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What must I do (and why me)? | 83
can recognise the Vedic sources of Naess’ philosophy. And if we read it
as an account of the human state, in the centre of which stands the
openness of the Self to the world and self-understanding, then the
influence of Martin Heidegger’s approach to human existence becomes
evident as well. As for the idea of the compassion and responsibility
arising from the suffering and will to live of other beings, that is familiar
directly from the writings of Albert Schweitzer. Naess opposes the
legacy of the Early-Modern theory of knowledge that dulls and
objectifies nature with the arguments of Gestalt philosophy: European
science doubles the world. It places experience and the sensual qualities
in the subjective sphere and recognises as real only the objects of
cognition constructed according to the strict methodological precepts
of mathematical logic and experimental physics. (He could of course
here also refer to Edmund Husserl.)
Naess’ transpersonal ecology drew enthusiastic followers, but also
much criticism from his colleagues. They held him to account mostly
for the return of anthropocentrism under the guise of the concept of
identification. “Given this emphasis on the gestalt-experience of the
human subject, it is difficult to see how the relational holistic ontology
of deep ecology can avoid an anthropocentric bias. Human beings
cannot escape the anthropocentric character of their relational
experiences.” Others pointed out that if one makes nature the extension
of the Self, then in the rush of identification one can easily forget its
fundamental and insoluble otherness. A limitless Self can have no
environment, since the world is not centred around it, but rather belongs,
so to speak, to its being. And yet “...the deepest intuitions of deep
ecologists are formed as much if not more from the direct experience
of the mysterious and radical otherness of nature than from a
transpersonal identification with it.”,* as Leslie Paul Thiele reminds us.
How can man approach nature so that what is revealed in this
relationship — the truth — is not the result of the appropriation and
objectification of nature, but rather the result of preservative care, which
is capable of maintaining in its own infinite otherness what it
understands? But what else could be termed understanding if not our
exceptional capacity to see beyond our own interests and biases and
become the conscious and joyful admirers of the fantastic wealth of a
more-than-human world? Naess’ true intentions are no doubt directed
°’ Eric Katz: Against the Inevitability of Anthropocentrism. In: E. Katz — A. Light -D.
Rothenberg eds.: Beneath the Surface, p.36. MIT Press, 2000.
5° Leslie Paul Thiele: Nature and Freedom. Environmental Ethics 17.2. 1995. p.188.