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egalitarianism in principle, most of them find ways of producing a
hierarchy of value so as to cope with clashes of interest between species
(for instance). Indeed, it will be remembered that biospherical egalitar-
ians often organize these hierarchies around the datum of complexity 
one of the features that distinguishes first from second nature in
Bookchin s description. In this respect Bookchin and his opponents
may not be so far apart.
48 Green Political Thought
What finally sets them apart, though, and what makes it hard to
regard social ecology as part of a radical ecocentric programme (this is
not, of course, to deny its radicalism in its own terms) is Bookchin s
view that humanity represents a qualitative improvement so far as nat-
ural evolution is concerned.  Selfhood, consciousness, and the bases for
freedom are only dimly visible (if at all) in  first nature (Bookchin,
1989, p. 201). Potentially, on the other hand,
an emancipated humanity will become the voice, indeed the expres-
sion, of a natural evolution rendered self-conscious, caring and
sympathetic to the pain, suffering and incoherent aspects of an
evolution left to its own, often wayward, unfolding. Nature, due to
human rational intervention, will thence acquire the intentionality,
power of developing more complex life-forms, and capacity to
differentiate itself.
(Bookchin, 1989, p. 203)
Robyn Eckersley has referred to this as Bookchin s  evolutionary
stewardship thesis (Eckersley, 1992, p. 154) and she suggests two
reasons why this thesis offends ecocentric sensibilities. First, the very
idea that nature s unfolding might be  wayward does not square with
the general ecocentric injunction to  allow all beings (human and non-
human) to unfold in their own way (Eckersley, 1992, p. 156); and the
second (connected) reason is that ecocentrics do not purport to know
what the direction of evolution is:
From an ecocentric perspective, it is both arrogant and self serving
to make, as Bookchin does, the unverifiable claim that first nature is
striving to achieve something (namely, greater subjectivity, aware-
ness, or  selfhood ) that  just happens to have reached its most
developed form in us  second nature.
(Eckersley, 1992, p. 156)
Although Eckersley may overstate somewhat the teleological dimen-
sion of Bookchin s thought, it is hard to deny the sense of  steering
that he gives to humanity s relationship with non-human nature  not
that any of this bothers Bookchin too much:  [I]f this [social ecology]
be humanism  more precisely ecological humanism, he writes,  the
current crop of antihumanists and misanthropes are welcome to make
the most of it (Bookchin, 1989, p. 36).
Bookchin aside (if that does not seem too peremptory for a per-
son who has had such a profound influence on North American
Philosophical foundations 49
environmentalism; Bookchin, 1995; Light, 1998), it would be a mistake
to think that deep ecology necessarily leads to Earth First!-type activ-
ities and so to reject it on that basis. Chris Reed s assertion (in an article
referred to above) that  Descent into irrationality has badly damaged
American feminism , and that  The present uproar among environ-
mentalists seems only too likely to repeat the feminists mistake (Reed,
1988, p. 21) is not only misguidedly offensive to radical feminism but
is also a one-sided reading of the implications of deep ecology. For
example, shifting the onus of justification from those who would
preserve the non-human world to those who would intervene in it
(presented above as implied by deep ecology) hardly justifies the kind
of disciplinary violence practised by some members of Earth First! 
and nor need it necessarily lead to anti-humanism and misanthropism,
despite what Bookchin, and Bramwell, might say (1994, p. 161).
Hybridity
Both the  code of conduct and  state of being approaches to going
beyond anthropocentrism have their problems. Theorists in the former
camp have difficulty with deciding just where to draw the boundary of
moral concern, and with articulating a convincing intrinsic value case
for  nature as well as for individual parts of it. State of being theorists,
meanwhile, are confronted with the challenge of persuading people to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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