دانلود رایگان ترجمه مقاله پست مدرنیسم، بوم شناسی عمیق و ایده درنده خویی – Philpapers 2007

پست مدرنیزم، بوم شناختی عمیق و ایده وحشی بودن: برخی از مشکلات با در مورد فرمول های Drenthen

Postmodernism, deep ecology and the idea of wildness: Some problems with Drenthen’s formulations

ABSTRACT 

Martin Drenthen has made a strong case for his interpretation of Nietzsche’s potential contribution to environmental ethics but he does not do justice to deep ecology. The problematic he identifies is essentially the difficulty of asserting a meaningful basis for action while being aware of the contingency of all meanings. This tension can be seen running through deep ecology, at least as described by its main theorist, Arne Naess, who is not the moral realist that Drenthen would have him. Key differences do emerge as Drenthen develops his idea of “Wildness” or nature as “other,” which can only partially support caring action towards nature. Drenthen is ambivalent, even hostile, to a context of experienced reality – central to Naess’s ecosophy. This causes him to fall into what is ultimately a fairly traditional nature versus culture distinction and so maintain the existential gulf between humans and nature.

Aseries of articles in Environmental Ethics has explored the role that Nietzsche might play in environmental philosophy. Hallman (1991) began by describing Nietzsche as a kind of proto-deep ecologist. This was heavily criticized by Acampora (1994) for largely ignoring the “high Humanism” of Nietzsche. Acampora’s conclusion was that while Nietzsche’s criticisms of society could be useful, nothing positive could be gained from him by environmentalists. Drenthen (1999) disagreed with this evaluation and presented his case for the potential contribution of Nietzsche’s paradoxical morality to environmental philosophy; although he did agree with Acampora that Nietzsche could not be used to support deep ecology. Drenthen seems to have made a strong case for his interpretation of Nietzsche,1 but he does not do justice to deep ecology. The problematic he identifies is essentially the difficulty of asserting a meaningful basis for action while being aware of the contingency of all meanings. This tension can be seen running through deep ecology, at least as described by its main theorist, Arne Naess, who is not the moral realist that Drenthen would have him. Key differences do emerge as Drenthen develops his idea of “wildness” or nature as “other,” which can only partially support caring action towards nature. Drenthen is ambivalent, even hostile, to a context of experienced reality – central to deep ecology. This causes him to fall into what is ultimately a fairly traditional nature versus culture distinction and so maintain the existential gulf between humans and nature. Drenthen describes “wildness” as what he calls a “Critical border concept” (2005) in the realm of General Ethics. Using Nietzsche, he argues that debates within Environmental Ethics reflect a crisis within moral theory itself. The problem is in needing a concept of nature (in the broadest sense of “reality”) to ground morality while being aware of the impossibility of acquiring a definitive version of what nature is. Nietzsche exposes the groundlessness of the moral theories of his day while nevertheless offering his own account of reality in the form of his “will to power.” Drenthen interprets this as a paradox of which Nietzsche was aware and maintained as an unavoidable tension running through his thinking. We have no choice but to base our morals on our accounts of nature and we now know these to be thoroughly contingent. In the area of environmental ethics, this is demonstrated by the opposition between “relativistic constructivism and moralistic value realism” (Drenthen 1999, 175). The first is exemplified by postmodern environmental ethics and authors like Max Oelschlaeger (1995; 1991) and William Cronon (1996). For them, all conceptions of nature are always contingent social constructions and, because a conception of nature makes an ontological claim about reality, it necessarily suppresses other interpretations. The second “traditional” approach assumes that it should be possible “to conceive of nature in a non-domesticating way”(Drenthen 1999, 166) and includes all anthropocentric, weak anthropocentric, non anthropocentric, and ecocentric positions. The many differences between these positions all have in common the assumption that nature can speak to us in its own terms. The fundamental difference makes fruitful discussion between these two perspectives more or less impossible.

پست مدرنیزم، بوم شناختی عمیق و ایده وحشی بودن: برخی از مشکلات با در مورد فرمول های Drenthen

Postmodernism, deep ecology and the idea of wildness: Some problems with Drenthen’s formulations