Deep ecology and liberalism: The greener implications of evolutionary liberal theory

Review of Politics

Volumn 58, Issue 4, 1996, Pages 699-734

  DiZerega, Gus ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0344032261     PISSN: 00346705     EISSN: 17486858     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S003467050002043X     Document Type: Article

References (136)

1. A classic presentation of this point of view is Bill Devall and George Sessions, Deep Ecology (Salt Lake City, UT: Peregrine Smith Books, 1985), pp. 2-3, 6-7,42-61.
2. See also Christopher Manes, Green Rage (Boston: Little Brown, 1990).
3. A more balanced discussion which still concludes that liberal thought has had little impact upon environmental political theory is Robyn Eckersley, Environmentalism and Political Theory: Toward an Ecocentric Approach (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992), pp. 23-24.
4. Anna Bramwell, Ecology in the 20th Century: A History (New Haven, Yale, 1989), p. 248;
5. Alston Chase, In a Dark Wood: The Fight Over Forests and the Rising Tyranny of Ecology (New York: Houghton Mifflen, 1995).
6. See Alan Drengson, "The Deep Ecology Movement, and Harold Glasser, Deep Ecology Clarified: A Few Fallacies and Misconceptions," The Trumpeter: Journal ofEcosophy 12 (1995).
7. Two excellent introductions to deep ecological thought are Alan Drengson and Yuichi Inoue, eds., The Deep Ecology Movement: An Introductory Anthology (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1995)
8. and George Sessions, ed., Deep Ecology for the 21st Century: Readings on the Philosophy and Practice of the New Environmentalism (Boston: Shambhala, 1995).
9. Among the authors developing specific arguments for deep ecology, see Arne Naess, Ecology, Community and Lifestyle, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990);
10. J. Baird Callicott, In Defense of the Land Ethic (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989;
11. Warwick Fox, Toward a Transpersonal Ecology (Boston: Shambhala, 1990);
12. Dolores LaChapelle, Sacred Land, Sacred Sex, Rapture of the Deep: Concerning Deep Ecology and Celebrating Life (Silverton, CO: Finn Hill Arts, 1988);
13. Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (New York: Ballantine, 1966);
14. Joanna Macy, Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1991);
15. Holmes Rolston, Environmental Ethics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988);
16. and Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild (San Francisco: Northpoint Press, 1990).
17. Devall and Sessions, Deep Ecology, p. 70.
18. Eugene Hargrove, "Weak Anthropocentric Intrinsic Value," in After Earth Day, ed. Max Oelschlaeger (Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press, 1992), p. 152.
19. Mark Sagoff, The Economy of the Earth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 152
20. F. A. Hayek, Liberalism, New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), pp. 119-151
21. The classic case for animal rights is Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983).
22. The utilitarian case is best made in Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, 2nd ed. (New York: New York Review of Books, 1990). Each fell short of the deep ecology platform. Regan limited rights to mammals and Singer excluded plants and many simpler life forms from "liberation
23. Regan, Case for Animal Rights, p. 296;
24. Singer, Animal Liberation, 226.
25. See the collection of essays in The Animal Rights/Environmental Ethics Debate: The Environmental Perspective, ed. Eugene Hargrove (Albany: SUNY, 1992)
26. See in particular J. Baird Callicott, "Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair," pp. 37-69.
27. F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: Regnery, 1960), p. 41.
28. F. A. Hayek, "The Atavism of Social Justice," New Studies, p. 65.
29. Hayek, "The Use of Knowledge in Society," Indiiridualism and Economic Order (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), pp. 77-91.
30. Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty, Vol.I: Rules and Order, Vol.II: The Mirage of Social Justice, Vol.Ill: The Political Order of a Free People (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973, 1976, 1979);
31. Michael Polanyi, The Logic of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951).
32. Gus diZerega, "Democracy as a Spontaneous Order," Critical Review,3:2 (1989).
33. I have applied this model to illuminate a number of important issues in democratic politics. See "Democracies and Peace: The Self-Organizing Foundation for the Democratic Peace," Review of Politics 57 (1995): 279-308;
34. "Federalism, Self-Organization and the Dissolution of the State," Telos, no.100 (Summer 1994): 57-86;
35. "Elites and Democratic Theory: Insights from the Self-Organizing Model," Review of Politics 53 (199): 340-372
36. "Equality, Self-Govemment and Democracy: A Critique of Dahl's Political Equality," Western Political Quarterly 41:3, Sept. 1988, pp. 447-468.
37. Thomas Luckmann and Peter Berger, The Social Construction of Reality (New York: Anchor, 1967), p. 61.
38. See also Alfred Schutz, The Structures of the Life-World (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973), chap. 4. Berger is often considered a conservative, but in Hayek's sense is a liberal.
39. Schutz, Structures , p. 289;
40. "On Multiple Realities," Collected Papers, vol.I., ed. A. Broderson (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964), pp. 207-259.;
41. Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969), p. 16.
42. Hayek, "The Errors of Constructivism," New Studies, 1978, pp. 19-20.
43. Callicott, In Defense of the land Ethic, particularly "Hume's Is/Ought Dichotomy and the Relation of Ecology to Leopold's Land Ethic," and "On the Intrinsic Value of Nonhuman Species," pp. 117-155
44. See also his "Can a Theory of Moral Sentiments Support a Genuinely Normative Environmental Ethic?" Inquiry, 35:183-198
45. Callicott, In Defense of the Land Ethic, p. 125.
46. Callicott, "Can a Theory of Moral Sentiments Support a... Environmental Ethic?" p. 184.
47. Hayek, "The Results of Human Action but not of Human Design," and "The Legal and Political Philosophy of David Hume," Studies on Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969) pp. 96-121.
48. David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, appendix II., in David Hume, Moral and Political Philosophy, ed. Henry D. Aiken (New York: Hafner, 1948), p. 270.
49. See the excellent critique of these models in Steven E. Rhoads, The Economist's View of the World: Government, Markets, and Public Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
50. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1969), p. 10;
51. Hume, "Of Self Love," Moral and Political Philosophy, pp. 270-275
52. Richard D. Alexander, The Biology of Moral Systems (New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1987), p. 160. 27.
53. I owe this analysis to Henry D. Aiken's introductory essay in his collection of Hume's writings. It was this essay which first clarified for me the logic of Hume's argument against egoism. Hume, Moral and Political Philosophy, pp. xxi-xxxvi.
54. Arne Naess, "Identification as a Source of Deep Ecological Attitudes," in Deep Ecology, ed. Michael Tobias (San Diego: Avant Books, 1985), pp. 256-270
55. I use the term sympathy somewhat differently than does James Q. Wilson in his The Moral Sense (New York: Free Press, 1993).
56. Wilson also argues for a basic moral sense, based on the insights of Adam Smith. But, he seems unaware that Smith built upon the work of Hume. Perhaps this is why he misreads Smith's use of "sympathy" to refer to compassion rather than to empathy (p. 131) Compare with Smith, Moral Theory of Sentiments, pp. 161-62,125. The other moral senses Wilson includes-fairness, self-control, and duty, seem to me derivable from the underlying sense of empathy central to Hume and Smith's thought.
57. David Hume, Treatise on Human Nature, bk. 2, sec. 2
58. in Hume, Moral and Political Philosophy, p. 7.
59. Smith, Moral Theory of Sentiments, p. 125.
60. Callicott, In Defense of the Land Ethic, pp. 121,151-52.
61. Ibid., Callicott Defense of the Land Ethic pp. 161-162
62. Hume, Treatise on Human Understanding, pt. 2, sec. 6;
63. Sec. ix, In Aiken Moral and Political Philosophy, pp. 227, 258.
64. See Henry Aiken's introductory essay, pp. xxiii.
65. I am uncertain whether Aiken clarified what is implicit in Hume, as it certainly is, or whether Hume fully grasped this point himself, for in pt. 2, sec. 5 he noted "It is needless to push our researches so far as to ask why we have humanity or a fellow feeling with others" (p. 212).
66. Frans de Waal, Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 66-71, 229-30 n. 32.
67. See also Gordon Gallup, "Self-Awareness and the Emergence of Mind in Primates," American Journal of Primatology 2 (1982): 237-248
68. Callicott, "Can a Theory of Moral Sentiments Support a Genuinely Normative Environmental Ethic?," pp. 186-189
69. Hume, Treatise on Human Nature, bk. 3, pt. 2, sec. 1
70. in Aiken, Moral and Political Philosophy, p. 52.
71. John A. Fisher, "Taking Sympathy Seriously: A Defense of Our Moral Psychology Toward Animals," in Hargrove, Animal Rights/Environmental Ethics Debate, pp. 227-48;
72. J. Baird Callicott, "Animal Liberation and Environmental Ethics: Back Together Again," In Defense of the Land Ethic, pp. 49-59.
73. Leopold, Sand County Almanac, p. 117.
74. Ibid., Leopold Sand County Almanac pp. 138-139
75. "Anthropomorphism may be the only example of a notion invented solely for God, and then transferred unchanged to refer to animals" (Mary Midgley, Animals and Why They Matter [(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1983), p. 125]z.
76. Ibid., Mary Midgley Animals and Why They Matter p. 13.
77. Quoted by Donald Worster, The Economy of Nature: A History of Ecological Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 181.
78. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, New York: Modem Library, pp. 471-511, esp. 492.
79. See also Callicott, In Defense of the Land Ethic, p. 119;
80. Donald Worster, Economy of Nature, pp. 180-84;
81. Roderick Nash The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), pp. 42-45.
82. Colin Tudge, Last Animals at the Zoo (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1992), pp. 193-240.
83. See also Fisher, "Taking Sympathy Seriously
84. Mary Midgley, Science as Salvation (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 78.
85. See also Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 123.
86. Keller, Gender and Science, p. 164.
87. See also Linda Jean Shepherd, Lifting the Veil: The Feminine Face of Science (Boston: Shambhala, 1993), pp. 70-74.
88. Keller, Gender and Science, p. 165.
89. Ibid., Keller Gender and Science p. 164.
90. See also her A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1983
91. Quoted in Fox, Transpersonal Ecology, p. 230.
92. Hargrove, "Weak Anthropocentric Intrinsic Value," p. 152.
93. Ariel Salleh, "Class, Race, and Gender Discourse in the Ecofeminism/ Deep Ecology Debate," Environmental Ethics 15 (1993): 229.
94. Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 54-65 53.1 am not arguing that this is the only legitimate definition of freedom. It is, however, one important kind of freedom.
95. Hargrove, "Weak Anthropocentric Intrinsic Value," p. 159.
96. Abraham Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature (New York: Viking, 1971), p. 69.
97. While I will not discuss Polanyi's political philosophy, it is strongly connected to his epistemology. Science and other liberal institutions are discovery systems wherein a community of practitioners seeks to persuade their peers. Standards are not objective but rather rooted in the community's commitment to certain values. See "The Republic of Science: Its Political and Economic Theory," Knowing and Being, ed. Marjorie Grene (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969)
98. and The Logic of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951).
99. Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), p. 59.
100. Robinson Jeffers, "The Inhumanist," The Double Axe (New York: Liveright, 1977), p. 57
101. quoted by Ron Erickson, "Review of Hargrove's Animal Rights/ Environmental Ethics Debate," Environmental Ethics 15 (1993): 284.
102. N. Scott Momaday, "A First American Views His Land," National Geographic, July 1976, p. 18.
103. Quoted in Hans Peter Duerr, Dreamtime: Concerning the Boundary Between Wilderness and Civilization (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), pp. 241-242
104. Christianity has received a very one-sided treatment by many environmental thinkers, who often blame it for our environmental crisis. For a corrective, see Ernest Fortin, "The Bible Made Me Do It: Christianity and the Environment," Review of Politics 57 (1995): 197-224. However, English Protestantism, at least, is let off the hook too easily.
105. See Gary B. Deason, "Reformation Theology and the Mechanistic Conception of Nature," God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter Between Christianity and Science (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 161-191
106. See Lewis P. Hinchman, "Aldo Leopold's Hermeneutic of Nature, The Review of Politics 57 (1995): 225-49
107. and David Abrams, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More than Human World (New York: Pantheon, 1996). 62.1 believe this argument unites the two approaches to Leopold's work developed by Callicott and Hinchman.
108. See Callicott, In Defense of the Land Ethic
109. and Hkichman, "Aldo Leopold's Hermeneutic of Nature
110. Warwick Fox, "What does the Recognition of Intrinsic Value Entail?" The Trumpeter: Journal ofEcosophy 10, no.3 (1993): 101.
111. Indeed, it is not going too far even at the physical level to say that individuality is a community endeavor. See in particular the work of Lynn Margulis, for example. "Microcosmos" in From Gaia to Selfish Genes: Selected Writings in the Life Sciences, ed. Connie Barlow (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), pp. 57-66
112. and with Richard Gurrero, "Two Plus Three Equals One: Individuals Emerge from Bacterial Communities," in Gaia 2: Emergence: The New Science of Becoming, ed. William Irwin Thompson (New York: Lindesfarne Press, 1991), pp. 50-67.
113. Stephen Macedo, Liberal Virtues: Citizenship, Virtue, and Community in Liberal Constitutionalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 56.
114. Julian Huxley, "Blurred Bounds of Individuality," in Barlow, From Gaia to Selfish Genes, p. 73.
115. On slime molds, see John T. Bonner, The Evolution of Culture in Animals (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), pp. 73-76.
116. On biology and individuality generally see Leo W. Buss, The Evolution of Individuality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).
117. Evelyn Fox Keller, "Between Language and Science: The Question of Directed Mutation in Molecular Genetics," Secrets of Life, Secrets of Death: Essays on Language, Gender and Science (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 161-178
118. Wendell Berry, "The Ecological Crisis as a Crisis of Agriculture," The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1977), pp. 27-38;
119. Joseph Rowe, "'Pas de Pays Sans Paysans' Sustainability vs. Agribusiness-As-Usual in France," Whole Earth Review (Winter 1993), pp. 42-49;
120. William Poole, "Another Way to Log," This World, San Francisco, 27 May 1990, pp. 7-8.
121. Christopher Stone, Should Trees Have Standing? Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects (Los Altos, CA: William Kaufmann, Inc., 1972).
122. Hayek, New Studies, pp. 249-266
123. Hayek, Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967), pp. 106-121;
124. Christian Bay, The Structure of Freedom (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958), pp. 33.
125. Hayek, Studies, p. 119.
126. Ibid., Hayek Studies pp. 96-121.
127. This liberal social ecology contrasts strongly with the "social ecology promoted in the writings of Murray Bookchin. Among Bookchin's voluminous writings, see in particular The Ecology of Freedom (Palo Alto: Cheshire Books, 1987).
128. For a critique, see Gus diZerega, "Social Ecology, Deep Ecology, and Liberalism," Critical Review, 6: 2-3 (1992): 305-370.
129. Two excellent essays from an ecocentric perspective which probe these matters more deeply than the usual deep ecological discussions are Neil Evernden, "Ecology in Conservation and Conversation"
130. and Michael E. Zimmerman "The Future of Ecology" both in After Earth Day, pp. 73-82,170-83.
131. Macy, Mutual Causality, pp. 200-201.
132. Ibid., Macy Mutual Causality p. 201.
133. Hayek, Rules and Order, pp. 55-71.
134. Erik Furubotn and Svetozar Pejovich, "Property Rights and Economic Theory: A Survey of Recent Literature," Journal of Economic Literature, December 1972, p. 1139
135. Mark Sagoff, "Takings, Just Compensation, and the Environment," in Upstream/Downstream: Issues in Environmental Ethics, ed. Donald Scherer (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990) pp. 158-179
136. John Gray, Liberalisms: Essays in Political Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 239.