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Ecology’s core values and beliefs. Table 4.4 presents this Eight-Point Platform of Deep
Ecology.
A key difference between Deep Ecology and many other environmental
approaches is that Deep Ecology’s starting point is not the value of nature to humans, but
rather the intrinsic, essential value of nature and all beings. Also, Deep Ecology is
committed to action, but not so much at the political as at the individual, personal level.
This includes a “deep questioning” of personal lifestyles and experiences, “self
realization” and the need for each individual to think out his or her “ecosophy”. The
founding father of Deep Ecology, 46 the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess, is rather up-
front about the normative, fundamentalist nature of such an approach (quoted in
Drengson and Inoue 1995:8):
By an ecosophy I mean a philosophy of ecological harmony or equilibrium. A
philosophy as a kind of sofia (or) wisdom, is openly normative, it contains both norms,
rules, postulates, value priority announcements and hypotheses concerning the state of
affairs in our universe. Wisdom is policy wisdom, prescription, not only scientific
description and prediction. The details of an ecosophy will show many variations due
to significant differences concerning not only the ‘facts’ of pollution, resources,
population, etc. but also value priorities. 47
46 Note that in his 1972 talk that coined the movement’s name, Naess quite explicitly differentiated between
a “long-range deep ecology movement” which deeply questioned fundamental values and a “shallow
ecology movement” which, translated into today’s context and terminology, is essentially the ecological
modernization approach. (A 1973 article based on Naess’ foundational talk is reprinted in Drengson and
Inonue 1995.)
47 Naess emphasizes that supporters of the eight platform principles can hold a wide range of “ultimate”
viewpoints that make up their own, individual ecosophy. Naess’ calls his own ultimate philosophy
“Ecosophy T”, and it is on this basis that Naess supports the Deep Ecology platform. Drengson (1999)
characterizes Naess’ “Ecosophy T” as a philosophy incorporating elements from the Norwegian outdoorliving
movement friluftsliv, from Gandian non-violence, from Mahayana Buddhism and from Spinozan
pantheism.