Page 194 - Contribution To Phenomenology

PHILOSOPHY AND ECOLOGICAL CRISIS 187

'self is widened and deepened so that protection of free Nature is felt
and conceived as protection of ourselves."^^
The modern subject is a social atom which, beyond the primary groups
of the family, the neighborhood and a small circle of friends, is linked
to other social atoms by contractual or market relations. Money is the
symbol of freedom for this modern subject The more money you have,
the more independent you are. Modern ideals of emancipation and
autonomy are based on an atomistic social ontology and an atomistic
conception of the self which are realized by and in turn legitimize the
modern capitalist money-economy. This modern self is fundamentally
egoistic, it is spasmodic, never at ease, ahvays on the alert, always anxious
of contact, of the danger of losing itself^Bahro calls it an "ego-fortress."
According to Deep Ecology, this is an immature form of the self, a self
cut off from its full self-realization-potential, because it cuts itself off from
that with which it is internally connected. In the words of Naess: "The
ego-trip interpretation of the potentialities of humans presupposes a
marked underestimation of the richness and broadness of our poten-
tialities."" The self is not only internally related to other human beings,
it is not only a social self, but it is internally related to the non-human
world as well, it is an ecological self. To quote Naess again: "We may
be said to be in, of and for Nature from our very beginning. Society and
human relations are important, but our self is richer in its constitutive
relations."^
The foundation of this view is a holistic and relational ontology which
is strongly implicated by recent developments in different sciences but in
particular, of course, by scientific ecology. This is how Warwick Fox,
leading representative of Deep-Ecology-thinking, expresses this ontological
position: "All subdivisions are seen as relative rather than absolute. Or
in metaphorical terms, 'separate things in the world' should be thought
as eddies, ripples and whirlpools in a stream ('unity of process') rather
than as bricks that are totally self-contained and self-sufficient."^ Naess
himself, drawing inspiration from ecology, Ghandian metaphysics and

^ Arne Naess, "Self-Realization," in The Trumpeter 4.5 (Summer 1987), 40.
^ Ibid., 37.
» Ibid., 35.
^ Warwick Fox, Approaching Deep Ecology: A Response to Richard Sulvan*s
Critique of Deep Ecology, Environmental Studies Occasional Paper 20 (University of
Tasmania: Hobert, 1986), 15.