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Peter Critchley

BEING AT ONE: MAKING A HOME IN THE EARTH'S COMMONWEALTH OF VIRTUE by Peter Critchley


Why ‘commonwealth of virtue’ instead of, say, ‘commonwealth of life’ (the title of Peter Brown’s book)? I refer to virtue for a specific reason. If talk of virtue seems archaic, there’s no need to mystify here. The virtues are qualities for successful living. When we define that along ecological lines, then successful living takes shape as sustainable living along ecological lines. At this point it becomes possible to call back the old eudaimonistic notion of flourishing well. And that is precisely what I propose to do. I’ve just been reading Owen Flanagan’s book ‘The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World’ (2007), and he writes of ‘eudaimonistic scientia’, or ‘eudaimonics’ for short, which he defines as the "empirical-normative inquiry into the nature, causes, and conditions of human flourishing." And the institutions, structures, practices and relations in which human and planetary flourishing go hand in hand.

Plenty in Being at One comes from MacIntyre and Nussbaum in philosophy, Flannery in ecology, Wilson in biology, Robert Wright on the non-zero sum society, (The nonzero-sum moment - our welfare is crucially correlated with the welfare of the other etc.), Stuart Kauffman on the self-organising creative universe, and many more. The originality of this thesis lies in the way these sources are brought together in an integral framework concerning the dialectic of natural dependency, moral independence and social and ecological interdependence.

BEING AT ONE:

MAKING A HOME IN EARTH’S COMMONWEALTH OF VIRTUE

Contents

Preface 15

1 INTRODUCTION 19

The Ethic of Ends 23

Holism, awareness and the web of life 24

A Transformation of Consciousness 27

The call for a new ethical vision 34

Lives lived appropriately to reality 35

The Ecopolis 36

Civic Environmentalism 38

The Ecopolis as an Urban/Ecological Public 43

Person, Place and ‘the Political’ 49

A common ethic and practice and the need for a social identity 53

A common ethic as binding 57

The need to create context for the common good 58

The integration of reason and emotion 58

2 ONE EARTH, MANY WORLDS 59

We are One 59

Oneness and Ethics 62

Oneness and connectedness 63

The need to find common ground 64

Two worlds 64

The separation of the social world from the natural world 69

Worlds in collision – human and biotic 70

Making the one world 71

Purposeless materialism and the recovery of purpose 72

Social evolution - the interrelatedness of people and all other life-forms 77

The critique of Radical Environmentalism 80

The premodern world was not benign 81

The rejection of foundational authority 83

Ecology as religion 84

3 AUTONOMY AND DEPENDENCY 105

Dependent rational animals – whether reason can rule 105

The ideal of rational self-sufficiency and the facts of natural dependency 106

Capabilities and the form of human life 109

Animal resemblances and commonality 110

Facts of dependence as central to the human condition 111

Human animality 113

The virtues of acknowledged dependence 115

4 COMMON GROUND 117

The Earth and human well-being 117

Oneness – rootedness and interdependency 117

The connection to land, landscapes and associated ecosystems 118

Underlying sense of spiritual connection to the Earth 118

The commonwealth of life 121

The constant cooperation of all the forces of nature and history 121

Oneness with the natural world 121

The ecological partnership with the earth 123

The community of life 126

Biospheric politics 127

Interlocking web of life 128

Re-envisioning our place in the world 128

The commonwealth of virtue 130

Living organisms constantly co-operate to remake the whole environment for the benefit of life 131

The commonwealth of life 132

A common ancestry 132

Biophilia 135

The threats to our existence 137

The genetic unity of life 140

Biophilia and ethics 142

Gaia 145

Gaia’s intelligent elite 148

The Partnership Ethic 157

The cooperation of human and nonhuman nature as active agents 160

The need for a standpoint – an ethical framework 161

Experience and personality 163

5 ETHICS AND POLITICS 165

Morality - canalising behaviour 165

Intertwining of ethics and politics 165

Flourishing 166

Social being and virtue 167

Normative judgements 170

Culture and division 170

Essentialism 171

Our participation in culture 178

Aristotle and flourishing - an active, positive form of co-operation 180

6 THE COMMON GOOD 182

Rational Freedom 182

Rational Freedom vs Libertarian Freedom 185

Privatisation as the corporatisation of public life 189

Rational freedom and the common good 193

Aristotle, the good city and the community of all 194

City, scale and symmetry 195

Ethics, universality and proximity 196

The biological basis - reciprocity 196

Proximity and eco-patriotism 198

7 REASON, FREEDOM AND THE COMMONS 201

Ecological crisis requires collective action 202

Recovering common benefits 206

Rational constraint and freedom 207

The tragedy of the commons 208

Free rational collective action 209

Rethinking our approach to climate change 211

Rational thinking and collective action – markets, individuals and public goods 215

Individual and collective action problems 216

Managing the global commons 217

8 GAMES THEORY AND THE COOPERATIVE SOCIETY 219

Egoism and altruism – competition and cooperation 219

Nature via Nurture 223

Games theory and the cooperative society 225

The Prisoners’ Dilemma: introduction 227

The cooperative society 243

The innate disposition to evolve co-operative strategies 246

Altruistic behavior as behavior which benefits others 248

The Parable of the Tribes 249

9 COMMONING – RECLAIMING THE COMMONS 264

Community and commoning – the recovery of close interpersonal relations 266

Community action – policies that can draw communities together 266

Managing the commons 268

The recovery of close interpersonal relations 268

Toward a Culture of Solidarity and a Just Economic Order 269

The social and moral matrix 270

Socially embedded markets 271

Sharing and managing common resources 276

The institutions of government and property 278

10 DEMOCRACY AND RESTRAINT 278

Being in the environment – politics and the claims of nature 278

The Ecopolis and Ecological Regionalism 279

Environmental stakeholding 279

Environmental Politics 290

Problem of liberal democracy 291

A constrained freedom 291

Democracy and limits 292

The Problem Defined 293

Cooperating with the future 300

The strong state and strong democracy 305

Politics and Practical Reasoning 310

Truth and the need to be practical 310

Democracy is judicious 312

Democracy, truth and judicious reasoning 313

11 ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS 314

Green spirituality and ecological virtues 314

Environmental ethics and politics – against anthropocentrism 317

Environmentalism and moral monism 317

Interests, values and priorities 318

Monism and ethical pluralism and political pragmatism 319

Epistemology and ethics – one earth and a plurality of values 322

Pragmatism – rejection of foundationalism 326

Refounding ethics 328

Need for practical philosophy - escaping academic confines 329

Actions and values 330

Environmentalism and plural values 330

Politics and decision making 330

Pragmatism over philosophical purity 331

Pragmatism, truth and real world problems 331

Integrating democratic values and processes 332

Beyond anthropocentrism and ecocentrism 332

Pragmatism and weak anthropocentrism 333

Pragmatism and intrinsic value 334

A public mode of deliberation and reasoning 335

All types of knowing and valuing 336

The pluralist model of environmental value and action embedded in natural systems 336

Public commitments and the civic spirit 337

12 CITIZEN SCIENCE, PRAXIS AND PUBLIC LIFE 339

Methodology - against constructivism 340

Environmentalism, postmodernism and social constructionism 348

Science, truth and values 351

Science as social construct – reality and context 356

The defence of objective truth against praxis/pragmatism 360

Citizen science and eco-praxis 361

Social knowledge 366

Joining scientific and social rationality 369

The New Ecological Paradigm 370

The experiment 375

Intersubjective and relational notions 376

The need to bridge the worlds of theoretical reason and practical reason 377

Civic Science 378

Science and the public domain 380

Critical and contextual science 381

Knowledgeable agency 383

The human impact 384

Environmentalism and naturalism 386

Ecology supplemented with ethics – beyond objectivity and positivism 386

A world laden with values 386

Fact and value 387

Environmentalism and ethical naturalism 388

The naturalistic fallacy 388

13 ECO-PRAGMATISM 395

The future as unknowable 396

Altering constraints 397

Practical motivations in ethics 398

Pragmatism, policy and environmental ethics 400

The rejection of foundationalism - experience over mirroring 402

A public mode of deliberation and reasoning 403

Pluralism requires second order principles – integrated worldview 406

Environmental knowledge and values and priorities 407

The limitations of knowledge 408

The limits of our knowledge of environmental problems 409

The transition from theory to practice 412

The need for embodiment 412

Eco-community 414

The epistemic, moral and political worth of the community 414

Human scaled communal life 415

Place 415

14 ETHICS 416

The failure of ethical theory 416

Innate and Universal Moral Grammar 419

Reason and the emotions 419

Innatists and culturalists 420

Innate moral grammar and the natural law 425

The overarching moral framework 429

15 MORAL THEORY 436

Aristotle and virtue theory 436

Virtue, character, the nature of the human good 440

Beyond morality as duty, obligation, rightness 440

The grounding of morality in human nature 441

What Is Virtue? 442

Why Are the Virtues Important? 442

Character and the social process 445

Some Advantages of Virtue Ethics 449

Feminism, virtue ethics and revaluing the private sphere 450

The Incompleteness of Virtue Ethics 452

16 ECOLOGICAL VIRTUE 452

Ecological Virtue and Dependence 453

eudaimonia stands in need of good things from outside 453

Integrating moral philosophy 453

Virtue as an exercise in participation in the whole order of being 454

The exercise of reason to restrain the passions 456

Participation in the civic life of the community 456

Virtues to live in equilibrium with the world 456

Moral ecology and the sense of eco-community 457

17 THE CAPABILITIES APPROACH 461

What are people actually able to do and to be? 461

Participation and flourishing 463

From alienation or anomie to creativity and spontaneity 465

Power and Flourishing 465

Flourishing as wholeness – being in place 465

18 ECOLOGICAL CITIZENSHIP AS A MORAL EDUCATION 466

Ecological citizenship 467

The greening of political theory 467

Habits as an ecological moral education 469

Habits to check materialism and individualism 469

After Virtue – rationality, means and ends 472

Moral Truth vs Moral relativism 473

Truth and objective reality 479

Ecological virtue and citizenship 481

Ethical naturalism – the natural virtues 482

Character, virtue and eco-citizenship 484

19 POLITICAL COMMUNITY 485

Against economic abstraction, for community commitments 485

The habits of the heart 486

Township democracy – civic engagement 486

Community collaboration 487

Collective action and cooperation 489

Decentralism – bioregionalism and localism 490

The need for a global politics 494

The Public Good: The conception of a just society 494

Social and moral ecology in the participatory universe 495

Conceptions of the Public Order 495

Sustainability and Livable Communities 496

Community and Place 498

Common assumptions, conceptual frameworks, and movement-building strategies 500

Linking movements and constructing a vision 500

Place-based focus 502

The construction of a common vision 503

20 GREEN SPIRITUALITY 506

The holistic mileu 506

Mechanicism - nature as a purely quantitative phenomenon 509

Rational calculation 510

Capitalism undermines a sense of mutual interdependence by its overemphasis on rational principles of control and utility 511

Earth-centred spirituality focused on the immanent divine 514

Earth community - law of the integral functioning of the Earth 519

Bounds of balance, order and harmony in the natural world 520

Ethos of the Cosmos 522

Directly experienced reality over disconnected abstract theories 522

Beyond the dualism of human and biotic worlds 523

Spiritual reality 529

Participation in the flow of creation 531

The relationship between our ethical norms and the world of nature 531

Taoism 531

Hinduism 541

Buddhism and ecological virtue 542

An ethic of interconnectedness and mutual responsibility 544

Non-destructiveness or harmlessness 544

Christianity - beyond anthropocentrism and man's metaphysical uniqueness 545

Beyond Life-As and Subjective Life 546

The virtuous life and the embedded life 546

The unfolding, evolving cosmos within progressive spirituality 550

Partners in the process of creation 550

The sacralization of nature - a renewed vision of the divine presence within the natural order 554

The self and the evolutionary unfolding of the cosmos 556

21 HOLISM 556

Organic holism and planning 556

That the underlying dynamic of the cosmos is benevolent, that everything is connected and that there is meaning 560

The moral imperative of the global village 560

Holism and emergence 562

The whole picture – patterns over pieces 564

Connected and ever changing 564

Emergence and interplay of natural systems 565

Ecological morality is holistic 566

We are developmental beings – the human journey 566

22 ECOLOGICAL HEALTH AND HAPPINESS 569

Community and the breakdown of collective feeling 569

The lack of common identity and involvement 570

Housing the sacred, housing mystery 571

Letting the object in 573

The ethical and the emotional 574

A common Weltanschauung 574

Putting reason and emotion together 575

Existential needs – rootedness, relations, power 578

Housing and belonging 578

The community of the soul 579

Housing our egos - belief as the ground we stand upon 579

Relationships and good health 580

Human health in the context of the total human environment 580

Health and well-being 585

The need for a central ethical framework 586

23 THE EVOLUTION OF UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY 587

The obligation to join with others 587

The nonzero-sum moment - our welfare is crucially correlated with the welfare of the other 588

Emergence of a global civil society and global governance 590

A fully networked global community 616

The Global Human Superorganism 619

Gaia’s intelligent elite 619

Humans as indispensible elements in the Earth system 621

The global human superorganism 622

Planetary politics and ethics – strategies for survival – the need for knowledge 624

The green enlightenment 625

The Gaian future 631

24 UNIVERSAL PLANETARY ETHIC 635

Universal responsibility, identifying ourselves with the whole Earth community as well as our local communities 637

Recognition of our environmental interdependence - a wider rationale of unity 638

Planetary interdependence demands that the functions are now seen to be world-wide and supported with as rational a concept of self-interest 639

Social movement and interconnections among ecological, economic and equity issues 639

A bond that recognizes the sanctity of the Earth 642

Principles for a common moral and institutional framework 646

A common ethic and inner orientation 646

A common ethic as a guide 647

The Principles of a Global Ethic 647

The need for new mentalities and modalities 647

The Need for an Appropriate Ethical Framework 649

The overarching ethical system 649

Construction of a global ethic 652

Common ground across our diverse traditions 652

Ethical frameworks 653

Common ethic and tribal loyalty 654

Explanatory Remarks Concerning a Common Ethic 655

A shared global ethic 655

A common, uniting framework 655

Avoiding cultural imperialism 657

25 THE POETRY OF EARTH 658

The Unfolding Cosmos 661

Felicity as the goal and natural term of all life 661

The visionary materialism of William Blake 662

26 THE CREATIVE UNIVERSE 667

The self-organizing universe 667

The participatory universe 667

Self-organisation, emergent properties, and the creative and participatory universe 668

Spontaneous self-organizing dynamics of the world 671

The co-production of the world 671

The emergent creativity in the universe 673

The self-organising universe beyond positivism 673

Metaphysical reconstruction – the creative universe 674

The creative processes of nature as energy flows up the biotic pyramid 675

The participatory universe 677

Ceaseless creativity in the natural universe, biosphere, and human cultures 684

God as the natural creativity in the universe 685

Spiritual Revolution 686

[metaphysical reconstruction - lives lived appropriately to reality] 686

Beyond technical fixes and natural self-regulation 687

Living into mystery 691

One as the whole - purpose and meaning – mystery and unanswerable questions 691

[knowledge and loss of meaning] 692

Ultimate questions and the need to picture 694

Need for the integral approach 699

The ever building of ourselves as fully human 703

[be-ing as the persistent becoming of culture, science, the economy, knowing, doing, and inventing] 703

The human personality emerges out of the matrix of communal functions and activities 712

Unity and meaningfulness of all life 713

[the outer world and the inner self are one] 713

Participation in the commonwealth of life 713

The limits of reason and the need to reunite our full humanity 714

Prometheus and Orpheus 715

The spiritual underpinning to our ecological consciousness 719

[intuitive awareness of our relationship to the environment - ethical obligation to our planetary home] 719

Partially knowing and understanding, but flowing 722

[be-ing as the persistent - the ever building of ourselves as full humans] 723

27 BEING AND BELONGING 724

The emergence of a new understanding of the Earth 724

[futures - After a long period of psychological disruption stability will return only with the emergence of a new understanding of the Earth 724

The inner and the outer 725

[the holiness of life - membership one of another - community of soil, soul and society] 725

[to stimulate a change of 'psychology, status and motivation – fostering an ecological citizenship] 725

Mode of being in the world 727

[a radically desacralised cosmos – to be an avid participant in an animate universe] 727

Making community - setting virtuous cycles in motion 728

Community as being, doing and having together 729

[being as the ever-deepening beauty that transcends ego - the great work of humanisation] 729

Ontological connection 730

[life, faith, hope] 732

Self-realisation 733

Community of soil and soul 733

John O’Donohue on belonging and virtue 733

Transpersonal community 737

In fine, consciously or otherwise, we are bound up with and in one another at the most profound level of reality. 737

Cycle of belonging – becoming alive to the aliveness of life 737

Responsibility 738

A sense of place is our grounding on Earth 740

The roots of life and what gives it meaning 740

28 PROPHECY AND HOPE 743

Reason and hope 743

The essential grammar of harmony 753

A more balanced way of looking at the world, and more harmonious ways of living. 753

Grounds for pessimism 755

Against the ecology of fear 758

Reclaiming the Ground of Hope 762

Prophecy and Hope 762

The emerging future is not predestined 763

The collapse scenario - abandoning hope 764

29 HOPE BEYOND PROGRESS 781

Abandoning utopias and avoiding dystopias 781

The end of the foundational assumptions of modernity 782

Honesty, resilience, appreciation of beauty and scale, and stability 783

Mystery, psychic depths and reason 797

Regrounding the human condition 797

Metaphysical reconstruction and the world of politics, economics and technology 798

Being receptive to a new mind and a new heart 800

Imagining the future 800

Soulcare and grounding the human condition 805

30 CONCLUSION 806

31 PAN AND LOVE 809

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