Toward A Transpersonal Ecology

by Warwick Fox

In this book I advance an argument concerning the nature of the deep ecology approach to ecophilosophy. In order to advance this argument in as thorough a manner as possible, I present it within the context of a comprehensive overview of the writings on deep ecology.

Genres: Environment, Ecology

328 pages, Paperback

First published November 21, 1990

Reviews

[Rhys · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting history of the emergence of 'deep ecology' in the lexicon of environmentalism.

[Joshua]

Fox spends a lot of time defining and redefining terms (e.g., the critique of using the phrase "deep ecology"), and summarizing various existing strands. It succeeds at the task it proclaims in the subtitle "Developing new foundations for environmentalism", if those foundations are understood to be philosophical. That being said, it is purely of academic interest.

[Glen · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a lot about this book that I like. For those seeking a scholarly primer on environmental philosophy (or ecophilosophy, as Fox prefers), one could do worse than this volume. The first six chapters offer a detailed overview of most of the major philosophical approaches to addressing the environmental crisis facing Earth dwellers and Earth lovers, with special attention to the approach most commonly dubbed "Deep Ecology" and the work of the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess who coined it. Some of this discussion gets rather technical, almost to the point of seeming scholastic, but on the whole it is well-documented and carefully argued. There are extensive notes, two helpful appendices, and plenty of verbal breadcrumbs along the way to help the reader track Fox's main argument which is most fully articulated in the concluding two chapters.

In those two chapters Fox identifies what he takes to be the real distinctive essence of Deep Ecology, an essence which both distinguishes it from other ecophilosophies and recommends it as the approach best suited to address the current crisis. That essence is that it is a transpersonal approach rooted in psychological identification with the cosmos or the phenomenon of being (think Advaita Vedanta and/or Zen Buddhism here) and hence emerges from the inside, so to speak, and manifests itself as natural concern rather than being imposed from "without" as a moral demand or requirement. In the last chapter Fox articulates what he takes to be the three ways in which transpersonal identification can take place and argues for his preference for one of the three.

What I found lacking in Fox's account though was any feel for how transpersonal identification can emerge from love of place (and by that I mean a particular place or region), and any emphasis on the role of community in providing the conditions favorable to such identification and its maturation. In short, I found Fox's account excessively cerebral, giving short shrift to the sentiments and even shorter shrift to the experience of generations of aboriginal people throughout the globe for whom the notion that non-human beings and even non-living places and systems can and do have a claim upon my highest loyalties and commitments is part of collective wisdom. This is not to say that having a philosophical awakening of the sort Fox discusses couldn't result in meaningful action on behalf of threatened life, but if we are seeking examples of the sorts of attitudes and practices that might actually be embodiments of the ecological virtues needed for the future, we might do well to look to the margins of the present and look to the past.

[Hamish · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book by accident but it rather conveniently filled a particular niche which I'd been looking for for a while: a comprehensive but accessible overview of Deep Ecology. it's not a riveting read and a lot of time is spent defining terms (and quite a lot of it is Fox telling you what he's going to tell you in the next section, or a different chapter, or what he told you elsewhere in the book) but that's because it is comprehensive and the definitional detail is needed to make his distinction between 'deep ecology' / 'transpersonal ecology' and other environmental movements which, on the surface, may appear to be the same.

The quotations and citations of deep ecologists is extraordinarily extensive so the annex and bibliography alone could be studied for ages. One frustrating tendency however is that Fox regularly says "critics say ..." without actually referencing anyone who has made that argument, so it can come across as quite vague.