By Matthew Coate
Taken literally, the word “ecology” means "the study (or science) of one's home," from the Greek
root, oikos. Home in this sense is not simply one's house, a place of residence, but “home” in the
deepest sense of the word, as a place to which one belongs. Having such a place in one's life was
considered by the ancient Greeks to be crucial to the psychological well-being of the individual
just as it is by most psychologists today.
Understood in this way, the current environmental crisis can be seen as a psychological crisis,
and, ultimately, as a crisis of identity. In order to make the relevant links clear, I'm going to
examine some ideas put forward by the contemporary philosopher Arne Naess, known as the foremost
pioneer towards an ecological philosophy (which he has taken to calling an "ecosophy").
We'll begin our discussion with Naess' formulation of a gestalt ontology, which gives rise
to what he refers to as an "ecology of the self." An understanding of what he means by a
gestalt is necessary for a thorough comprehension of this notion of the self, and of its direct
relevance with the ecological crisis at hand.
Faces or a vase?
The term gestalt (German for "essence" or "whole") was first coined in its present usage by the
philosopher and psychologist Christian van Ehrenfels in the late 19th century. It soon became a
crucial notion for many branches of psychology as well as epistemology, and has recently experienced
a spirited revival due to its relevance for modern field (or systems) theories of the sciences.
The idea is popularly illustrated in the well-known drawing that can be seen either as a vase or two
faces kissing. Looking at in one manner, we see a black vase in front of a white background. In another,
we see two white faces in profile, kissing (or, sometimes, staring into each other's eyes, depending on
the particular drawing), in front of a black background. The vase is perceived only in its particular
context (with its background), and each of the two faces, in another. This is made vivid by the telling
fact that, try as we may, we cannot see both the vase and the two faces at once. This is because
the contexts to which they belong are overlapping and exclusive, which precludes a simultaneous
perception of both. When either one of the two contexts are not perceived, its constituent "parts"
are also not perceived.
Put very simply, a gestalt is the spontaneous experience of a whole that is "greater than the
sum of its parts." Without further clarification, though, this definition can be quite misleading.
To begin with, the terms "part" and "whole" must be vigorously re-defined; in fact, a gestalt ontology
essentially does away with the notion of either wholes or parts as being fundamental entities, given
to us concretely in our experience, and not simply as (perhaps useful, or even necessary) abstractions.
To clarify this, it should be fruitful to contrast a gestalt ontology with the type of atomistic
ontology (either empiricist or rationalist) predominantly held throughout most of the history of
the sciences (and, unfortunately, in quite a few branches of science, even today -- though not in ecology).
Here, objects are held to be self-sufficient in and of themselves, and only related to other objects
extrinsically, through a series of causal and external actions and reactions, mediated by what are
typically referred to as "forces." What we might consider a context is held in this view to be a
mental or conceptual abstraction of sorts, never empirically experienced, and generally only its
constituent parts are believed to have any claim on existence (beyond the status afforded
such conceptual abstractions, at least). A gestalt ontology disputes much of this:
We never experience any "parts" as such, and can only posit these through an abstraction
of our immediate or spontaneous experience. In actuality, we experience the objects of
our experience only in a context or in a relation to each other. In this way, a better
formulation of the gestalt maxim would be, "the part is more than a part,” or, "there is
no spontaneous experience of the part merely as a part," as Naess writes in "Ecosophy and Gestalt
Ontology." For relations here are "internal,” meaning that the part is experienced as
being actually structured, i.e., having as fundamental within its internal make-up, its relatedness
to various other "parts," its contextuality, and the way in which it is involved
in the constitution of the very context of which it is a part means that it is forever
an opening, in a manner of speaking, to what is beyond its own "partness."
Naess stresses here, however, that this certainly does not imply that a part is an
abstraction from a whole, as certain forms of idealism (in the ontological sense) or a
"holistic" ontology, would, for a gestalt ontology views wholes as abstractions as well.
While it is true that there is no spontaneous experience of the part, Naess makes clear
in his discussion of gestalts that "neither is there spontaneous experience of the whole."
What we do experience is a spontaneously "unified" experience, in that its content is essentially
indivisible. As such, when analyzed into "parts," these parts must by necessity be given in our
experience only through and by means of various inter-relations and within a context (in relation
to other objects, or to a compound whole of which it is a part, wholes which themselves are
experienced only in relation to their constituent parts, and to other whole objects
constituted of other objects as parts). This indivisible spontaneous experience of
reality, Naess believes, is itself actual, as opposed to the "totally 'abstract
structures' of reality," i.e., the analyzed parts or wholes. Because neither parts nor
wholes are sufficient (entia per se, as the lingo goes) in and of themselves, only, as
Naess puts it, "the spontaneous experience of the content of reality." In truth, we
(each individual being) are not simply parts of reality, as well (or for that matter,
the whole of it), and our experience as individuals cannot be called merely "subjective" in
this sense. Ultimately, an "experience of reality (is) beyond the divisions between
subject/object.” The experiencing self is itself constituted by the contexts which are the
objects of its own experience.
This notion of self, of the "ecological self of a person (as) that with which this
person identifies," profoundly undercuts, or rather, is founded upon the profound
undercutting of, the dichotomy between subject (or "self") and object (or "other") that
underlies the traditional notion of self. Here, the self or ego is constructed as a higher
order gestalt (a gestalt of gestalts, if you will) that is in no way an absolute. Its own
existence, as it were, depends upon its relations to others (that with which it does not,
at least in the present, identify), and as such its full self-realization depends upon the
realization of this never-ending series of relations that the self is founded upon, expanding
or broadening the notion of self in the process of this further identification. The nature of
the self, as Naess puts it, "is such that, with sufficient comprehensive (all-sided) maturity,
we cannot help but identify our self with all living beings."
Naess elaborates on this by turning to the psychologist Erich Fromm. Fromm often deals with
the idea of self-identification with others in his works. In this sense, he asserts the
equivalence of seeking one's self-interest and virtue (in a similar fashion as the 17th-century
philosopher Baruch Spinoza), pointing out in "Selfishness, Self-Love and Self-Interest" that,
"the interest of humans is to preserve their existence [not mere survival, but the
existence of the "self"; remember, here, our new concept of it!], which is the same as
realizing their inherent potentialities [self-realization]." It follows, then, that an authentic
love of one's own self must lead to a love of others, for to realize the "inherent potentialities"
of the self is to realize the way the self is essentially and internally related to others.
Again, it must be stressed, the self (ego subject) and other (object of perception) here are
abstractions, as well as the medium of their interrelation; the reality, here, is in their
indivisibilty. Fromm puts it rather succinctly, saying "love, in principle, is indivisible as
far as the connection between "objects" and one's own self is concerned."
An ecological awareness, so to speak, then becomes the central fact of any self-realization,
and as such self-realization becomes central to Naess' proscription for the ecological or
"green" life, the human life in harmony with Nature. For the self is constituted by its
contextual situated ness, its home or "oikos" in the deepest sense (of which the natural
environment is a crucial constituent), and this must extend towards all that we experience.
No distinction is ultimately made, here, between human and non-human beings, each a fundamental
facet of our experienced being, and hence, our realized self. It should be noted that
this is not a "dependence" in the sense of requiring the ecosystem for our physical survival
(which is no doubt true), but rather a realization of our self in the widest sense within
the context of an ecosystem, and Nature in general.
This is, strictly speaking, an act of freedom, an embracing of our own identity.
Therefore, far from calling for a "duty based" ethics, based on notions of what we
ought to do, Naess calls for an environmental ethic based upon what he refers to as
"beautiful acts," moral acts which stem from our deepest inclination. One finds his or
her own happiness in living, as we would say, sustainably. Living in an unsustainable
manner becomes a personal suffering: In shopping at Wal-mart, or Target, or in
buying Nike shoes, for instance, one may feel it as an affront to oneself, for one's self
is bound up directly in contexts of which the agony of exploited workers or of felled
forests and polluted streams is a fundamental constituent, even if one is not personally
impacted directly by the suffering. Conversely, it becomes obvious that an authentic ethics
calls for no sacrifices, only the joy and freedom of the experiencing subject which has recognized
its home as a fundamental part of what it truly is (a denial of which is a denial of self). This
leads Naess to posit, as far as influencing people toward concern for environmental
affairs: "we should work on their inclinations rather than their morality."
To be sure, guilt trips are counter-productive; if one doubts this, it should
be instructive to recall how often (or, rather, how rarely) one has, in his or her
own life, done something helpful for another out of a feeling of duty or obligation,
as opposed to doing the same because one simply found joy in doing so. The nature
of this joy is to be found in the nature of the self.