The Politics Book
Page 34
"Earth does not belong to humans."
Arne Naess
Carson’s book provided the catalyst for the emergence of the environmental movement in mainstream politics. Arne Naess, a Norwegian philosopher and ecologist, credited Silent Spring with providing the inspiration for his work, which focused on the philosophical underpinnings for environmentalism. Naess was a philosopher of some renown at the University of Oslo, and was primarily known for his work on language. From the 1970s, however, he embarked on a period of sustained work on environmental and ecological issues, having resigned his position at the university in 1969 and devoted himself to this new avenue of thought. Naess became a practical philosopher of environmental ethics, developing new responses to the ecological problems that were being identified. In particular, he proposed new ways of conceiving the position of human beings in relation to nature.
Fundamental to Naess’s thought was the notion that the Earth is not simply a resource to be used by humans. Humans should consider themselves as part of a complex, interdependent system, rather than consumers of natural goods, and should develop compassion for non-humans. To fail to understand this point was to risk destroying the natural world through narrow-minded, selfish ambition.
Early in his career as an environmentalist, Naess outlined his vision of a framework for ecological thought that would provide solutions to society’s problems. He called this framework “Ecosophy T”, the T representing Tvergastein, Naess’s mountain home. Ecosophy T was based on the idea that people should accept that all living things – whether human, animal, or vegetable – have an equal right to life. By understanding oneself as part of an interconnected whole, the implications of any action on the environment become apparent. Where the consequences of human activity are unknown, inaction is the only ethical option.
The Industrial Revolution changed people’s thinking about the environment. It was seen as a resource to be exploited, an attitude that Naess thought could lead to the destruction of mankind.
Deep ecology
Later in his career, Naess developed the contrasting notions of “shallow” and “deep” ecology to expose the inadequacies of much existing thinking on the subject. For Naess, shallow ecology was the belief that environmental problems could be solved by capitalism, industry, and human-led intervention. This line of thinking holds that the structures of society provide a suitable starting point for the solution of environmental problems, and imagines environmental issues in a human-centric way. Shallow ecology was not without value, but Naess believed it had a tendency to focus on superficial solutions to environmental problems. This view of ecology, for Naess, imagined mankind as a superior being within the ecosystem and did not acknowledge the need for wider social reform. The broader social, philosophical, and political roots of these problems were left unsolved, as the primary concern was with the narrow interests of humans, rather than nature in its entirety.
"The supporters of shallow ecology think that reforming human relations towards nature can be done within the existing structure of society."
Arne Naess
In contrast, deep ecology says that, without dramatic reform of human behaviour, irreparable environmental damage will be brought upon the planet. The fast pace of human progress and social change has tilted the delicate balance of nature, with the result that not only is the natural world being damaged, but mankind – as part of the environment – is ushering itself towards destruction. Naess proposes that, in order to understand that nature has an intrinsic value quite separate from human beings, a spiritual realization must take place, requiring an understanding of the importance and connection of all life. Human beings must understand that they only inhabit, rather than own, the Earth, and that only resources that satisfy vital means must be used.
Direct action
Naess combined his engagement in environmental thought with a commitment to direct action. He once chained himself to rocks near the Mardalsfossen, a waterfall in a Norwegian fjord, in a successful protest against the proposed site of a dam. For Naess, the realization that accompanied a deep ecological viewpoint must be used to promote a more ethical and responsible approach to nature. He was in favour of reducing consumerism and the standards of material living in developed countries as part of a broad-reaching programme of reform. However, Naess disagreed with fundamentalist approaches to environmentalism, believing that humans could use some of the resources provided by nature in order to maintain a stable society.
Resolving environmental issues within current political, economic, and social systems is doomed to failure, according to Naess. What is needed is a new way of looking at the world around us, seeing mankind as a part of the ecological system.
Naess’s influence
Despite his preference for gradual change, and his disdain for fundamentalism, Naess’s ideas have been adopted by activists with more radical perspectives. Earth First!, an international environmental advocacy group that engages in direct action, has adapted Naess’s ideas to support their own understanding of deep ecology. In their version of the philosophy, deep ecology can be used to justify political action that includes civil disobedience and sabotage.
As awareness of environmental issues grows, Naess’s ideas are gaining ever-greater resonance at a political level. Environmental issues show no respect for the boundaries of national governments, and generate a complex set of questions for theorists and practitioners alike. The green movement has entered the political mainstream, both through formal political parties and advocacy groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. Naess’s work has an important place in providing a philosophical underpinning to these developments. His ideas have attracted controversy, and criticism has come from many quarters, including the accusation that they are disconnected from the reality of socio-economic factors and given to a certain mysticism. Despite these criticisms, the political questions raised by the environmental movement, and the place of deep ecological perspectives within them, remain significant and seem sure to grow in importance in the future.
ARNE NAESS
Arne Naess was born near Oslo, Norway, in 1912. After training in philosophy, he became the youngest ever professor of philosophy at the University of Oslo at the age of 27. He maintained a significant academic career, working particularly in the areas of language and semantics. In 1969, he resigned from his position to devote himself to the study of ethical ecology, and the promotion of practical responses to environmental problems. Retreating to write in near-solitude, he produced nearly 400 articles and numerous books.
Outside of his work, Naess was passionate about mountaineering. By the age of 19, he had built a considerable reputation as a climber, and he lived for a number of years in a remote mountain cabin in rural Norway, where he wrote most of his later work.
Key works
1973 The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement: A Summary
1989 Ecology, Community and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy
See also: John Locke • Henry David Thoreau • Karl Marx
IN CONTEXT
IDEOLOGY
Racial equality
FOCUS
Civil disobedience
BEFORE
1948 The Afrikaaner-dominated National Party is elected to power, marking the start of apartheid in South Africa.
1961 Frantz Fanon writes The Wretched of the Earth, outlining the process of armed struggle against an oppressor.
1963 Martin Luther King delivers his “I have a dream” speech in Washington, DC.
AFTER
1993 The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to Mandela for his work towards reconciliation in South Africa.
1994 In the country’s first free and multi-racial elections, Mandela is voted the first black president of South Africa.
The fight against apartheid in South Africa was one of the defining political battles of the late-20th century. From 1948, the election of the apartheid National Party spelled the beginning of a period of
oppression by the white minority. Nelson Mandela was at the forefront of the resistance, organizing public protest and mobilizing support through his involvement in the African National Congress (ANC) party. This grew in response to the legislation implemented by the new government and, by the 1950s, a popular movement was taking part in the resistance to apartheid, drawing its inspiration from civil rights leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
"I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society."
Nelson Mandela
For freedom
The strategy pursued by the ANC was intended to make effective government impossible, through a mixture of civil disobedience, the massed withdrawal of labour, and public protest. By the mid-1950s the ANC and other groups within the anti-apartheid movement had articulated their demands in the Freedom Charter. This enshrined the values of democracy, participation, and freedom of movement and expression, which were the mainstays of the protesters’ demands. However, it was treated by the government as an act of treason.
From protest to violence
The effect of this dissent on the apartheid regime was gradual, but telling. By the 1950s, although the democratic process was still closed to most non-whites, a number of political parties had begun to promote some form of democratic rights – albeit only partial – for black people in South Africa.
This was significant as, by gaining the support of some of the politically active white minority, the anti-apartheid movement was able to demonstrate that it was not mobilizing along racial lines. This fitted Mandela’s view of the struggle, which was inclusive in its vision of a new South Africa. He emphasized that the primary motivation for the protest was to combat racial injustice and white supremacy, rather than to attack the white minority themselves. Despite the well-organized and active approach of the ANC, dramatic reform was still not forthcoming, and demands for a full extension of voting rights were not met. Instead, as the intensity of protest escalated, the government’s response became ever more violent, culminating in the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, when police shot dead 69 people who were protesting against laws that required black people to carry pass books.
However, the struggle against apartheid was not wholly peaceful itself. Like other revolutionary figures, Mandela had come to the conclusion that the only way to combat the apartheid system was through armed struggle. In 1961, Mandela, with other leaders of the ANC, established Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC, an act which contributed to his later imprisonment. Despite this, his belief in civil protest and the principle of inclusion gained worldwide support, culminating in Mandela’s eventual release and the fall of apartheid.
The battle to end apartheid was not an attack on South Africa’s white minority, Mandela asserted, it was against injustice and as such was a more inclusive call for change.
NELSON MANDELA
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born in the Transkei, South Africa, in 1918. His father was advisor to the chief of the Tembu tribe. Mandela moved to Johannesburg as a young man and studied law. He joined the African National Congress (ANC) party in 1944 and became involved in active resistance against the apartheid regime’s policies from 1948. In 1961, he helped establish the ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, partly in response to the Sharpeville Massacre a year earlier. In 1964, he received a sentence of life imprisonment, remaining incarcerated until 1990, and spending 18 years on Robben Island.
On his release from prison, Mandela became the figurehead of the dismantling of apartheid, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 and becoming president of South Africa in 1994. Since stepping down in 1999, he has been involved with a number of causes, including work to tackle the AIDS pandemic.
Key works
1965 No Easy Walk to Freedom
1994 Long Walk to Freedom
See also: Mahatma Gandhi • Marcus Garvey • Frantz Fanon • Martin Luther King
IN CONTEXT
IDEOLOGY
Federalism
FOCUS
De-unification
BEFORE
1532 Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince predicts the eventual unification of Italy.
1870 The unification of Italy is completed with the Capture of Rome by the Italian army of King Victor Emmanuel II.
AFTER
1993 US political scientist Robert Putnam publishes Making Democracy Work, which examines the divisions in political and civic life across Italy.
1994 The separatist party Lega Nord participates in Italian national government for the first time.
Italian politics has a history of confrontation. Historically, Italy was a divided nation, ruled by a loose coalition of city-states until the unification of the country was completed in 1870. Between the industrial north and the rural south, a long history of inequity and dispute exists, with many in the north feeling that unification had brought economic benefits to the south but disadvantage to their own region.
Gianfranco Miglio was an Italian academic and politician whose work examined the structures of power in political life. Drawing his inspiration from Max Weber and Carl Schmitt, Miglio argued against the centralization of political resources across Italy on the basis that this form of collaboration had harmed the interests and identity of the north.
Northern separatism
Miglio believed that collaboration was not a desirable feature of politics, nor was it possible in the political marketplace. The differing interests of Italy’s various regions would not be resolved through compromise and discussion, but through the dominance of the more powerful groupings. Miglio’s ideas eventually led him into a political career, and in the 1990s he was elected to the national senate as a radical member of the separatist party Lega Nord (“Northern League”), founded in 1991.
Car manufacturers such as Fiat have contributed to northern Italy’s wealth. In Miglio’s view, it was unfair that such wealth should subsidize the poorer south.
See also: Niccolò Machiavelli • Max Weber • Carl Schmitt
IN CONTEXT
IDEOLOGY
Radicalism
FOCUS
Critical education
BEFORE
1929–34 Antonio Gramsci writes his Prison Notebooks, outlining his development of Marxist thought.
1930s Brazil suffers extreme poverty during the Great Depression.
AFTER
1960s While professor of history and philosophy of education at the University of Recife, Brazil, Freire develops a programme to deal with mass illiteracy.
1970s Freire works with the World Council of Churches, spending nearly a decade advising on education reform in a number of countries across the world.
Political writers have often attempted to understand the struggle against political oppression. Thinkers such as Karl Marx and Antonio Gramsci framed oppression in terms of two groups of actors – the oppressors and those who are oppressed.
Brazilian educator Paulo Freire’s work revisited this relationship, concentrating on the conditions needed to break the cycle of oppression. He believed that the act of oppression dehumanizes both parties and that, once liberated, there is a danger of individuals repeating the injustice they have experienced. In effect, the oppressed themselves might become oppressors.
"The greatest humanistic and historical task of the oppressed is to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well."
Paulo Freire
Genuine liberation
This line of thinking held that it would take more than just a shift in roles to end oppression and begin the genuine process of liberation. Freire believed that through education, humanity could be restored, and that a reform of education could produce a class of people who would rethink their lives. In this way, oppressors would stop viewing others as an abstract grouping and would understand their position as individuals who are subject to injustice.
Freire saw education as a political act in whi
ch students and teachers needed to reflect on their positions and appreciate the environment in which education takes place. His work has influenced many political theorists.
See also: Georg Hegel • Karl Marx • Antonio Gramsci
IN CONTEXT
IDEOLOGY
Liberalism
FOCUS
Social justice
BEFORE
1762 Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s treatise Of The Social Contract discusses the legitimacy of authority.
1935 American economist Frank Knight’s essay Economic Theory and Nationalism lays the basis for Rawls’s understanding of the deliberative procedure.
AFTER
1974 Robert Nozick publishes a critique of Rawls’s A Theory of Justice under the title Anarchy, State, and Utopia.
1995 Gerald Cohen publishes a Marxist critique of Rawls.
2009 Amartya Sen publishes The Idea of Justice, which he dedicates to Rawls.
American philosopher John Rawls’s life-long preoccupation with ideas to do with justice, fairness, and inequality were shaped by his experience of growing up in racially segregated Baltimore and in the US Army. Rawls was concerned with identifying a general framework of moral principles within which it is possible to make individual moral judgments. For Rawls, these general moral principles could only be justified and agreed upon through the use of commonly accepted procedures for reaching decisions. Such procedures are key to the process of democracy – Rawls thought that it was the process of debate and deliberation before an election, rather than the act of voting itself, that gives democracy its true worth.