Feminism and Environmental Ethics: A Materialist Perspective 225economic determinism that dogged Marxist theory underestimated the role of
ideas in changing human consciousness/awareness. However, I would argue that a
deep materialist analysis provides a firmer basis upon which to establish grounds
for political agency than an idealist philosophical/ethical stance.
Deep materialism shares with deep ecology a view of nature as embracing
hu(man)ity. As Eckersley expresses it (following Naess) the world is ‘an intrinsically,
dynamic, interconnected web of relations in which there are no absolutely discrete
entities and no absolute dividing lines between the living and the nonliving, the
animate and the inanimate, or the human and the nonhuman’ (1992, p49).
The insight of deep, green thinkers has been the conception of the natural
world as having its own ontological status. Non-human nature is not a social con-
struction or a dead nature that transcendent humans can manipulate at will and
without consequences. It is an alive nature that enfolds human beings. The radical
ecological (and ecofeminist) criticism of Western culture is that its dualistic social
structures and forms of knowledge ignore the fact that hu(man)ity is part of the
natural world (Plumwood, 1993). Hu(man)ity is always immanent. Transcend-
ence is socially constructed against ‘nature’. The natural world is not dead or dumb
or a product of the human mind, it is ‘fundamentally material and subjective’ (Lahar,
1991, p37, italics in the original). It is real, dynamic, and always beyond human
knowing in that imbedded hu(man)ity has no Archimedes point from which to
assess the complex interrelations of all the forces of the natural world. Ecologically
hu(man)ity exists in a condition of radical uncertainty.
The concept used by deep ecologists to express a nature-centred approach is
ecocentrism as opposed to human-centredness or anthropocentrism. Despite the
claims of deep ecologists to a holistic framework, nature-centredness (ecocentric-
ity) in rejecting human-centredness (anthropocentrism) tends to see human soci-
ety as out of step with ‘nature’. This implies a dualist distinction between
‘humanity’ and ‘nature’, where nature is ‘right’ and hu(man)ity is ‘wrong’. Ecocen-
trism is often expressed in a way that sees hu(man)ity as outside of ‘nature’, par-
ticularly in the emphasis on wilderness. ‘Untouched’ nature is more ‘natural’ than
when peopled by human beings. From a deep materialist perspective I would argue
that human beings are inside, not outside of the processes of life. They have evolved
out of the physical materials of this planet and their intelligence and destructive-
ness is part of that natural process. Nature does not have moral position on hu(man)
ity. Hu(man)ity just is, as it is. It is for hu(man)ity itself to judge the ecological
impact of its own existence. In this sense we cannot escape human-centredness.
Nature is how we see it now. However, where the deep ecologists are right is to
accuse modern humanism of arrogance in its attitude to the natural world. Human
beings, no matter how powerful, cannot determine the ultimate conditions of
their own existence. Nature will go on with or without hu(man)ity. The concept I
would use to express the immanence of the human condition and the need to
embrace a more nature-aware ontology is ecological holism. Ecological holism sees
hu(man)ity as part of a dynamic interactive ecological process where the whole is
always more than the sum of its parts (Mellor, 1997b, p185).