In the first part of this paper I survey some of the main arguments used by environmental philosophers since the 1970s in their attempts to formulate an ecological ethics grounded in a nonanthropocentric perspective. This means we begin from the standpoint of the non-human creatures, organisms, objects of the natural world (animals, plants, soils, rocks, waters, air). A crucial notion is that of the “intrinsic value” of natural organisms and objects: intrinsic value can mean something like Kant’s notion of being an end-inoneself, but here we must extend beyond the limits imposed by the term “rational” in Kant’s ethical imperative that we regard other rational beings as ends-in-themselves and not as means-to-an-end or use-objects of humans. A key issue arises: must the tree have its own intrinsic value, and not one “given” it by humans—must it perhaps possess a sort of “subjectivity"—in order to warrant “moral considerability”? Another problem is that of distributing intrinsic value too broadly on the one hand—is it not “ethical” for me to killa mosquito that is sucking my blood, or to kill even plants in order to eat them?—while on the other hand not distributing it broadly enough to encompass that which is finally at stake: entire species (or the entire earth) rather than individuals. That is, if the value or “interest” of the individual resides in serving the species or ecosystem, how would we define the interest or intrinsic value of an entire species (genus, planet)? In the second part of the paper I argue that to have a clear theoretical framework (or set of ethical principles) is, contrary to the claim of environmental pragmatists, itself the most fundamental sort of praxis: it is vital that we have thought through these issues and come to a certain understanding, for this will inevitably engage us in practical action.

In this post-industrial age the move “back to nature” need not be overly romantic in the sense of rejecting either all machines or all other people. If like Thoreau we want to live in an isolated cabin in the woods then it will be much more “natural” (as human beings) to live with our families and in a community of like-minded people; we can also hang onto our computers, TVs, and even our cars without abandoning ourselves to mindless consumerism. This is the notion of “simplicity with complexity”: to simplify our lives (following Thoreau’s famous admonition to “Simplify! Simplify! Simplify!”) within a complex human social. network which, extended further, includes the ecosystem in which our community is situated. This may look like a return to the traditional life of people in the past, especially in smaller villages and countryside areas. But the argument here, presented through a brief reading of several recently-published books, is that this is also a necessary direction for us to move in now, at the beginning of the 21th century, in our post-industrial, postcolonial, postmodernist societies filled with industrial and technological waste, corporate greed and corruption, blind consumerism, social and familial fragmentation, individual loneliness, confusion and despair. The return to lives of “complex simplicity,” where we need not sacrifice all of our high-tech advancements but rather need to use them wisely, and where the focus is on human intimacy within the family and community, is also the return to a more highly developed ecological (supra-individual, ultimately supra-anthropocentric) awareness.

The human brain is still rather primitive inasmuch as it tends to be much more deeply impressed by concrete perceptions (seeing a man pointing a gun) than by abstract concepts (global warming) that can only be expressed in the mathematical terms of the physical or social sciences. Ecologists then face the problem of making clear to people the immediacy and seriousness of the threat of the numerous ecological dangers we face, dangers for which the physical evidence becomes clearer every day, just as their mathematical probability becomes is ever more precisely calculated. Literary texts with a value finally more social than aesthetic are now one of the best means of making us feel concretely and individually the meaning and potential impact of these “abstractions”: That is, these texts can “refine the ecological discourse” by making that which once seemed physically and mathematically abstract become experientially particular and concrete.

The Western humanism that came out of a classical Greek philosophical tradition became involved with imperialist colonial expansionism when it emerged in more intense form as Renaissance humanism and 17th-century Cartesian rationalism. Descartes posits a split between the rational human consciousness and objective nature; as corollary we have the separation between a rational, subjective, “divine” humankind and the rest of nature, which is there as an object to be colonized, controlled, manipulated, used by man. Certain dominant threads of our current, postmodernist and “globalizing” late-capitalist thinking further reinforce the techno-scientific understanding of human beings in relation to nature—moving us beyond subjectivity and beyond humanism on the way to becoming mindless cyborgs, cyberspace-linked man-machines, money-making and nature-exploiting machines. But this move beyond (neo)classical humanism is not what we need. Rather we need what has been called “green humanism”: we must maintain our sense of humanity or human subjectivity, human creaturehood, while dwelling intersubjectively and non-anthropocentrically with all other organisms and ecosystems on earth. This involves adopting (or returning to) the sort of understanding Merleau-Ponty speaks of: an awareness that we are through our bodies intimately intertwined with, infolded within the world, which we can experience only from the particular perspective of this bodily involvement. We must now become embodied human citizens of the biosphere, whose minds are part of the world and intertwined in participation with its myriad lives and energies.

in the halls of power, the social and ecological crises of globalisation are mystified by neo-liberal rhetoric; displacing the language of productivist economics is therefore an eco-political act. One strategy for challenging this hegemony exists in opening up a lifeaffirming discourse around reproductive values—a move that destabilises both neo-liberal and socialist productivism, and destabilises the conventional divide between North and South. To articulate this position, I introduce the notion of “meta-industrial labour” for describing trans-cultural, politically silenced groupings whose work negotiates the socially constructed margins of “humanity” and “nature.” In contesting globalisation, and seeking alternatives to it, we can be guided by the model of meta-industrial labour, which “embodies” grassroots democracy and local sustainability. To our search for healing, this usually unspoken labouring class brings practical “holding” skills, grounded knowledges, and a precautionary ethic.

By treating society and the environment as objects of manipulation and exploitation, the human community has caused unprecedented world wide environmental degradation. Behaviors associated with manipulation and exploitation of the natural world can be traced to a form of modern consciousness that perceives the individual to be separate and disconnected from others and the environment. This paper discusses the potential of art educators to foster a redefinition of the “sense of self,” whereby an individual may develop an ecological consciousness informed by a new perception of the world, a new visual awareness of the interconnectedness and interdependence that exists among all beings and things. The fostering of ecological consciousness is discussed in terms of a tripartite model of the self and the holistic ways of thinking which define ecological awareness. Interdisciplinary curriculum strategies for art educators may be developed by focusing upon integrating the three domains of understanding, locating commonality and promoting identification with nature. Included in this discussion is an examination of several traditional and contemporary works of visual art, including the installation work of Sally Packard. The paper concludes with a discussion of dominant trends in the history of art education, the process of information exchange within the field, and a call for the development of an ecological vision.

The genre of nature writing in effect begins in the 18th-century with writers like Gilbert White, for whom nature as nature—not as a symbol of something beyond it—is placed in the foreground, and for whom this nature is taken as a whole of which humans are just one part. The revolutionary aspects of this new “literary” approach to nature have a certain connection to the revolutionary sociopoliti- cal changes taking place in Europe and North America in the late 18" century (“Romantic” period). But the purest, most direct de- scription of nature must inevitably be a “scientific” description, one which is essentially non-fictional—as in White or Thoreau. This pre- sents a kind of dilemma: on the one hand “nature writing” cannot be as scientific as science itself, since we are still concerned here with a sort of concrete narrative prose (the narrator as naturalist, observer of nature) and not with the abstractions of biology, chemistry or physics; on the other hand such writing cannot be mythic, metaphorical or symbolic in the manner of (traditional, modernist and postmodernist) narrative “fiction,” since after all it is fundamentally “non-fictional.” The argument set forth here is that nature writing must then steer a kind of middle course between these two alternatives. Therefore this genre needs to be more clearly situated in relation to postmodern discussions of “grand narratives” (Lyotard)—if even history and science are narratives then there is no “absolute truth”—and of the discontinuous stages of a European history (Foucault in The Order of Things) which moved from a pre-1600s “world of resemblances” (“signs”) to a post-1600s Galilean world of “analogy” and “representation.”

Deep ecologists E.F. Schumacher and Arne Naess (among others) believe that living a simple lifestyle helps to reduce the consumption of natural resources, and to protect nature and wildlife. For example, the simple life of aborigines around the world contributes to sustaining the ecosystems of their respective communities. The way of life of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples—their hunting, farming, housing, logging, and making of clothing—has been studied in certain detail; however, little scholarly attention has been devoted to describing how their lifestyles protect the natural environment. This paper explores these ecological implications. It argues that the way of life of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples is ecologically sound, and that a better understanding of it can give us valuable insight into problems associated with consumerist cultures and lifestyles. This understanding is necessary if we want to construct an ecologically sustainable future for both humans and nonhumans.

Here, by looking at the poetry of three Native American woman poets, I contrast a Eurocentric view of the world with the less egocentric and more ecocentric view of native peoples everywhere. The Eurocentric view which came to America with the white settlers is based on Judaeo-Christian hierarchical thinking—God on top, nature on the bottom, the human soul striving away from nature and toward the divine—and the Greek philosophical distinction between subject (soul, mind, ego) and object (body, material world). In the ecocentric worldview of native peoples the subject is in a sense decentered: the focus is on intersubjective (interpersonal) relationships and on the relationship of individual to the larger natural environment of which she is an integral part. The poetry of these three Native American women in various ways expresses the disruptions of the life and worldview of their culture(s), and the struggle to overcome this disruption. Rose deals more directly with the political and military history of the natives’ displacement by white Americans, which is in fact part of the larger colonialist-imperialist devastation of the colonized (human) “environment”; Harjo and Hogan focus on the traditional stories and myths of their culture(s), showing the power of an aboriginal mythic-ecocentric understanding of the human-natural world to “heal the wounds” of cultural disruption and fragmentation, and to redress this ecological “imbalance.” This strategy of returning to ecocentric roots can be seen as a vital part of the larger drama of postcolonialism as an overcoming of colonialist dualities: in Conley’s poststructuralist view subjectivity becomes “geographical and ecological,” which corresponds to native peoples’ attachment to a “situated place” and sense of being positioned “in the world.”

Nature’s ability to support life and social development, as well as to restore itself, has turned out to be limited. Globalized capitalism has become an increasingly destructive force for the biosphere and thus for mankind. Using many technologies that destroy ecosystems, we have not yet found something to replace the regulating mechanisms of the biosphere. Thus the conservation of pristine environments takes on a very special significance. The Arctic and Antarctic are the last pristine, ecologically “clean” areas of the planet; they are therefore the earth’s most sensitive ecosystems. Thus not only does preserving the natural environment of the Arctic mean also preserving the native cultures which so intimately depend upon it; we must think of the Arctic as a vital ecological reserve for the present and future generations of all peoples on this steadily deteriorating planet. The Arctic’s pristine environment is in effect the common heritage of mankind, and therefore its preservation is the common concern of mankind.