This is the first book-length treatment of the metaphysical foundations of ecological ethics. The author seeks to provide a metaphysical illumination of the fundamental ecological intuitions that we are in some sense `one with' nature and that everything is connected with everything else. Drawing on contemporary cosmology, systems theory and the history of philosophy, Freya Mathews elaborates a new metaphysics of `interconnectedness'. She offers an inspiring vision of the spiritual implications of ecology, which leads to a deepening of our conception (...) of conservation. (shrink)

A bold and original work in ecocosmology and metaphysics.

The environmental philosophy that has grown from the ecological movement has often been accused of providing no rational arguments for the holistic concepts it embraces. This is the first book to consider the metaphysical foundations of ecological ethics. The author seeks to provide a metaphysical support for the basic institutions of the 'one-ness' and the interconnectedness of everything, the fundamental principles of the ecological movement.

Biomimicry as a design concept is indeed revolutionary in its implications for human systems of production, but it is a concept in need of further philosophical elaboration and development. To this end certain philosophical principles underlying the organization of living systems generally are identified and it is argued that not only our systems of production but also our psychocultural patterns of desire need to be reorganized in accordance with these principles if we are collectively to achieve the integration into nature (...) to which biomimicry aspires. Even were this reorganization to be effected however, there is still an ethically momentous ambiguity in biomimicry that needs to be teased out before we can be assured that biomimicry will indeed produce the bioinclusive sustainability outcomes that it seems to promise. (shrink)

Biomimicry can serve as a design template for an ecological civilisation by showing how cyclical, no-waste, mutually adaptive production systems designed 'after nature' could render human industry fully 'sustainable'. However, unless the modes of praxis involved in such a reformed industrial base are also redesigned, the value orientation fostered by the new order would remain anthropocentric. Biomimicry would accordingly result in an eco-modernist-type scenario in which society was 'decoupled' from nature, with dystopian consequences for the larger community of life. Drawing (...) on Indigenous modalities, I explore ways in which modern industrial systems could include participatory modes of praxis that would emanate in genuinely bio-inclusive forms of consciousness and hence lay the ethical foundations for an ecological civilisation. (shrink)

Argues that the environmental crisis is symptomatic of much deeper crises in modern civilization.

Nature in its wider cosmic sense is not at risk from human exploitation and predation. To see life on Earth as but a local manifestation of this wider, indestructable and inexhaustible nature is to shield ourselves from despair over the fate of our Earth. But to take this wide view also appears to make interventionist political action on behalf of nature-which is to say, conservation-superfluous. If we identify with nature in its widest sense, as deep ecology prescribes, then the “self-defence” (...) argument usually advanced by deep ecologists in support of conservation appears not to work. I argue that the need for eco-activism can be reconciled with a rejection of despair within the framework of deep ecology, and that in the process of this reconciliation the meaning of the term conservation acquires a new, spiritual dimension. (shrink)

What is nature, and how are we to live with it rather than against it, as ecophilosophers enjoin? My own understanding of nature and of our proper relation to it is ultimately traceable to a metaphysics that could be broadly described as panpsychist, in that it attributes an internal principle, or subjectival dimension, to matter generally. I have explored such a metaphysic elsewhere, and do not propose..

Nature in its wider cosmic sense is not at risk from human exploitation and predation. To see life on Earth as but a local manifestation of this wider, indestructable and inexhaustible nature is to shield ourselves from despair over the fate of our Earth. But to take this wide view also appears to make interventionist political action on behalf of nature-which is to say, conservation-superfluous. If we identify with nature in its widest sense, as deep ecology prescribes, then the “self-defence” (...) argument usually advanced by deep ecologists in support of conservation appears not to work. I argue that the need for eco-activism can be reconciled with a rejection of despair within the framework of deep ecology, and that in the process of this reconciliation the meaning of the term conservation acquires a new, spiritual dimension. (shrink)

Is philosophy an appropriate means for inducing the 'moral point of view' with respect to nature? The moral point of view involves a feeling for the inner reality of others, a feeling which, it is argued, is induced more by processes of synergistic interaction than by the kind of rational deliberation that classically constituted philosophy. But how are we to engage synergistically with other-than-human life forms and systems? While synergy with animals presents no in-principle difficulty, synergy with larger life systems (...) takes us into epistemological realms explored only in the margins of the Western tradition, such as in Goethe's Romantic alternative to science. These 'alternative' epistemological realms are however the very province of the Daoist arts of China, and these arts accordingly furnish us with practices conducive to a moral consciousness of nature. (shrink)

As an environmental philosopher I had long been aware of dilemmas between animal ethics and ecological ethics, but now, as the manager of my own biodiversity reserve, I was facing these dilemmas in a more gut-wrenching and complex form than I had ever encountered in the classroom. Pressured by environmental authorities to cull kangaroos on my property, in the name of ecological ethics, I started thinking about the very meaning of ethics, its origins in the evolution of society and its (...) material and metaphysical presuppositions. Two different conceptions of the normative root of society emerged, the deontic conception, appropriate within the material and metaphysical framework of hunter-gatherer societies, and the axial conception, appropriate within the framework of ’civilization’, viz the agrarian societies that evolved into the urban-industrial formations of the modern era. The axial conception, based on empathy, aligned with our modern conception of ethics, and underlay our contemporary sense of animal ethics. ’Ecological ethics’, on the other hand, seemed to be obscurely underpinned by the deontic conception, and was not ethical at all in the axial sense, and was moreover mismatched, normatively speaking, with the material and metaphysical realities of modern societies. A different set of practices from those currently prescribed by environmental authorities needs to be devised to meet both the ethical and ecological requirements of our contemporary natural environment. (shrink)

I argue that a metaphysical controversy, comparable with the ‘pantheism controversy’ of the late 18th century, is being played out today in the world-wide clash between religion and science, in which one side adheres to a strict materialism and the other admits phenomena of inspiritment as having a place in ontology. Just as the pantheism controversy was resolved, to some degree, via the concept of panentheism, so the solution to the contest between science and religion today might be pointing us (...) in a panentheist direction. Taking into account (a) the empirical evidence of science, (b) the widespread evidence of spirit phenomena from different religions and spirit traditions, and (c) that the experience of spirit phenomena varies according to cultural frame of reference, I conclude that spirit phenomena must emanate from something that is common across cultures. The only thing that could be common across cultures is matter: it must be matter itself then that is imbued with spirit. While this position has affinities with panentheism, I argue that ‘panentheism’ is not in fact an appropriate name for it in the 21st century, as this name excludes the experience of many cultures for whom phenomena of inspiritment are not describable in any kind of theistic terms. (shrink)

: How we understand the world (our metaphysical premise) determines, to a large degree, how we treat it. How we treat our world constitutes our basic modality. Our basic modality colors everything we do—our entire culture takes its cue from it. Three basic modalities are here distinguished. The first is the modality of pre-materialist or traditional, religion-based societies. This is a modality of importuning, the seeking of assistance from supernatural sources. The second is the modality of materialist or modern, secular (...) societies. This is a modality of instrumentalism, involving mastery, control, and a will to re-make the world in accordance with human ends. The third is the modality of prospective post-materialist societies. These societies would be post-religious but not post-spiritual. Their modality would be one of letting the world unfold according to its own nature, and, by extension, finding creative synergies between human and nonhuman conativities. This modality of synergy is explicated by reference to the Daoist notion of wu wei. (shrink)

What is the optimal political framework for environmental reform reform on a scale commensurate with the global ecological crisis? In particular, how adequate are liberal forms of parliamentary democracy to the challenge posed by this crisis? These are the questions pondered by the contributors to this volume. Exploration of the possibilities of democracy gives rise to certain common themes. These are the relation between ecological morality and political structures or procedures and the question of the structure of decision-making and distribution (...) of information in political systems. The idea of 'democracy without traditional boundaries' is discussed as a key both to environmentalism in an age of global ecology and to the revitalisation of democracy itself in a world of increasingly protean constituencies and mutable boundaries. (shrink)

The honeybee, Apis mellifera, has excited both literary and scientific interest since ancient times, and even modern entomological investigation has not entirely dispelled the mystery surrounding the corporate intelligence of the beehive. Yet this lingering mystique has not prevented the wholesale exploitation of the honeybee as pollinator of choice in present-day industrial agriculture. In the context of this industrialization of the apiary, honeybees around the world are succumbing to the condition known as “colony collapse disorder.” The consequent disappearance of honeybees (...) on a massive scale poses the question, what do honeybees mean to us? Is their loss a moral loss, and if so, is it merely a moral loss, or something more? Does the loss of honeybees portend further losses that will amount to the loss of the basic conditions for meaning, and hence for morality, per se? (shrink)

On 29 February 2008, Val Plumwood died of stroke at the age of 68. She was not only a seminal environmental thinker, whose book Feminism and the Mastery of Nature has become a classic of environmental philosophy; she was also a woman who fearlessly lived life on her own deeply considered terms, often in opposition to prevailing norms. In this obituary Freya Mathews discusses Val's life and her contributions to environmental philosophy.