Rebuilding the Foundations of Deep Ecology a Nondualist Approach
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Rebuilding the Foundations of Deep Ecology A Nondualist Approach by Dara Linda Miriam Tatray A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2006 University Of New South Wales Contents Acknowledgments 5 Introduction 6 The Case Against Deep Ecology 9 A Qualified Nondualism 16 What is Required from a New Metaphysic 19 Aims 21 Approach 23 Thesis Outline 28 1. The Project of Ecophilosophy 32 Ecocentrism 33 Towards a More Realistic Philosophy of Nature 36 Is There a Need for a New Order in Ecophilosophy? 38 Addressing the Problem of Scientific Materialism 40 Panpsychism 45 Intrinsic Unity as the Basis of a New Axiology 47 Value and Nonduality 49 Nonduality and Nonlocality 53 Reverence For Life 55 Consciousness and Social Change 57 2. The Deep Ecology Approach 60 The Emergence of Deep Ecology 70 Deep Ecology and Green Consciousness 75 The Deep Ecology Approach 79 The Ecological Self 81 2 Self-Realisation 89 The Nature of the Self 92 Âtman as Pure Consciousness 96 The Deep Ecology Version of Self-Realisation 99 Freedom Not Attachment is the Way of Yoga 106 Capital “R” Realisation 110 3. Perennial Philosophy and its Association with Deep Ecology 112 Platonism 113 The Theory of Successive Emanations Re-evaluated 120 Central Tenets of Religio-Philosophy 125 Direct Intuitive Perception 127 Consciousness and the Intuitive Faculty 132 German Idealism 135 Developing the Faculties 140 Self-knowledge and German Idealism 144 Intuition Defined 147 The Deep Ecology version of “Perennial Philosophy” 148 A Tradition of Philosophic Dissent 152 4. Deep Ecology Under Fire 157 Problems with the Doctrine of Self-realisation 159 Deep Ecology Rides Rough-Shod over “Difference” 165 Popper and Plumwood on Unity 169 Deep Ecology Has Nothing to Contribute to Deliberative Democracy: Or Has It? 173 A Critique of Green Reason 175 3 Of What Use is a Green Identity? 179 Direct Action and Nonviolence 184 RIC Projects 186 Inspired Activism 189 5. Panpsychism and other attempts at Inclusiveness 194 Organism and Soul 195 Change in Values 197 Matter as Purely Material 200 Bruno on Matter 203 The Primacy of Unity 209 Towards a Re-evaluation of Matter 213 The Whole is a “Spirit-Thing” 214 Matter as a Unity 216 The Essence of Matter 218 A Communicative Order 219 Mind in Matter - an ancient precedent in Sânkhya 220 Towards a Rational Mysticism 224 Yoga and Freedom 227 Some Other Approaches to Freedom 230 Counteracting Ignorance and Passivity 232 6. Krishnamurti and Bohm 234 Bohm on Matter and Mind 243 Order 248 Freedom 251 Time 254 The Role of Dialogue 255 4 The Untapped Potential of Attention 261 7. Foundations for a Nondualistic Framework 266 The Place of God or the Ultimate Category 272 Evolution and Time versus Eternity 275 Order and the Nature of Intelligence 281 Space and Consciousness 286 Process 292 Who Decides what is of Value? 297 Action in a Nondualistic Framework 298 The Karma Doctrine 300 Implications of the Karma Doctrine 306 Karma Yoga 309 Ethical Dilemmas in a Nondualistic Framework 312 Conclusion 316 Bibliography 323 5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks are due to Freya Mathews for sending chapters of her book by e-mail while I waited for it to arrive soon after publication. Also to Warwick Fox and Robyn Eckersley for permission to quote from their impromptu e-mails, especially to Dr. Fox who allowed me to do so in spite of the fact that our brief correspondence revealed a large area of disagreement between us. Thanks also to my supervisors Paul Brown and Anthony Corones, particularly the latter, for patiently reading through several drafts. As an external student living in Lismore, some 800 kilometres away from campus, my greatest debt is to the staff of Interlibrary Loans and Document Delivery at the University of New South Wales. Books and articles have been ungrudgingly obtained for me from other libraries in Australia, in Britain, and in the United States, and sent to my home on a regular basis. It would not have been possible for me to conduct this research without their help. I would also like to thank John Seed for inviting me to the 4th Earth Philosophy Australia camp. It enabled me to meet a number of highly committed philosopher- activists, and to experience the Council of All Beings and other Deep Ecology practices at first hand. It also gave me the opportunity to participate in a mini ecophilosophy seminar conducted by Val Plumwood, one of Australia’s foremost eco-philosophers, in a forest setting snug in the Mt. Warning Caldera. Finally, my husband has been an unfailing support in the years during which I was uncommunicatively attached to my desk researching and writing this thesis. Now he may enjoy a well-earned reprieve. 6 Abstract Rebuilding the Foundations of Deep Ecology: A Nondualist Approach This work examines the representations of the Perennial Philosophy in the literature of the Deep Ecology movement, and the negative response of critics to the Self-realisation approach. It then goes on to suggest that a deeper engagement with the nondualistic doctrines Naess embraced could lift environmental philosophy out of the Cartesian framework in which it appears to be bogged down. Deep Ecology has been accused of being politically ineffective, and letting down the environmental movement, because it remains insufficiently engaged with debates concerning power, class, sex, and other hegemonies that occupy the minds of social ecologists, ecofeminists, and cultural studies theorists. I argue that Deep Ecology is not as ineffective as detractors claim, but that it remains philosophically undeveloped, and has not provided sound foundations for environmental ethics. The qualified nondualism I advance, based on Vedânta, the work of David Bohm, and (to a lesser extent) Platonic thought, treats cosmos, society and the individual as intelligent creative systems in which the interrelated parts are expressions of a vital generative order to which each is actively related. The Self is a mirror of the cosmos, engaged in the process of becoming a more complete reflection of the totality. In all of this the nature of consciousness as vast creative intelligence is paramount, and freedom dominates the entire process from beginning to end. This thesis offers an opportunity to rethink ideas of value, moral considerability, and the nature of the empirical self, from a nondualistic perspective. It proposes that "intrinsic unity" might replace the community as the foundational moral concept for environmental ethics. In the process, emphasis shifts away from the objective sphere and settles firmly on the thinker and thought. Following Bohm and Krishnamurti, I argue that conditioned thought is the only barrier to (inner) freedom and creativity. Most important, the metaphysics of nondualism privileges processes of universal Self-realisation, and reveals the limitations of the empirical self. Understanding thought as a process then becomes something of a moral imperative. INTRODUCTION This work begins with an examination of the representations of the Perennial Philosophy in the literature of the Deep Ecology movement, and the negative response of critics to the Deep Ecology approach, but soon goes on to address some of the broader issues within environmental ethics disclosed in this exchange. With supporters from diverse cultural and ideological backgrounds, Deep Ecology is an international social movement dedicated to the protection of nature. It is also a new philosophy of nature with self-proclaimed links to what Bishop Steuco, Leibniz, and Huxley referred to as the philosophia perennis, a body of philosophic approaches to meta-empirical problems concerning the nature of reality, the relationship between matter and spirit, the nature of the noumenal world, and the relationship between the empirical self and the universal Self. George Sessions once claimed that Deep Ecology is ‘the new Perennial Philosophy’ (Sessions 1981, p.417). Nevertheless, although the connection has endured in the literature of the movement, both as a recurring theme in the writings of Deep Ecology theorists, and as the cause of consternation amongst their detractors, it has not been seriously questioned - or perhaps it has simply not been taken seriously. The notion of a Perennial Philosophy is problematic and contentious. As William Quinn Jr. points out, the term might be used variously by, (1) those who promulgate the philosophy as such; (2) those who promulgate either identical or similar principles, without labelling them as Perennial Philosophy; and (3) those who merely write about these principles and the tradition as existing (Quinn Jr. 1997, p.67). In the literature of the Deep Ecology movement, the latter two usages are evident. In The Reason, the Understanding, and Time Arthur Lovejoy makes a compelling case for the bankruptcy of the notion of the "Romantic" (Lovejoy 1961). Among other 7 things, Lovejoy argues that because the word romantic ‘has no generally understood meaning’, it is ‘useless as a verbal symbol’. Without a single accepted meaning, the romantic is not ‘open to discussion, or comparison with any objective matters of fact’ (Lovejoy 1961, p.x/xi). Although this equally applies to perennial philosophy, it does not necessarily imply that the concerns and interests subsumed under that term are unfit for public discourse. What may be of questionable value is a classification with no generally accepted meaning. In many cases, the ideas themselves are staple fare in the history of metaphysics. In Primordial Truth and Postmodern Theology, a dialogue with Huston Smith, David Ray Griffin has shown that the concerns of thinkers who identify themselves with perennial philosophy can be addressed satisfactorily, without recourse to that contentious term (Griffin and Smith 1989). Looking more closely at what are regarded as the central characteristics of perennial philosophy by those who identify themselves with this tradition, such as Huxley, Smith and Schuon (see Figure 2), we find a number of recurring themes which have also found their way into the literature of the Deep Ecology movement.