deep ecology

Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion

Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

Deep ecology is presented through Næss as an expansion of selfhood and ethical concern through identification with the living world. The ecological Self is inseparable from wider life processes, and self-realization extends beyond the isolated human individual. The author values this widening while arguing that identification must also reach the institutions and technical arrangements that organize ecological harm.

Explanation

AB retains widened identification but finds feeling alone insufficient to change damaging machinery. RB3 situates Næss alongside Bateson and Guattari, preserving their different contributions before specifying the regime as the scale at which ecological, social and technical relations become durable and answerable.

RB1 supplies an ecological account of the Self with native Næss references. PB’s earlier animal essay offers a more sharply ecocentric exposition and an adapted comparison table, whose attribution runs through O’Riordan and Næss rather than constituting an unqualified direct quotation from Næss.

The table’s claim connecting natural laws and morality must remain local to that presentation. Later PB passages explicitly state an ethical commitment that description or mathematics does not prove. Recording these different formulations preserves the books’ distinctions without silently reconciling them or inventing an authorial decision.

Scope and attribution

A bounded attributed definition is supported; differing book formulations are preserved rather than resolved on the author’s behalf.

AB — The Actual Book

Widening identification is valuable but insufficient without changing the regime.

Occurrence locators: 185; Thinker register: 231; Notes: 248.

PB — The Possible Book

The earlier ecology essay and adapted table retain their attribution and differ from later explicit normative premises.

Occurrence locators: Notes: 205; Reproduced historical essay: 201, 202.

RB1 — The Real Book, Volume I: The Possible Is Real

Næss’s ecological Self is related to wider life processes.

Occurrence locators: 39.

RB3 — The Real Book, Volume III: Murmurations

Ecosophic ancestry is retained while institutions and technicity extend the inquiry.

Occurrence locators: 208, 209, 222, 240, 304.

Background used in the editorial explanation

Named theories and mechanisms are distinguished from neighboring background, homonyms and the author’s own synthesis. Reproduced AI passages retain their separate voice.