THEORY
weshare no sense of interdependence or community, such as Sudanese
famine victims. In this sense, the community argument may erect barriers
that prevent us from fulfilling obligations to the needy in poorer countries
because of the primary obligations we might owe to those in our own com-
munity. Consequently, community may be both too exclusive (of those suf-
fering elsewhere) and too inclusive (of those in the community with a lesser
claim on grounds of need or well-being) to provide the basis of an ethical
code.
Another implication of the reformulated principle is that Naess clearly
regards humans as having priority over non-humans, which seems to place
him in the anthropocentric camp. Most other holists adopt a similar
position.^7 Typically, they construct hierarchies of value-holders – humans,
higher mammals, animals, plants and so on – in which humans always seem
tocome out on top. Mathews ( 1991 ), for example, defines ‘the degree of
power of self-maintenance’ (i.e. complexity) as the criterion for determining
priority in conflicting moral claims, a characteristic that (coincidentally?)
humans possess in abundance. Put differently, in adjudicating conflicts
between values, it seems that ecocentric writers ultimately fall back on
arguments that privilege humans. Alternatively, they avoid the challenge
of providing moral codes of conduct altogether.
Thus, to summarise, Naess does little more than stipulate that nature
possesses intrinsic value; many writers would simply deny this claim. The
‘scientific’ grounds on which nature is accorded intrinsic value are also
strongly contested. Even if we accept that nature does have intrinsic value,
it is not clear what that implies. Holistic arguments provide little guidance
on how to resolve dilemmas when different parts of nature conflict with one
another. So, in practice, the claim that nature has intrinsic value simply sits
there; it does not tell us how we should behave towards nature.
Consequently, it is not surprising that deep ecologists have focused
increasingly on developing the second key theme in Naess’s work – the
concept of the ‘relational self’. Warwick Fox ( 1990 ), with his concept of
‘transpersonal ecology’, is one of the more sophisticated exponents of this
approach,^8 which explicitly rejects intrinsic value theory. Fox, whose work
bears the imprint of psychology (notably Maslow 1954 ), argues that the ‘self’
should be extended beyond the egoistic, biographical or personal sense of
self to produce ‘as expansive a sense of self as possible’ (Fox 1990 : 224).
Instead of regarding ourselves atomistically – as separate and isolated from
everyone and everything else – we should seek to empathise with others,
particularly with animals, plants and wider nature. Humans should try to
experience a lived sense of identification with other beings; for if some-
one’s sense of self can embrace other beings, then there is little need for
moral exhortation to behave in a caring way towards those beings (Eckersley
1992 : 62). This ‘state of being’ approach therefore focuses on the normative
question of how people might be motivated to develop a higher ecological
consciousness.