Ecologism
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KEY FIGURE
CAROLYN MERCHANT (BORN 1936) A US ecofeminist philosopher and historian of science, Merchant’s work has highlighted links between gender oppression and the ‘death of nature’. Merchant developed a feminist critique of a scientific revolution that explained environmental degradation ultimately in terms of the application by men of a mechanistic view of nature. On this basis, she argued that a global ecological revolution requires a radical restructuring of gender relations. Some of Merchant’s works include The Death of Nature (1983), Radical Ecology (1992) and Autonomous Nature (2015).
Robert Holmgren/ ESPM UC Berkeley
Modern ecofeminists, however, highlight the biological basis for women’s closeness to nature, in particular the fact that they bear children and suckle babies. The fact that women cannot live separate from natural rhythms and processes in turn structures their politico-cultural orientation. Traditional ‘female’ values therefore include reciprocity, cooperation and nurturing, values that have a ‘soft’ or ecological character. The idea that nature is a resource to be exploited or a force to be subdued is more abhorrent to women than men, because they recognize that nature operates in and through them, and intuitively sense that personal fulfilment stems from acting with nature rather than against it. The overthrow of patriarchy therefore promises to bring with it an entirely new relationship between human society and the natural world, meaning that ecofeminism shares with deep ecology a firm commitment to ecocentrism. Deep ecology The term ‘deep ecology’ was coined in 1973 by Arne Naess. For Naess, deep ecology is ‘deep’ because it persists in asking deeper questions concerning ‘why’ and ‘how’, and is thus concerned with fundamental philosophical questions about the impact of the human species on the biosphere. The key belief of deep ecology is that ecology and anthropocentrism (in all its forms, including ‘enlightened’ anthropocentrism) are simply irreconcilable; indeed, anthropocentrism is an offence against the principle of ecology.
This rejection of anthropocentrism has had profound moral and political implications. Deep ecologists have viewed nature as the source of moral goodness. Nature thus has ‘intrinsic’ or inherent value, not just ‘instrumental’ value deriving from the benefits it brings to human beings. A classic statement of the ethical framework of deep ecology is articulated in Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac ([1948] 1968) in the form of the ‘land ethic’: ‘A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise’. Such a moral stance implies ‘ biocentric equality ’. Naess (1989) expressed this in the idea that all species have an ‘equal right to live and bloom’, reflecting the benefits of biodiversity . Such ecocentric ethical thinking has been accompanied by a deeper and more challenging philosophical approach that amounts to nothing less than a new metaphysics , a new way of thinking about and understanding the world. In addressing metaphysical issues, deep ecology
Biocentric equality: The principle that all organisms and entities in the biosphere are of equal moral worth, each being an expression of the goodness of nature. Biodiversity: The range of species within a biotic community, often thought to be linked to its health and stability. Metaphysics: The branch of philosophy that is concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of existence, or being.
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