On what basis should we build our relationship with the rest of the living? This question, which has occupied philosophers well before the birth of ecology, seems to be doubly important in the time of the climate crisis.
So how did we go from the spirit of prudence advocated by Aristotle to the ransacking of nature, seen as a reservoir of resources to be extracted? How did we come to live the Promethean myth that precisely warned humans against the temptation to make themselves gods on Earth?
In The Ecological Idea and Philosophy — In Search of a Common WorldFrench author Laurence Hansen-Løve goes back to the ideological sources of the climate crisis to better present critical perspectives seeking to get us out of it.
Through a philosophical journey from ancient Greece to today, the professor shows that a separation has taken place in Western thought, establishing an anthropocentric superiority at the risk of the environment.
“The divorce between nature and humanity has been consummated,” she writes, “a divorce which has led to turning the page on ancient naturalism and the virtues of prudence and humility which were attached to it.”
Other paths are possible. But we still need to understand how we got here.
Blame Descartes
This is a vast program. All the more so since Hansen-Løve only allows herself a few pages to analyze this great transformation that occurred at the turn of modernity, in parallel with the technical and scientific advances of the time.
It first highlights how the mathematization of nature – its knowledge through quantitative laws – led to its devitalization and then its “placement under supervision by engineers from the 17th century onwards”.e century”. But very quickly, the author directs our attention towards the “true architect of this revolution” of mentalities: René Descartes.
Thus, the father of modern Western philosophy, through his cogito – often summed up by the expression “I think therefore I am” – bases his metaphysics on the dualism between mind and matter. Indeed, in the systematic doubt that he takes as a starting point, the philosopher can only fall back on one certainty: the fact that he thinks, and this, in the abstraction of all material reality. For Descartes, “the soul and the body are two substances whose essences differ absolutely”, Hansen-Løve recalls.
Result? “The Cartesian dualism on which modern Western philosophy will henceforth be based confirms a radical opposition between nature and spirit, partially covering up the separation between nature and morality,” she adds.
Before the mind, the “machine world” is reduced to nothing more than soulless parts that humans can study to better control, becoming “like masters and possessors of nature” (Descartes, Discourse on the method).
The emergence of ecological thinking
Now, these ideas, which accompany the early stages of capitalism, are already in competition with others in their time. Baruch Spinoza, a contemporary of Descartes, for example, rejects the latter’s dualism, postulating instead that everything that exists is only the mode of a single substance: “God, that is to say, nature.”
And the ravages of modern technology – alongside its benefits in other areas, which the author does not neglect – pushed many other philosophers and scientists to distance themselves from Cartesianism in the following centuries.
Quite quickly, under the effect of industrialization, nature became for many, as with the heirs of American transcendentalism such as Thoreau and Muir, “that which must be protected and preserved.”
Sometimes opposing visions of what constitutes the principles and goals of this emerging environmental awareness then emerge.
Diverging principles and aims
Beyond the vague need to “protect nature”, The ecological idea and philosophy clearly shows that important metaphysical, ethical and political debates arise regarding the definition of this mission.
What should be protected and why? How can we reconcile the issues specific to the “end of the world” and those of the “end of the month”? More fundamentally, how can we define nature and the place that humans occupy in it? These are some of the questions that environmental philosophy has been asking for decades.
The answers differ and the divergences can be seen in very concrete debates around animal rights, the creation of protected areas or the protection of ecosystems. The case of the deer in Michel-Chartrand Park is an example where we can see these visions in conflict.1.
Ecofeminism, deep ecology, critique of technology: perspectives abound and collide in The ecological idea and philosophyquestioning the foundations of our climate commitment — even if it means creating some cognitive dissonance.
The journey, which spans only 130 pages, can unfortunately seem quick at times, closer to a skim than a slow hike. It is up to the reader to take note of the good addresses that the guide presents, in order to go and reflect further afterwards.
1. Listen to an episode of the podcast Biodiversity factshosted by Alexandre Shields, where we look at this specific case from the point of view of environmental ethics
Excerpts
“Even today, for many thinkers and moralists, believers or not, the duties owed to our fellow men derive from our belonging to a moral community, itself resulting from our supposed superiority or difference of an ontological order.”
“Questions of ethics or morality, as they were posed by the Ancients (“how to be happy while leading an honorable life?”) and then reformulated by the Moderns following Kant (“what must I do to worthily fulfill my vocation as a human being?”) certainly fall within the realm of philosophy. However, they raise the problem, as crucial as it is eminently ecological, of the value that we grant – or do not grant – to everything that is foreign to humanity (namely, that which belongs to the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms).”
Who is Laurence Hansen-Løve?
Laurence Hansen-Løve was born in 1948 in Paris. She is an associate professor of philosophy in France and is the author of several books, including Planet in turmoil (Ecosociety), Violence — Should we despair of humanity? (From the return) and Private Philosophy Lesson — Questions for the Present Time (Berlin).
The ecological idea and philosophy. In search of a common world
130 pages
Ecosociety