Toward a Transpersonal Ecology

by Warwick Fox

380 pages, paperback, SUNY Press, 1995, $27.95

Toward a Transpersonal Ecology argues for an approach to ecophilosophy based on identification rather than values. The approach is derived from deep ecology and is presented in the context of a comprehensive overview of the writings on deep ecology.

Praise for Toward a Transpersonal Ecology

"Toward a Transpersonal Ecology is a pioneering work that brings together two of the most important disciplines of our time, transpersonal psychology and ecology. Warwick Fox's wide reading, thoughtfulness, and subtle distinctions will give readers much to think about,"--Roger Walsh

"As a leading deep ecology scholar, Warwick Fox provides the most comprehensive and detailed examination of the development of philosophical deep ecology yet in print."--George Sessions

"The best and most comprehensive overview of deep ecology yet written. I urge environmental philosophers and everyone else with a concern for the relation of humans to the Earth to seek it out."--Alastair Gunn

"Ecology and spirituality are fundamentally connected, because deep ecological awareness, ultimately, is spiritual awareness. The common ground between deep ecology and transpersonal psychology arising from this connection is explored in scholarly fashion and with great clarity in this important book. Warwick Fox offers us not only some very original and provocative ideas, but also an almost encyclopedic overview of the entire field. Toward a Transpersonal Ecology is essential reading for everyone seriously interested in the philosophical foundations of the emerging new paradigm."--Fritjof Capra

"This is the best book on deep ecology that I've come across in years. Anyone interested in the relationship of human beings to the environment ought to read this book."--Paul R. Ehrlich

"Toward a Transpersonal Ecology is essential reading for teachers, scholars, and all people concerned with the fate of the earth. It is an excellent book that will be used as a benchmark for all discussions of environmental philosophy in the 1990s."--Bill Devall

Quotes from Toward a Transpersonal Ecology

"The fact that the term transpersonal derives from the recent work in psychology is appropriate since Naess's philosophical sense of deep ecology obviously refers to a psychologically based approach to the question of our relationship with the rest of nature as opposed to an axiologically based (i.e., a value theory based) approach."

"There are two main points that should immediately be noted in connection with my introduction of the term transpersonal. First, there is one point that I want to make absolutely clear in regard to the prefix trans-. It is possible that some people who hear the term transpersonal ecology for the first time but who are aware neither of the context (and, hence, the intended meaning) of this term as discussed herein nor of the emerging field of transpersonal psychology might interpret the prefix trans- in transpersonal to mean 'across,' as in transcontinental. Thus, transpersonal might be taken to suggest something like 'across persons,' and this in turn could suggest that transpersonal ecology refers in some way to an anthropocentric approach to ecology! However, the prefix trans- also means, interalia, 'beyond,' as in transcend; 'changing thoroughly,' as in transfigure, transform, or transliterate; and 'transcending,' as in transubstantiation. And it is these meanings of extending 'beyond,' 'changing thoroughly,' and 'transcending' one's egoic, biographical, or personal sense of self that the originations of the term transpersonal (i.e., Stanislav Grof, Abraham Maslow, and Anthony Sutich), and others influenced by them, have always intended by this term. In general, the most convenient way of capturing these senses of trans- is simply to employ the word beyond. Thus, Maslow employs this word when he speaks of transpersonal as meaning 'beyond individuality, beyond the development of the individual person into something which is more inclusive than the individual person'; Roger Wash and Frances Vaughan use it in the two-word definition of 'transpersonal' that constitutes the main title of their excellent collection of reading in transpersonal psychology: Beyond Ego" Transpersonal Dimensions in Psychology; and I use this word when I employ the term transpersonal . . . to describe 'a sense of self that extends beyond one's egoic, biographical, or personal sense of self.' "

"How does one realize, in a this-worldly sense, as expansive a sense of self as possible? The transpersonal ecology answer is: through the process of identification. As Naess says: "The ecological self of a person is that with which this person identifies. This key sentence (rather than definition) about the self, shifts the burden of clarification from the term 'self' to that of 'identification,' or rather 'process of identification.' ' How, then does one proceed in realizing a way of being that sustains the widest and deepest possible identification? I suggest that there are three general kinds of bases for the experience of commonality that we refer to as identification; three general kinds of ways in which we may come to identify more widely and deeply. I refer to these bases of identification as personal, ontological, and cosmological."

"Having said this, it must immediately be noted that, as with ontologically based identification, the fact that cosmologically based identification tends to be more impartial than personally based identification does not mean that it need be any less deeply felt. Consider the Californian poet Robinson Jeffers! For Jeffers, 'This whole is in all its parts so beautiful, and is felt by me to be so intensely in earnest, that I am compelled to love it.' Although Jeffers may represent a relatively extreme exemplar of cosmologically based identification, it should nevertheless be clear that this form of identification issues at least--perhaps even primarily?--in an orientation of steadfast (as opposed to fair-weather) friendliness. Steadfast friendliness manifests itself in terms of a clear and steady expression of positive interest, liking, warmth, goodwill, and trust; a steady predisposition to help or support; and, in the context of these attributes, a willingness to be firm and to criticize constructively where appropriate. Indeed, if a particular entity or life form imposes itself unduly upon other entities or life forms, an impartially based sense of identification may lead one to feel that one has no real choice but to oppose--even, in extreme cases, to terminate the existence of--the destructive or oppressive entity or life form. Even here, however, an impartially based sense of identification leads one to oppose destructive or oppressive entities or life forms in as educative, least disruptive, and least vindictive a way as possible.

"Over time, steadfast friendliness often comes to be experienced by the recipient as a deep form of love precisely because it does not cling or cloy but rather gives the recipient 'room to move,' room to be themselves. In the context of this book, it may be of particular interest to add here that Arne Naess seems to me to be an exemplar of steadfast friendliness-- and of course I am not only talking here about his relationship with me over the years, but of his orientation toward the world in general. It is also interesting to note that Naess has himself written a paper on the importance of the concept of friendship in Spinoza's thinking in which he notes that 'the intellectual sobriety of Spinoza favours friendship rather than worship' and that, for Spinoza, 'friendship is the basic social relation' between members of a free society. Naess concludes this paper by explicitly linking the theme of friendship in Spinoza's philosophy with the 'the ecological concept of symbiosis as opposed to cutthroat competition.' 'Both in Spinoza and in the thinking of the field ecologist,' says Naess, 'there is respect for an extreme diversity of beings capable of living together in an intricate web of relations.' "

Table of Contents of Toward a Transpersonal Ecology

1. Moving Away from Human-Centeredness: From Silent Spring to Deep Ecology
2. Deep Ecology: A Focus within Ecophilosophy--and Beyond
3. Why So Influential?
4. Arne Naess and the Meanings of Deep Ecology
5. The Problem with the Label Deep Ecology
6. The Most Widely Recognized Approaches to Ecophilosophy
7. Transpersonal Ecology as a Distinctive Approach to Ecophilosophy
8. Transpersonal Ecology and the Varieties of Identification

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