Gandhi And Deep Ecology.pdf

journal of

peace

vol. 36, no. 3, 1999, pp. 349–361

Sage Publications ( London, Thousand

Oaks, CA and New Delhi)

[0022-3433 (199905) 36:3; 349–361; 007822]

R ESEARCH

Gandhi, Deep Ecology, Peace Research and Buddhist

Economics*

THOMAS WEBER

School of Sociology, Politics and Anthropology, La Trobe University

The central importance of Gandhi to nonviolent activism is widely acknowledged. There are also other

signiﬁcant peace-related bodies of knowledge that have gained such popularity in the West in the rela-

tively recent past that they have changed the directions of thought and have been important in encour-

aging social movements – yet they have not been analysed in terms of antecedents, especially Gandhian

ones. The new environmentalism in the form of deep ecology, the discipline of peace research and what

has become known as ‘Buddhist economics’ very closely mirror Gandhi’s philosophy. This article

analyses the Mahatma’s contribution to the intellectual development of three leading ﬁgures in these

ﬁelds: Arne Naess, Johan Galtung and E. F. Schumacher and argues that those who want to make an

informed study of deep ecology, peace research or Buddhist economics, and particularly those who are

interested in the philosophy of Naess, Galtung or Schumacher, should go back to Gandhi for a fuller

picture.

Gandhi as a Source of Inﬂuence

Gandhi has had a profound and celebrated

inﬂuence on the nonviolence movement

through Martin Luther King Jr, Cesar

Chavez, Helder Camara, Thomas Merton,

Danilo Dolci, Gene Sharp and many others.

In this article, I examine Gandhi’s inﬂuence

on three signiﬁcant bodies of knowledge that

have recently gained wide popularity in the

West and which have also stimulated

important social movements: deep ecology,

peace research and what has become known

as ‘Buddhist economics’, and particularly on

the intellectual development of leading

ﬁgures in these ﬁelds: Arne Naess, Johan

Galtung and E. F. Schumacher.

Many environmental activists who claim

that ‘deep ecology’ is their guiding philos-

ophy have barely heard the name of Arne

Naess, who coined the term. While Naess

readily admits his debt to Gandhi, works

about him tend to gloss over this connection

or ignore it. For example, while a recent

article on Naess’ environmental philosophy

and the Gita ( Jacobsen, 1996: 228–230)

refers to the link, the chapter on deep

ecology in Merchant’s book (1992: 88)

which surveys ‘radical ecology’ contains a

long list of its sources, including the debt

owed to interpreters of Eastern philosophy

such as Alan Watts, Daisetz Suzuki and Gary

Snyder, without even mentioning Gandhi.

The deep ecology of Naess not only talks of

a personal identiﬁcation with nature, but

also of self-realization being dependent upon

it. For those who know Gandhian philos-

* I would like to thank Arne Naess, Johan Galtung, Surur

Hoda, Ralph Summy and Shahed Power for valuable com-

ments on earlier drafts of this paper.

349

350

journal of P EACE R ESEARCH

volume 36 / number 3 / may 1999

ophy well, this line of reasoning is readily

recognized. However, Naess’ writings on

Gandhi are not particularly well known and

Gandhi’s inﬂuence on him has not received

due recognition.

Peace research is a diverse ﬁeld and

Gandhi’s inﬂuence has only touched certain

areas of it. While he is generally not men-

tioned, and potential causal links are rarely

investigated, the literature on conﬂict resol-

ution is commonly quite ‘Gandhian’ in its

approach. In much of the international

relations, defence, security, ethnic conﬂict

and related peace areas the possible relevance

of Gandhian philosophy is not even an issue

considered worthy of investigating.

Although the connection between the two

receives scant attention or is very much

implicit (see Sørensen, 1992: 143–144, note

15), and a recent speech has called for the

‘adding of Gandhi to Galtung’ (Herman,

1994), the work of Johan Galtung, one of

the leading academics in the peace research

area, is centrally and obviously inﬂuenced by

Gandhian philosophy. While Galtung

makes several references to this inﬂuence on

his thought in the introductory chapters to

his Essays in Peace Research and elsewhere

(e.g. Gage, 1995: 7), even Lawler (1995),

the recent chronicler of Galtung’s peace

research, does little more than mention it in

passing. For him Galtung seems to have

moved from positivism to Buddhism, while

according to Galtung himself ‘it was Gandhi

all the time’. 1

Unlike the works of Naess and Galtung,

Schumacher’s writings have made it onto

popular bestseller lists. The Gandhian con-

nection, at least at a superﬁcial level, was

originally also more explicit. However,

Schumacher’s ‘small is beautiful’ philosophy

eventually came to be known as ‘Buddhist

economics’ and gradually the links with

Gandhi took a back seat. His concern for

Third-World poverty led to the formation of

the Technology Group to develop tools and

work methods which are appropriate to the

people using them. While this practical work

can only be lauded, its philosophical under-

pinning should also be remembered.

Arne Naess and Deep Ecology

Although a conservation ethic had been

around for decades (Nash, 1989) before the

publication of books such as Carson’s Silent

Spring (1962) and studies such as The Limits

to Growth (Meadows et al., 1972), Arne

Naess took environmental philosophy into

new areas with his call for a ‘deep ecology’.

In 1973, Naess provided a summary of a

lecture given the year before in Bucharest at

the World Future Research Conference.

That short article (Naess, 1973) was to take

on paradigm-shifting proportions. It intro-

duced us to a terminology that has since

become commonplace.

Naess (1973: 95) points out that a

shallow but inﬂuential ecological movement

and a deep but less inﬂuential one compete

for our attention. He characterizes the

‘shallow’ ecological movement as one that

ﬁghts pollution and resource depletion in

order to preserve human health and afﬂu-

ence, while the ‘deep’ ecological movement

operates out of a deep-seated respect and

even veneration for ways and forms of life,

and accords them an ‘equal right to live and

blossom’. 2

In a later elaboration, Naess puts the con-

trast between the two in its most stark form:

shallow ecology sees that ‘natural diversity is

valuable as a resource for us’. He notes that

‘it is nonsense to talk about value except as

value for mankind’, and adds that in this for-

2 More recently, Naess has substituted the term ‘same

rights’ for ‘equal rights’, explaining that this provides less

opportunity for misinterpretation – after all, a parent has a

duty to protect a child, for example from a poisonous

insect, even if he or she risks killing the insect (personal

communication, 27 January 1998).

Personal communication, 30 January 1998.

Thomas Weber

G ANDHI , D EEP E COLOGY , P EACE R ESEARCH

351

mulation ‘plant species should be saved

because of their value as genetic reserves for

human agriculture and medicine’. On the

other hand, deep ecology sees that ‘natural

diversity has its own (intrinsic) value’ and he

notes that ‘equating value with value for

humans reveals a racial prejudice’, and adds

that ‘plant species should be saved because of

their intrinsic value’ (Naess, 1984: 257).

During a camping trip in California,

Arne Naess and George Sessions (1985:

69–70) jointly formulated a set of basic

principles which they presented as a

minimum description of the general features

of the deep ecology movement: the ‘well

being and ﬂourishing’ of human and non-

human life have intrinsic value; 3 the richness

and diversity of life forms contribute to the

realization of these values and are therefore

also intrinsic values; humans have no right

to reduce this richness or diversity except

where it is necessary to satisfy vital needs; the

ﬂourishing of human life and culture is com-

patible with a large decrease in the human

population, and a ﬂourishing of non-human

life requires it; human interference with

nature is excessive and increasing; and,

therefore, economic, technological and ideo-

logical policies must change. This ideo-

logical change will mean an appreciation of

the quality of life rather than the standard of

living; and those who subscribe to these

points ‘have an obligation directly or

indirectly to try to implement the necessary

changes’.

Naess loved nature and identiﬁed with it

from early childhood. As a philosopher he

researched and was inﬂuenced by Spinoza

(Rothenberg, 1993: 91–101) who main-

tained a spiritual vision of the unity and

sacredness of nature and believed that the

highest level of knowledge was an intuitive

and mystical kind of knowing where

subject/object distinctions disappeared as

the mind united with the whole of nature.

However, as important as those inputs were,

the inﬂuence of Gandhi is also clearly visible

in his formulation of deep ecology. In fact

Naess himself admits in a brief third-person

account of his philosophy that ‘his work on

the philosophy of ecology, or ecosophy , devel-

oped out of his work on Spinoza and

Gandhi and his relationship with the moun-

tains of Norway’ (Devall & Sessions, 1985:

225).

Gandhi experimented with and wrote a

great deal about simple living in harmony

with the environment (Power, 1991) but he

lived before the advent of the articulation of

the deep ecological strands of environmental

philosophy. His ideas about human con-

nectedness with nature, therefore, rather

than being explicit, must be inferred from an

overall reading of the Mahatma’s writings.

Naess (1986: 11) explains that ‘Gandhi

made manifest the internal relation between

self-realisation, non-violence and what

sometimes has been called biospherical egal-

itarianism’, and points out that he was

‘inevitably’ inﬂuenced by the Mahatma’s

metaphysics ‘which contributed to keeping

him (the Mahatma) going until his death’.

Moreover, ‘Gandhi’s utopia is one of the few

that shows ecological balance, and today his

rejection of the Western World’s material

abundance and waste is accepted by progres-

sives of the ecological movement’ (Naess,

1974: 10).

While Gandhi allowed injured animals to

be killed humanely to save them from unrea-

sonable pain and at times even because they

caused undue nuisance, his nonviolence

encompassed a reverence for all life. In his

hut at the Sevagram Ashram there is a large

pair of wooden tongs which were used to

pick up snakes so that they could be taken

beyond the perimeter and released as an

alternative to killing them.

3 Naess now prefers the following formulation: ‘every

living being has intrinsic value; the wellbeing and ﬂour-

ishing of human and nonhuman beings have intrinsic

value’ (personal communication, 27 January 1998).

352

journal of P EACE R ESEARCH

volume 36 / number 3 / may 1999

A review of the Gandhian literature

(while keeping in mind the time in which it

was written as a reason for anthropocentric

expression) readily reveals statements such

as: ‘If our sense of right and wrong had not

become blunt, we would recognise that

animals had rights, no less than men’

(Hingorani, 1985: 10); ‘I do believe that all

God’s creatures have the right to live as

much as we have’ ( Harijan , 19 January

1937); and ‘We should feel a more living

bond between ourselves and the rest of the

animate world’ (Patel & Sykes, 1987: 50).

The clearest indication of Gandhi’s respect

for nature, however, comes through his

interpretation of the Hindu worship of the

cow. Gandhi saw cow protection as one of

the most wonderful phenomena in human

evolution. ‘It takes the human being beyond

his species. The cow to me means the entire

sub-human world. Man, through the cow, is

enjoined to realise his identity with all that

lives’ ( Young India , 6 October 1921).

Another way to illustrate Gandhi’s con-

cerns with the oneness of life is to look at his

writings on ahimsa . Usually translated as

nonviolence, it can be seen as the fountain-

head of Truth – the ultimate goal of life.

From his prison cell in 1930, Gandhi wrote

to his ashramites that ‘ Ahimsa and Truth are

so intertwined that it is practically impossible

to distangle and separate them. They are like

two sides of a coin …’ (Gandhi, 1932: 6).

For Gandhi, ahimsa meant ‘love’ in the

Pauline sense and was violated by ‘holding

on to what the world needs’ (Gandhi, 1932:

5). As a Hindu, Gandhi had a strong sense of

the unity of all life. For him, nonviolence

meant not only the non-injury of human

life, but as noted above, of all living things.

This was important because it was the way

to Truth (with a capital ‘T’) which he saw as

Absolute – as God or an impersonal all-per-

vading reality – rather than truth (with a

lowercase ‘t’) which was relative, the current

position on the way to Truth.

Naess had been an admirer of Gandhi

since 1930 (Naess, 1986: 9). When he read

Romain Rolland’s Gandhi biography

(Rolland, 1924) as a young philosophy

student in Paris in 1931, he must often have

come across Gandhi’s statements on Truth

and the essential oneness of all life. In some

of his works, Naess notes that ‘nature con-

servation is non-violent at its very core’ and

quotes Gandhi to this effect:

I believe in advaita (non-duality), I believe in

the essential unity of man and, for that

matter, of all that lives. Therefore I believe

that if one man gains spiritually, the whole

world gains with him and, if one man fails,

the whole world fails to that extent. ( Young

India , 4 December 1924)

As this implies, for Arne Naess deep ecology

is not fundamentally about the value of

nature per se, it is about who we are in the

larger scheme of things. He notes the

identification of the ‘self ’ with ‘Self ’ in

terms that it is used in the Bhagavad Gita

(that is, as the unity which is one) as the

source of deep ecological attitudes. In other

words, he links the tenets of his approach to

ecology with what may be termed self-real-

ization. And here the influence of the

Mahatma is most clearly discernible. Naess

notes (1986: 9) that while Gandhi may have

been concerned about the political libera-

tion of his homeland, ‘the liberation of the

individual human being was his supreme

aim’.

The link between self-realization and

Naess’ environmental philosophy can be

clearly seen in his discussion of the connec-

tion between nonviolence and self-realiza-

tion in his analysis of the context of

Gandhian political ethics. Starting with the

‘one basic proposition of a normative kind’

when investigating Gandhi’s teachings on

group conﬂict – ‘Seek complete self-realis-

ation’ (the ‘manifestation of one’s potential

to the greatest possible degree’) – Naess

summarizes this connection as:

Thomas Weber

G ANDHI , D EEP E COLOGY , P EACE R ESEARCH

353

Figure 1.

Naess’ Systematization of Gandhian Ethics

Realize

truth

Act upon

‘all beings are

ultimately one’

Realize

God

Realize

yourself

Seek

truth

Refrain from

violence against

yourself

Help others

realize

themselves

Refrain from

violence against

others

Reduce violence

in general

Source : Naess (1974: 55)

(1) Self-realization presupposes a search for

truth.

(2) In the last analysis, all living beings are one.

(3) Himsa (violence) against oneself makes

complete self-realization impossible.

(4) Himsa against a living being is himsa

against oneself.

(5) Himsa against a living being makes com-

plete self-realization impossible.

(adapted from Naess, 1965: 28–33)

where a parent kills the last animal of a

species to save his or her child from its

attack), Naess is asked whether protection

of nature should occur because we should

think not only of ourselves or because

natural things are part of us also. Naess

refuses to separate the two approaches. He

answers with another allusion to Gandhi:

‘When he was asked, “How do you do these

altruistic things all year long?” he said, “I

am not doing something altruistic at all. I

am trying to improve in Self-realisation” ’

(Rothenberg, 1993: 141–142). There need

be no divide between the intrinsically valu-

able and the useful. And, in a Gandhian

way of feeling rather than intellectualizing,

he adds: ‘if you hear a phrase like, “All life

is fundamentally one”, you should be open

to tasting this, before asking immediately,

“What

This conceptual construction evolved into

ever more complex and graphic presen-

tations. In his 1974 work, Naess provides

various systematizations of Gandhi’s teach-

ings on group struggle where self-realiza-

tion is the top norm and which contain the

critical hypothesis that all living beings are

ultimately one, as set out in in Figure 1.

In a discussion with David Rothenberg

over human destruction of the environment

without

does

this

mean?” ’

(Rothenberg,

1993: 151).

Along with other deep ecological theorists,

adequate

reason

(for

example,

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