Page 196 - Contribution To Phenomenology

PHILOSOPHY AND ECOLOGICAL CRISIS 189

to Naess, we always decide and act on the basis of such a total view:
"All we do somehow implies the existence of such systems, however
elusive they may be to concrete descriptions."'^ Naess maintains that it
is of great importance in the present crisis-situation that people try to
articulate their total views as clearly and as systematically as possible even
if a complete articulation is in principle impossible.^' We should try to
articulate what our ultimate values and norms are and how we derive
other lower norms from them with the help of certain factual hypotheses.
This means in fact that we should try to articulate in the form of a
hierarchical normative system what we really and ultimately want and
what we really believe in. We should "announce our value-priorities
forcefully,"'^ but do without any dogmatism. "To accept a particular norm
as a fundamental, or basic norm, does not imply an assertion of
infaUibility nor does it claim that the acceptance of a norm is indepen-
dent of its concrete consequences in practical situations. It is not an
attempt to dominate or manipulate. As with descriptive statements, we
should retain a principle of revisability. The cult of obstinacy in the reahn
of norms renders calm debate practically impossible.'"^ On the basis of
a systematic articulation of a total view, rational and meaningful debate
about value-priorities becomes possible. There can be and there should
be quite different total views as the ground of different lifestyles and
different cultures. There is no end to meaningful debate and interaction,
to clarification and modification regarding our total views. The present
system of industrial production and consumption, and this seems to be
Naess' conviction, would turn out not to be supported by any coherent
total view. Therefore it is particularly important that we urge the
defenders and representatives of this system to articulate their total views
and involve them in a debate about their and our total views.
A more detailed presentation and discussion of Naess' sophisticated
normative-system-technique as well as his and others' concrete elaboration
of the total view of a Deep Ecology, down to rules for a
Deep-Ecology-lifestyle, for Deep-Ecology-politics and -economics, is

'2 Ibid., 68.
" Regarding the impossibility of a complete articulation of a total view see,
Arne Naess, "Reflections about Total Views," in Phenomenology and Phenomenol-
ogical Research (Sept. 1964).
'^ Ibid,
'^ Ibid., 69.