Plumwood, Val 1993
Feminism and the Mastery of Nature,
Routledge, London ISBN 0-415-06810-X

DIFFERENCE AND DEEP ECOLOGY from
Plumwood, Val 1993
Feminism and the Mastery of Nature,

Val Plumwood is a forest activist, forest dweller, bushwalker, crocodile survivor, and wombat
mother. (The Plumwood is a beautiful local rainforest tree.) She is part of a Green women's
network in Canberra. Her book on ecofeminism, Gender, Ecology, and Identity, is to be
published by Routledge in their feminist series, 'Opening Out."

Mainstream environmental philosophy is problematic not just because of restriction in ethics but also because of restriction to
ethics. Most mainstream philosophers continue to view environmental philosophy as primarily concerned with an extension of
existing ethical frame- works. For example, instrumentalism is viewed as a problem in ethics, and its solution seen as setting up a
theory of intrinsic value. But this neglects the key further aspects we have been examining, of dualism and the account of the self
and of human identity as hyperseparated from nature, the connection between this and the instrumental view of nature, as well as
the broader historical and political aspects of the critique of dualism and instrumentalism. As an alternative to this impoverished
conception, deep ecology has had some success in broade- ning the conception of the problem to include issues concerning the
human self and questions of human identity and discontinuity from nature. Feminist theory has revealed many of the buried links
between conceptions of ethics and conceptions of selfhood, and thus has a very useful contribution to make to the discussion of
both these approaches. In many crucial respects deep ecology does not present a very thoroughgoing alternative to extensions
of mainstream ethics. In its dominant forms deep ecology continues to suffer from problems associated with unresolved
human/nature dualism and other dualisms. If mainstream environmental ethics suffers from the kind of distor- tions of difference
which attend the problematic of individualism and rational egoism, deep ecology tends to suffer from the obverse kind of
distortion of difference associated with incorporation. As we saw in the last chapter, major forms of deep ecology fail to
acknowledge difference and continue to conceive nature in ways which reflect dualism and, in some cases, male domination
(Cheney 1987; 1989; Kheel 1990; Plumwood 1991a). Although deep ecology contrasts with the mainstream in emphasis- ing
connections with the self and the continuity between humans and nature there remain severe tensions between some forms of
deep ecology and feminist perspectives. These forms have not satisfactorily identified the key elements in the traditional
framework, or noted their connections with rationalism and the master identity. As a result they fail to reject adequately
rationalist assumptions, and indeed often provide their own versions of rationalist accounts of self, universalisa- tion and the
discarding of particular connections. The analysis of human/nature and other dualisms I have presented here has stressed the
importance of affirming both difference and continuity, and of maintaining the balance between them. Respect for others involves
acknowledging their distinctness and difference, and not trying to reduce or assimilate them to the human sphere. We need to
acknowledge difference as well as continuity to overcome dualism and to establish non-instrumentalising relationships with
nature, where both connection and otherness are the basis of interaction. The failure to affirm difference is characteristic of the
colonising self which denies the other through the attempt to incorporate it into the empire of the self, and which is unable to
experience sameness without erasing difference. Major forms of deep ecology have tended to focus exclusively on identification,
interconnectedness, sameness and the overcoming of separation, treating nature as a dimension of Self, for example, in the
concept of self-realisation and in the extension of ego psychology to nature. Foundational deep ecologist Arne Naess, whose
concept of self- realisation, as I will argue later, also has elements of the relational self, urges a way of thinking and feeling which
'corresponds to that of the enlightened, or yogi, who sees "the same" '; Naess quotes the Bhagavadgita:

He whose self is harmonised by yoga seeth the Self abiding in all beings and all beings in Self; everywhere he sees the same.
(Naess 1985: 260)

Since ethics is normally viewed as concerned with the relation of self to other, Naess's substitution of the 'maxim of
"self-realisation" ' for an account of ethical relations to nature is a symptom of the death of the other in the theoretical framework
of deep ecology.' Even though 'the self' in such an account is not to be interpreted as the 'egoic or biographical self' or 'the
personal ego', such a framework must lose the possibility of providing a dynamic or interactive account, which requires
diversified elements. The loss by the account of the 'essential tension between self and other' appears in the fact that the theory
does not see itself as concerned with relations between diverse interacting elements, self and other, humans and nature, but
basically only with one element, the self. In terms of a role in the theory, nature as other is erased, and in Warwick Fox's
account seems to disappear entirely as a focus of concern:

the appropriate framework of discourse for describing and present- ing deep ecology is not one that is fundamentally to do with
the value of the non-human world ... but rather one that is fundamentally to do with the nature and possibilities of the Self, or,
we might say, the question of who we are, can become, and should become in the larger scheme of things. (Fox 1986: 85)

The proper study of the deep ecologist, it seems, is Tautology', and the other is of concern for what it reflects back about the
self; the other is made an 'instrument of self-definition' (Kheel 1990: 136). The proper comparison for such an account of the
liberation of nature is not with a theory of opposition to sexism that is also concerned with the behaviour and interests of men, as
Fox claims in response to criticism of this self- preoccupation (Fox 1990: 242), but with one that sees it as 'fundamentally'
concerned only with the behaviour and interests of men. It is ironic that a position clai ' ming to be anti-anthropocentric should
thus aim to reduce questions of the care and significance of nature to questions of the realisation of the human self (or Self). The
denial of difference is also reflected in the use by some deep ecologists of a 'transpersonal' version of ego psychology, in which
the self as isolated subject incorporates or internalises outside objects in nature, assimilating them to self (or Self). Hidden at the
foot of the tree of transpersonal psychology lie the liberal-individualist roots of humanistic psychology.-' As Fox explains,
transpersonal psychology arose from humanistic ego psychology through Sutich's conviction that the personal ego was too
small, was 'no longer comprehensive enough' (Fox 1990: 293). The'big "Self" ' was the answer. But on an interactive account,
the loss of the essential tension between different and alike is characteristic of domination and instrumentalisation, which involves
the erasure of the other as an external limit and its reappearance as a projection of self (Benjamin 1988: 53, 73). In the
domination frame- work, the entire dynamic of interaction takes place within the self, rather than between the self and the
external other. The framework on which deep ecology draws here represents such a psychology of incorporation, in which 'our
sense of self can expand to include aspects of both the mind and the world that we usually regard as "other" ' (Fox 1990: 299).
Even if the direction of travel is reversed so as to absorb self in world rather than world in self, the result is still not a framework
which allows for the tension of sameness and difference or for the other to play an active role in the creation of self in discovery
and interaction with the world; rather it is one that, like ego psychology itself, conceives the self as a closed system. As
Benjamin says of ego psychology:

Within this closed system, the ego invests objects with his desire and takes in these objects to further his autonomy from them.
This conception of the individual cannot explain the confrontation with an independent other as a real condition of development
and change. It does not comprehend the simultaneous process of transforming and being transformed by the other. (Benjamin
1988: 49)

These problems over difference emerge especially in deep ecological accounts of separation, the self and the chameleon
term'identification'. Deep ecology locates the key problem area in human-nature relations in the separation of humans and
nature, and it provides a solution for this in terms of the 'identification' of self with nature. 'Identification' is usually left deliberately
vague, and corresponding accounts of identification and of self are various and shifting, and not always compatible.' There seem
to be at least three different accounts of self involved - indistinguishability, expansion of self, and transcendence of self - and
practitioners appear to feel free to move among them. Much of the appeal of deep ecology rests on the failure to distinguish
between them. As I shall show, all are unsatisfactory, both from a feminist perspective and from that of obtaining a satisfactory
environmental philosophy.

THE INDISTINGUISHABILITY ACCOUNT

The indistinguishability account rejects boundaries between self and nature. The universe is said to be a seamless whole, and
according to Fox (1984: 7), the central intuition of deep ecology is that'We can make no firm ontological divide in the field of
existence ... there is no bifurcation in reality between the human and non-human realms ... to the extent that we perceive
boundaries., we fall short of deep ecological consciousness'. This seems like a firm rejection of human/nature dualism and
hyperseparation, but much more is involved here than the rejection of radical exclusion between humans and nature. Leading
deep ecologists go on to deny separation entirely, and to replace the human-in-environment image by a holistic or Gestalt view
which 'dissolves not only the human-in-environment concept, but every compact-thing-in- milieu concept' - except when they
are talking at a superficial level of communication (Fox 1984: 1). These deep ecologists insist on a cos- mology of 'unbroken
wholeness which denies the classical idea of the analysability of the world into separately and independently existing parts'
(Naess 1973: 96). They are strongly attracted to a variety of mystical traditions and to the Perennial Philosophy, where the self
is merged with the other -'the other is none other than yourself'. As John Seed puts it: 'I am protecting the rainforest' develops
into 'I am part of the rainforest protecting myself. I am that part of the rainforest recently emerged into thinking' (Seed et al.
1988: 36). According to Joanna Macy: 'In the web of relationships ... there are no clear lines demarcating a separate,
continuous self'(Macy 1989: 205). Macy thinks that 'the notion of an abiding individual self ... is the foundational delusion of
human life' (1989: 207). There is 'no separate experiencer, no permanent self' (1989: 207). There are many problems here. It is
not merely that the dissolution of boundaries of which deep ecologists speak stands in need of much more clarification; it is also
that it does the wrong thing. The real basis of hyperseparation lies in the concept of an authentic human being, and in what is
taken to be valuable in human character, society and culture, as exclusive of what is taken to be natural. Instead of healing this
dualism, deep ecology proposes a 'unifying process', a metaphysics which insists that everything is really part of,
indistinguishable from, everything else. This is not only to employ overly powerful tools, but ones that do the wrong job, for the
origins of the particular opposition involved in human/nature dualism remain unaddressed and unanalysed. This overreaction
results from the confusion of separation and hyperseparation, radical exclusion and non-identity. The confusion is clear in Fox,
who proceeds from the ambiguous claim that there is no 'bifurcation in reality between the human and non-human realms' (which
could be taken as a rejection of human discontinuity from nature) immediately to the conclusion that what is needed is that we
embrace an indistinguishability metaphysics of unbroken wholeness in the whole of reality. But the problem must be addressed
in terms of this specific dualism and its connections. Instead this form of deep ecology proposes the obliteration of distinction. It
is unclear how such a solution to removing human/nature dualism, by obliterating any human/nature distinction and dissolving self
boundaries, is supposed to provide the basis for an environmental ethic. The analysis of humans as metaphysically unified with
the cosmic whole will be equally true whatever relation humans stand in with nature - the situation of exploitation of nature
exemplifies such metaphysical unity equally as well as a conserver situation, and the human self is just as indistinguishable from
the bulldozer and Coca Cola bottle as the rocks or the rainforest. What John Seed seems to have in mind here is that once one
has realised that one is indistinguish- able from the rainforest, its needs will become one's own. But there is nothing to guarantee
this - one could equally well take one's own needs for its. And some pronouncements indicate clearly that this is what happens.
Thus John Seed's 'I remain in awe of the perennial power of humans joining together in worship of our Earth and the way that
the Earth always responds. Of course She hears! For She? It? (words fail), is us' (Seed 1991: 2). The question of just whose
response counts for both of us has important political implications. The problem points towards a general set of boundary
problems encountered by forms of deep ecology which dissolve or expand the self in this way. There is an arrogance in failing to
respect boundaries and to acknowledge difference which can amount to an imposition of self. Deep ecologists see themselves
as'empowered to act on behalf of other beings' by claims of merging (Macy 1989: 210). One may in certain situations claim
without arrogance to act in solidarity with or on behalf of another through one's own (always imperfect) understanding of that
other's situation, but one may not without arrogance assume that one is that other or knows that situation as does the other, that
the other is transparent and encompassable by self without residue. Acknowledg- ing the other's boundary and opacity of being
is part of respect for the other. It is the master consciousness which presumes to violate boundaries and claims to subsume,
penetrate and exhaust the other, and such treatment is a standard part of subordination; for example, of women, servants, the
colonised, animals. Similarly, respecting the needs of the other involves acknowledging the difference as well as the connection
between our needs. We need to recognise not only our human continuity with the natural world but also its distinctness and
independence from us and the distinctness of the needs of things in nature from ours. As Jean Grimshaw writes of a related
feminist account implying the indistinctness of persons (the acceptance of the loss of self boundaries as a feminine ideal):'

Certain forms of symbiosis or connection with others can lead to damaging failures of personal development ... because care for
others, understanding of them, are only possible if one can adequately distinguish oneself from others. If I see myself as indis-
tinct from you, or you as not having your own being that is not merged with mine, then I cannot preserve a real sense of your
well- being as opposed to mine. Care and understanding require the sort of distance that is needed in order not to see the other
as a projection of self, or self as a continuation of the other. (Grimshaw 1986: 182)

These points seem to me to apply as much to caring for other species and for the natural world as they do to caring for our own
species. But just as hyperseparation is confused with separation, so self/other merger is taken to be the only alternative to
egoistic accounts of the self as without essential connection to others or to nature. Fortunately, this is a false choice; it is neither
helpful nor necessary to opt for merger to realise an account of the ecological self as connected to nature in non- instrumental
ways.

THE EXPANDED SELF

In fairness to deep ecology, it should be noted that it often tends to vacillate between mystical indistinguishability and the other
accounts of self, especially between the merged self and the expanded Self. Vacillation occurs often by way of slipperiness as to
the meaning of the identification of self with other, a key notion in deep ecology. This slipperiness reflects the coniusion
previously noted between separation and hyperseparation, but also seems to reflect a desire to retain the mystical appeal of
indistinguishability while avoiding its many difficulties. Where 'identification' is used equivocally to mean both 'identity' and
something like 'sympathy' or 'empathy', identification with other beings leads to an expanded self which encompasses all those
we empathise with. According to Arne Naess, 'The self is as comprehensive as the totality of our identifications.... Our Self is
that with which we identify' (Naess 1985: 261). This larger self (or Self to Deep Ecologists) is something for which we should
strive'insofar as it is in our power to do so' (Fox 1986: 13-19). And according to Fox we should strive to make it as large as
possible. But this expanded Self is not the result of a critique of egoism; rather, it is an enlargement and an extension of egoism
(Cheney 1989). It does not question the structures of possessive egoism and self-interest; rather, it tries to allow for a wider set
of interests by an expansion of self. The motivation for the expansion of self is to allow for a wider set of concerns while
continuing to allow the self to operate on the fuel of self-interest (or Self-interest). This is apparent from the claim that 'in this
light ... ecological resistance is simply another name for self defence' (Fox 1986: 60). Fox quotes with approval John
Livingstone's statement, reminiscent of knightly vows: 'When I say that the fate of the sea turtle or the tiger or the gibbon is mine,
I mean it. All that is in my universe is not merely mine; it is me. And I shall defend myself. I shall defend myself not only against
overt aggression but also against gratuitous insult' (Fox 1986: 60). Joanna Macy also invokes the Self- interest model in an
expanded form, calling on us to be 'a little more enlightened about what our self-interest is' (1989: 210), while Arne Naess says:
'The requisite care flows naturally if the self is widened and deepened so that protection of free nature is felt and conceived of as
protection of our very selves' (Seed et ai. 1988: 29). The expanded Self version of deep ecology misconceives identification
(Blum 1980: 75) and arises from failure to question fully the problematic of rational egoism. It continues to subscribe to two of
the main tenets of the egoist framework - that human nature is egoistic and that the alternative to egoism is self-sacrif ice.' The
concept of Self-realisation also inherits the Nietzschean framework of egoist assumptions inscribed into humanistic psychology
and the human potentials movement (Grimshaw 1986: 146-53). Given these assumptions about egoism, the obvious way to
obtain some sort of human interest in defending nature is both through the expanded Self operating in the interests of nature, and
along the familiar lines of self-interest.' Once the assumptions of rational egoism are questioned it is unnecessary to expand the
Self in order to extend consideration to the other. The expanded Self strategy might initially seem to be just a dramatic but
harmless way of saying that humans empathise with nature. But the strategy of transferring the structures of egoism is both
unnecessary and highly problematic, for (as noted in Cheney 1989), the widening of interest is obtained at the expense of failing
to recognise unambiguously the difference and independence of the other. Others are recognised morally only to the extent that
they are incorporated into the self, and their difference denied. And the failure to critique rationalism, dualism and the structures
of egoism means a failure to draw connections with other contemporary critiques. One of the effects of the shift in focus towards
the critique of dualism and rationalism is to make the connections of the environmental critique with other critiques, especially
feminism, central rather than peripheral or accidental as they tend to be seen by deep ecologists. There are places, especially in
Arne Naess's more recent work, where the assumptions of egoism are called clearly into question and appeal is made to what
appears to be a version of the relational account of self (Naess 1988; 1990). If 'identification' is interpreted to mean simply I
empathy' or the assuming of the other's interests as one's own, as Naess suggests in his response to Reed (Naess 1990: 187),
then the self which identifies with the other will be a version of the relational self, albeit a version which is interpreted in an
unnecessarily holistic way as interest-identity, the assumption by the self of all the interests of the other. But the problem for
deep ecologists in treating the relational self as a further, fallback interpretation of the Self is that it makes the whole problematic
and cumbersome account of ecological selfhood as self-expansion and Self-realisation entirely unnecessary, along with the claim
that the Self is the totality of its identifications. And it is also inconsistent with these frameworks, for the relational self framework
must readmit the other, which the self-realisation strategy of deep ecology, especially with respect to the dissolution of ethics,
depended upon absorbing into Self.

THE TRANSCENDED OR TRANSPERSONAL SELF

To the extent that the expanded Self requires that we detach from the particular concerns of the I narrow, biographic self' (a
relinquishment which despite its natural difficulty we should, according to Fox, struggle to attain), expansion of self to Self also
tends to lead into the third position, and to become the transcendence or overcoming of self, the conquest of 'the personal ego'.
Thus Fox urges us to strive for impartial identification with all particulars, the cosmos, discarding our identifications with our own
particular concerns, personal emotions and attachments (Fox 1989: 12; 1990). Fox presents here the deep ecology version of
universalisation, with the familiar emphasis on the personal and the particular as corrupting and self-interested ('the cause of
possessiveness, war and ecological destruction' [1989: 121), and of particulars as inferior to the larger whole. This treatment of
particularity, the devaluation of personal relation- ships and of an identity tied to particular parts of the natural world as opposed
to an abstractly conceived whole, the cosmos, inherits the rationalistic preoccupation with the universal and its account of ethical
life as oppositional to the particular. Fox (1989: 12) reiterates (as if it were unproblematic) the view of particular attachments as
ethically suspect and opposed to genuine, impartial 'identification', which necessarily falls short with all particulars. The
framework of detach- ment, impartiality and impersonality which this form of deep ecology takes over so uncritically from
rationalist ethics and from some eastern thought, has been seen by many feminists as deeply problematic since, as Gilligan puts
it, 'it breeds moral blindness or indifference - a failure to discern or respond to need' (1987: 24). The analogy in human terms of
impersonal love of the cosmos is the view of morality as based on universal principles, or the impersonal and abstract 'love of
man' detached from any particular caring relationships. As Marti Kheel writes: 'This preference for identification with the larger
"whole" may reflect the familiar masculine urge to transcend the concrete world of particularity in preference for something more
enduring and abstract' (1990: 136). Because it carries this extra freight of devaluation of the area of particularity which has been
associated with women, 'transpersonal ecology' represents a significant increase in theoretical masculinisation over and above
the earlier forms of deep ecology.'o Because this 'transpersonal' identification is so indiscriminate and denying of particular
meanings, it cannot allow either for the deep and highly particularistic attachment to place which has motivated both the passion
of many modern conservationists and the love of many indigenous peoples for their land" (which much deep ecology in-
consistently tries to treat as exemplifying its modal). In addition to the love of the land as kin, noted earlier, particularistic care
emerges clearly in the statements of many indigenous peoples; for example, in the moving words of Cecilia Blacktooth
explaining why her people would not surrender their land:

You ask us to think what place we like next best to this place where we always lived. You see the graveyard there? There are
our fathers and our grandfathers. You see that Eagle-nest mountain and that Rabbit-hole mountain? When God made them, He
gave us this place. We have always been here. We do not care for any other place.... We have always lived here. We would
rather die here. Our fathers did. We cannot leave them. Our children were born here - how can we go away? If you give us the
best place in the world, it is not so good as this.... This is our home.... We cannot live anywhere else. We were born here and
our fathers are buried here.... We want this place and no other. (McLuhan 1973: 28)

These are very specific and local responsibilities of care. In inferiorising such particular, emotional and kinship-based
attachments, deep ecology gives us another variant on the superiority of reason and the inferiority of its contrasts, failing to grasp
yet again the role of reason and incompletely critiquing its influence. To obtain a more adequate account than that offered by
mainstream ethics and deep ecology it seems that we must move towards the sort of ethics much feminist theory has suggested,
which can allow for both continuity and differ- ence, and for ties to nature which are expressive of a rich variety of relationships
of care, kinship and friendship, rather than towards increasing abstraction and detachment from relationship.

THE ECOLOGICAL SELF AND THE VIRTUE OF ETHICS

A major motivation for the self-realisation account of deep ecology is that it supposedly makes it possible to dispense with
appeals to ethics and morality in ecological matters and to replace them with Self- interest, from which care flows naturally. On
this deep ecology account, ethics and morality are equated with duty, sermonising and self-sacrifice, in effect Kantian ethics,
which operates as a prohibition on desire (Naess 1988b; Macy 1989: 210). But this form of ethics is only one variety of ethical
account of relationship to nature, and there are other types of ethical experience and theory which do not take such a
prohibitory form. Virtue accounts, for example, are based on a set of commitments inherent in a particular type of identity, and
from them care does'flow naturally', that is, it expresses what that individual wants to do, as that particular sort of individual,
rather than what he or she is constrained to do through duty (Poole 1991: 55; Mclntyre 1982). Deep ecology often operates
with a covert version of a virtue-based account of the ecological self; thus Naess writes: 'We need not say that today man's
relation to the non-human world is immoral. It is enough to say that it lacks generosity, fortitude, and love'(Naess 1980: 323).
Were the use of such a virtue-based account to be explicitly admitted by deep ecology, it would be unnecessary to incur the
many problems of Self-interest, especially the denial of difference, in order to find a basis for consideration of others in nature
which flows from the self and is not based on prohibition. There are many good reasons to avoid building an account of
ecological morality on ethics in its usual rationalist conception, and to

-inspired move in the direction of an ethics of virtue . Rationalist ethical concepts are highly ethnocentric and cannot account
adequately

for the views of many indigenous peoples. The attempted application of these rationalist concepts to their moral life tends to lead
to the view that they lack a real ethical framework (Plumwood 1990). Alternative virtue-based concepts such as care, respect,
gratitude, sensitivity, reverence and friendship seem more applicable." Such concepts are more resistant to analysis along the
lines of reason/emotion dualism, and their construal along these lines has involved confusion and distortion (Blum 1980). They
are moral 'feel- ings' but they involve both cognitive elements, ethical elements and emotion in ways that do not seem separable.
These are more local concepts, which allow for particularity and do not require either assimilation or, mostly, reciprocity. They
are also concepts many feminist philosophers have argued should have a more significant place at the expense of abstract
concepts of mainstream western ethics such as rights and justice (Gilligan 1982; 1987; Benhabib 1987). The feminist suspicion
is that no abstract morality can be well founded that is not grounded in sound particularistic relations to others in personal life,
the area which brings together in concrete form the intellectual with the emotional, the sensuous and the bodily. Such an
approach treats ethical relations as an expression of identity; for example, maternal care as an expression of self-in-relationship
(Gilligan 1987: 24) rather than as the discarding, containment, or generalisation of a self viewed as self-interested and
non-relational, as in the conventional ethics of prohibition or universalisation. From this perspective, rationalist ethics provides an
account suited to governing the relations of egoist stranger to egoist stranger (Benhabib 1987; Poole 1991: 61), rather than one
suited to a richer and more particular form of relationship. If the grounding of virtue in the commitments of identity can provide
the terra firma of valuation which floundering ethical theories have long sought, it also provides its own problems. Identities
themselves must be subject to ethical assessment, and may be morally problematic (Poole 1991: 61); alongside the identity and
virtue of the mother must be placed that of the soldier. Indeed many moral issues are simply displaced on to issues of the
morality of being that kind of person, having that identity. But the argument I have developed in this book has shown that these
issues of human identity and relationship to nature are among the key issues which need to be addressed in any new approach
to nature. It is not, then, that we need to abandon ethical aspects of envir- onmental philosophy, or opt for an entirely contextual
ethics. 1 4 Rather environmental ethics needs a different and richer understanding of ethics, one which gives an important place
to the issues surrounding human identity, allows for ethical concepts owning to emotionality and particularity, and abandons the
exclusive focus on the universal and the abstract associated with egoism, and the dualistic and oppositional accounts of the
reason/emotion and universal/particular contrasts given in rationalist accounts of ethics. Deep ecology has some excuse for the
identification of ethics with those rationalist forms of it based on the concept of moral rules restraining the rational ego. For this
has been the conception cor- responding to dominant forms of modern market rationality and social life. Rationalism, the
prestige of reason and the kind of egoist and instrumental identity demanded by the public sphere have influenced not only the
concept of what morality is and of what is central to it, but also what count as moral concepts. Virtue-based concepts such as
friendship, love, respect, care, concern, gratitude, community and compassion are in conflict with the rational instrumentalism of
the public sphere, in which they have no place. As the main ethical concepts of society, they correspond to a different
conception of (social) moral life which is now, as Mclntyre argues, a residue. Excluded from the public, these concepts appear
today mainly in the practices and relation- ships of the private sphere, and of women especially as the representa- tives of that
sphere (Gilligan 1987: Poole 1991: 59). Motherhood and friendship represent perhaps the clearest examples of relational
selfhood, and an identity expressed in caring practices which treat the other non-instrumentally. As we saw in chapter 6, the
ecological self can be interpreted as a form of mutual selfhood in which the self makes essential connection to earth others, and
hence as a product of a certain sort of relational identity. In expressing that identity, the individual fulfils his or her own ends as
well as those of the other (one meaning of 'self-realisation'). He or she stands in particular relations, which may be those of care,
custodianship, friendship, or various diverse virtue concepts, to that other, who is treated as deserving of concern for its own
sake, and hence as intrinsically worthy or valuable. The relational self and intrinsic value are, therefore, essential theoretical
complements of a virtue account of ecological selfhood. I have tried to show how they can be accounted for in ways that enable
them to apply to the natural world without problematic assumptions about difference or egoism. On their own, however, they do
not delineate the precise content of that relationship, except as one of essential and non-instrumental concern, one of regard for
beings for their own sake. Since virtue accounts are based on a set of commitments inherent in a particular type of identity
(Mclntyre 1982; Poole 1991), an essential further ingredient in putting flesh on the bones of an alternative conception of care for
nature is that of human identity. I have stressed the origins and defects of the traditional western account which defined human
virtue in terms of the radical exclusion of the contrast class of nature, and which, as we have seen, treats the human relation to it
as one of domination and instrumentalism. Any new conception of human identity would need to make allowance for the variety
of human commitments to and human caring relations for the limitless variety of beings in nature, as well as providing for
alternative visions and ethical frameworks which may be highly regionalised and particularised. lt is unlikely that any single
conception would cover a ground of such diversity. However, if care and friendship are seen as generic or determinable
concepts, there is a range of determinate relationships and caring virtues on which such a practice of human virtue in relation to
nature might draw. Many of the more specific virtues which might be drawn upon for a new human identity in relation to nature
have already emerged from the debate. Some of them are the general virtues of friendship, such as openness to the other (Macy
1989: 211), generosity (Naess 1980), leaving space for the other, the ability to put oneself in the place of the other and to
respond to the other's needs. With nature, as with the human sphere, the capacity to care, to experience sympathy, under-
standing and sensitivity to the situation and fate of particular others is an index of our moral being. Other virtues would express
recognition of specific relations of dependency, responsibility, continuity and interconnection, as well as those of difference
(including human difference) and of respect for the independence and boundlessness of the other. An important ground of
certain caring relations would be a locally particularised identity involving commitment to a particular place and its non-human as
well as its human inhabitants. This is advocated by bioregionalism. But any attempt to rekindle such an alternative conception of
human identity must confront the loss in modern urban life of much of the basis of that identity, and the loss of the particular
practices of care through which commitment to particular places is expressed and fostered. For most people in industrial society
such virtues are, tragically, indeed a residue. This is not just a feature of modernity; it is a feature of the mobility and
instrumental- ism of market society. Although a virtue ethics is usually now exemplified in relations in the private sphere, a
private construction of ecological selfhood (for example, as personal 'care' or as the Self) does not go far enough. Rather such
an ethical commitment should be thought of as a form of resistance to dominant instrumental constructions of public and social
life. Any attempt to work towards a different conception of the human self and to construe its relations to nature along these
lines as non- instrumental will have to confront the problem of the dominance of instrumental relationships in the public sphere.
Although ecological selfhood has private aspects, it cannot satisfactorily be construed as a purely private practice, like personal
friendship or motherhood, which does not impinge on the public sphere, or challenge its dominant instrumentalism. Hence
ecological selfhood cannot be conceived in terms of the thunderclap of personal conversion to an after-hours religion of earth
worship, tacked on to a basically market-orientated conception of social and economic life. Nor, as Poole argues against
McIntyre, should it be tied to the attempt to resurrect past social forms. It must be seen rather as an attempt to obtain a new
human and a new social identity in relation to nature which challenges this dominant instrumental conception, and its associated
social relations. Hence it is a practice of opposition which parallels that of the attempt to retain and expand other
non-instrumental forms of social and economic life in the face of relentless instrumentalising pressure. Part of overcoming the
influence of dualism in ethics is the dissolu- tion of the false opposition rationalist ethics assumes between particularistic relations
of concern and more general moral concern. There can be opposition between particularity and generality of concern, as when
concern for particular kin is accompanied by exclusion of others from care or chauvinistic attitudes towards them (Blum 1980:
79, 80). But this does not happen automatically. Emphasis on oppo- sitional cases obscures the frequent and important
instances in which care for particular others is essential to a more generalised morality. Special relationships, which are treated
by universalising positions as at best morally irrelevant, and at worst a positive hindrance to the moral life, are thus mistreated.
For as Blum stresses (1980: 78- 83), special relationships inevitably must form the basis for much of our moral life and concern.
Special relationships with, care for or empathy with particular aspects of nature as experienced, rather than with nature as
abstraction, are essential to provide a depth of concern. Under appropriate conditions, experience of and care and
responsibility for particular animals, trees, rivers, places and ecosystems which are known well, are loved and are appropriately
connected to the self, enhance rather than hinder a wider, more generalised concern for the global environment. This helps to
explain why global moral concern should not be and does not have to be abandoned in such a framework. Certainly, we cannot
treat the entire universe as if it were our nearest and dearest, although saints sometimes try, and certainly, moral concern cannot
exclude strangers and distant others. Moral concern cannot just be particularistic, but at the same time it cannot be based
satisfactorily on a universalism which denies and devalues particularised moral commit- ments and the relevance of personal
experience. Nor can they just be tacked on, as some accounts suggest (the 'adding women's experience' solution). For we have
to address not only the omission of the voice of love and care but also the opposition between the universalising voice and the
caring voice, as well as the latter's subordination. And this in turn is part, not just of ethics, but of re-evaluating and realigning the
relations of the public and private sphere on which these different voices have been based. Still, there is scope here for a
different account of universalisation which is not based on devaluation of the personal and particular. It would make wider
concern a question not of transcending or detaching the self from particular, personal moral commitments, but in part at least of
understanding or coming to see the relationship between these particular commitments and local situations and those of distant
others. You can come to understand the relationship between your own loss and that of others, the degradation of your own
local ecosystem and that of the global ecosystem, the impoverishment of social and natural life-forms and that of your own life
and the lives of those you know. Such wider forms of care can be expressed in political consciousness and social action with as
much force and validity as in personal relationships. The implication of this form of empathic generalisation, in contrast to
Kantian universalisation, is that the more strongly you feel about your own commitments and attachments the more basis you
should have for expanding concern to others. This is not to assume that everyone makes such connections, but rather to shift the
moral focus from supposed oppositional relations, between particular and general concern, to the conditions of social and
political life which produce such opposition and which hinder such empathic generalisation. These conditions will often be those
which construct the other as alien, and include especially the web of dualism and hierarchy. However, an ethic of care speaks
not in one voice but in a number of different political voices, both particularised ones of concern for family and immediate
others, and more general forms voicing concern for nature and wider social groups. These voices will not necessarily be in
harmony. To expect that they would be so would be to mistake what such voices have to offer us. The voices of care are
non-instrumentalis- ing voices, but they can carry widely different political messages. There cannot be a single answer to the
question of whether the ethics of care is socially progressive or socially regressive - it is a determinable whose determinates can
be either. The care which women provide in the context of the family in market society typically has an incompleteness and an
ambiguity, the more so to the extent that it is controlled and structured by its larger context. Often the ethics of care is contained
and adapted to a supportive role, that of supplying the care and the human values omitted from the public sphere and so making
life tolerable or possible, or that of providing the co-operatively socialised individuals on which the public sphere relies but
which it could not itself provide. Thus familial care can support a conservative value system resisting extension of care to
non-familial or 'undeserving' others or working to disadvantage women by denying them equal participation in the public arena
(Bacchi 1990: 244-5); the mother working in the munitions factory can give care for 'the boys' as the justification for work
supporting militarism (Ruddick 1989: 87). Or, in the ecological case, a woman can give care for a husband's or son's welfare
and employment as the reason why she thinks a logging practice, which will destroy an endangered species, should continue.
But despite these ambiguities, the care model has a major contribu- tion to make to understanding alternatives to the dominant
instrumental models. The association of the virtues of personal care with women is historical and contingent rather than
essential."5 It does not reflect women's unique or innate suitability for their practice so much as the exclusion of these
non-instrumentalising virtues and practices from the public sphere. It is in these wider contexts especially that the practices and
virtues of care, long contained in the private sphere, realise their subversive and oppositional potential. Women indeed have
something highly valuable to offer in these non- instrumentalising voices, as 'custodians of a story about human attach- ment and
interdependence' (Gilligan 1987: 32), a story increasingly driven from the world at large, both as human care and in the form of
care for the earth.

RECONSTRUCTING REASON

The resolution of human/nature dualism is closely linked with the resolution of other closely associated reason/nature dualisms,
such as the reason/emotion dualism. We have seen how reason/emotion dualism fits the model of denied dependency, especially
in the ratio- nalist conception of the ethical. We have noticed how emotion is constructed as the opponent and dualised
underside of reason, so that it is identified as an unreliable, unreflective, irrational and sometimes uncontrollable force reason
must dominate. We should certainly challenge the narrowing and dominating role of reason. But what is contra-indicated by the
analysis of reason/emotion dualism is the replacement of the affirmation of reason by the affirmation of the dualised conception
of emotion (as in parts of the Romantic and current New Age traditions). Emotion, like other areas reason has excluded, can be
treated affirmatively, as a crucial and creative element, but in doing this we affirm neither the irrational nor the anti-rational. Since
overcoming dualism does not imply dissolving difference, there may still be a point in recognising a distinction between reason
and emotion. But the distinction should not be treated in terms of radical exclusion: emotions need not be treated as so
unreasonable, nor reason as so divorced from emotion, as they are in dualistic construction; nor need they be construed as
necessarily oppositional, but as capable of a creative integration and interaction (Blum 1980). The anti-dualist programme
implies a politics which can create a different, non- hierarchical and integrative role for rationality in developing and articulating
perceptions, feelings and values (Midgley 1981: 3), in grounding and establishing a basis for human existence on the earth which
is not based on illusions of the master. In a properly grounded human life, reason could act as the facilitator for the faculties,
rather than the dictator, and play this role both in its relation to other elements in individual life and in the many social forms and
institutions in which the hierarchical construction of reason is still embedded. An honoured, rather than a denigrated, place could
be given to engaged forms of reason which acknowledge and are faithful to their value commitments, and to a conception of
social and public life governed by the values of care for and commitment to the other which have been stripped from it and
confined to the private. The expulsion of the master identity from the western construction of reason requires not the
abandonment of reason itself, but an effort to instal another, less hierarchical, more democratic and plural identity in its place.