Aristotle and the Roots of Deep Ecology

Date

October 22, 2020

source

Modern ecological ethics, for example Deep Ecology, often reaches back to Aristotle (385-322 BC) and his idea that the flourishing of any one thing is dependent on the flourishing of everything else. Aristotle did not think that one can selfishly have a good life. Instead, a virtuous person would naturally benefit both themselves and others at the same time. This idea also applies to our relations with the environment.

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It’s tragic that we only begin loving nature after we’ve lost it.

Cultures that are immersed in the natural world, people whose daily lives are defined by the struggle to survive in the wild, they don’t romanticise nature. Nature, for them, is a series of obstacles to be overcome. For us, sitting in our small concrete flats, surrounded by whirring, beeping machinery, nature becomes the utopian dream of a better world, a word that’s laden with meaning and with the promise of a lost paradise.

Interestingly, the most modern philosophies of nature, for example, Arne Naess’ Deep Ecology, go back all the way to an ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle (385–322 BC). Aristotle, whom we have already met a few times, had the idea that every thing in the universe has its own kind of perfection – a way of reaching its maximum potential, of being the best it can be.

This clearly applies to man. What is the best kind of man? Aristotle asks. What makes us special and different from all other things in nature? There are, he says, two things: our rationality and our moral goodness, our virtues. So the best human beings would be those who have developed these two sides of themselves to the greatest possible extent: who are the most rational as well as the most virtuous of men. People like that would be wise, they would be also successful in the world, happy, and morally good.

So this is Aristotle’s insight: one thing alone can not meaningfully flourish.

Now only men can reach this highest stage of being because only we have the necessary rationality to do so. But if we look at things, we can also see that some of them fulfil the purpose that is inherent in them better than others, and this is one of the main points of deep ecology: that nature is not only here for us, but for itself. A pen can be a good pen or a bad pen. Good pens write well, they are easy to use, widely available, write on any surface, can be used to highlight as well as to draw, for example. Bad pens are the kind of thing you get for free in the office: they break easily, they don’t write well, the ink dries out for no good reason, their caps get lost and using these pens is generally a traumatic affair.