promotes the central tenets of Deep Ecology: an ecological self who identifies with all living beings is in a position to recognise the inherent value of all other life forms and promotes the principle ‘live and let live’. This identification with all living beings is, for Naess, to be taken literally and seriously:

What would be a paradigm situation involving identification? It would be a situation that elicits intense empathy. My standard example involves a nonhuman being I met in the 1940s. I was looking through an old-fashioned microscope at the dramatic meeting of two drops of different chemicals. At that moment, a flea jumped from a lemming that was strolling along the table. The insect landed in the middle of the acid chemicals. To save it was impossible. It took minutes for the flea to die. The tiny being’s movements were dreadfully expressive. Naturally, I felt a painful sense of compassion and empathy. But the empathy was not basic. Rather, it was a process of identification: I saw myself in the flea. If I had been alienated from the flea, not seeing intuitively anything even resembling myself, the death struggle would have left me feeling indifferent. So there must be identification for there to be compassion and, among humans, solidarity (2016, pp.83-4)

The identification that the ecological self feels with all human and nonhuman life provides a check on the negative self-love associated with the egotistical self, instead replacing it with a genuine self-love: through identification, Naess believes, people may come to see that environmental conservation does not involve a painful self-sacrifice, but rather that ‘their own interests are served by conservation’ (2016, p.85). But even if we artificially limit our considerations to the strictly human perspective, the aim of achieving maximal identification with other beings through an ecological self is, on Naess’s account, the key to a joyful life in co-existence with the non-human world. Naess rekindles the Aristotelian idea that ‘each life form has its own nature, which determines what kind of life gives maximum satisfaction (1984, p.9). The best, most joyful life for human beings is one which maximises identification with entirety of nature through the maturity of an ecological self. Such a self is a truly rich self, maximally satisfied, which reaches towards its full potential. In transcending the limited ego and extending our ability to identify with and care for others, we can fully realise our capacity to love, flourish and live in harmony with the world.