The New ecological Order

the New ecological Order , subtitle “the tree, the animal and the man”, is a Essai of Luc Ferry, published in 1992 with the editions Grasset. It received the Prix Médicis. The author present and critical certain philosophical tendencies of the thought modern ecologist, in particular the Antispécisme and the major ecology. It sees there a antihumanism which it compares with the Romantisme and, on certain aspects, with the ecological policy Nazi. It replaces the debates on ecology within the framework of the debates on the Modernité and the heritage of the Lumières.

In this work, Luc Ferry adopts a tone of historian of philosophy to expose the theories of the large thinkers on the relationship between the man and nature. It presents also objections of a philosophical nature to certain contemporary theories. It uses sometimes an ironic tone which contributes to give an aspect of lampoon to its work, whose exit caused a public debate and media about the ideological sources of écologisme.

Three philosophical tendencies of ecology

The author recalls in a long foreword the existence of lawsuits brought against of the animals of 15th to the 17th centuries and reports the sales leaflet developed in 1972 by the professor of university states-unien Christopher Stone in favor of the recognition of a legal status for the trees.

Luc Ferry, while noting that France did not produce the same theorists of ecology that Anglo-Saxon or Germanic countries, defines three tendencies of philosophy ecologist:

the movement environmentalist, of democratic nature, aims at the protection of the interests included/understood well of the man through the protection of nature, which does not have an intrinsic value but whose destruction makes run a danger to the man.
the second tendency, utilitarian, regards that the animal suffering must be taken into account morally, as the east the human suffering. Consequently the animals become subjects of right, which is the justification used by some of the movements of “animal release”.
the third allots rights to nature itself, including in its nonanimal forms. Ferry attaches to this tendency the current of the major ecology as well as the ideas of the philosophers Hans Jonas and Michel Serres.

The author opposes in two most of the work the second and the third tendencies of the philosophy ecologist which it identified.

The question of the right of the animals

The author recalls the analysis of Rousseau in the Discours on the origin and the bases of the inequality among the men : the man is different from the animals by his freedom which gives him the capacity to progress, as well during his individual existence (by the education) as from one generation to another (by the Politique). He opposes the romantic vision to it which would be more deterministic, attaching the man to his cultural, linguistic and national traditions.

Recalling the evolution from the point of view of the philosophers on the animals since the vision of a purely mechanical animal at Descartes, Ferry sees the root of the anti-spéciste thought at Jeremy Bentham, theorist of the Utilitarisme at the end of 17th: any attempt to maximize greatest happiness for the greatest number must include the animals, if one can show that those really suffer. It is the position developed and pushed in all its consequences by the philosopher Peter Singer with 20th: he denounces under the name of “specism” the attitude consisting in giving more importance to the suffering of a man than to that of an animal. Luc Ferry admits that the suffering of the animals is probably real, but estimates that Singer should initially show that this suffering has an ethical value, vis-a-vis the Kantian design which places the ethical value in the freedom and the dignity of the gifted beings of reason.

The author tackles finally the subject of the Corrida. According to Alain Renaut, philosopher with whom Luc Ferry has Co-writing several works, the bullfight would have an esthetic value in the tender of strong rough with a free will. Ferry sees in this idea a design of humanism going up with Descartes, according to which nature would be only one object “to be civilized”. He opposes a humanism to him which he attaches to Kant: although the animals do not have rights by themselves, we should make them suffer only when it is necessary. The bull, because of its quality of living being, is not a simple thing.

Major ecology

The author considers the theses of the major ecology ( deep ecology ) by presenting ideas of Aldo Leopold, Arne Naess, John Baird Callicott and other authors. He sees a radical opposition to the Occident there, of revolutionary nature and not reformist, doubled of a marked antihumanism. He attaches to these currents the ideas presented by Michel Serres in his work the natural Contract , of which he criticizes the concept even because of impossibility for the man of physically signing a contract with nature.

He examines also the ideas of Hans Jonas, largely diffused in 1979 in the Principle responsibility , by denouncing the temptation of Jonas for the use of strong methods such as those of the Stalinist mode.

Ferry sees in major ecology a mixture of brown” and “red” ideas “, love of the soil and the nostalgia of a purity lost with the critic of capitalism and the support of self-management. The central point of these ideas would be for him a “hatred of modernity” and time present. He concludes by affirming that major ecology “plunges some of its roots in the Nazism and pushes its branches until in the most extreme spheres of the cultural gauchism”.

Ecology Nazi

The author presents the legislation ecologist implemented by the mode Nazi in Germany as from November 1933. He also sticks to the theories of Walther Schoenichen, biologist and theorist Nazi of the environment. According to Ferry, the Nazis take again a central theme of romantic sentimentalism, the need for protecting the nature virgin and not touched by the man, whom it brings closer to the topics developed by major ecology. On the other hand, the classicism, following Descartes, considers that the man owes, by the culture, to release itself from nature, as in the gardens with the Frenchwoman which organize and civilize nature.

Luc Ferry, starting from the writings of Schoenichen, sees in the theories Nazis a will to preserve not only nature, but also, as at the third-mondistes, the people of the world in their authenticity, against the Colonialisme which controls them cruelly.

It brings closer to the writings of Schoenichen the importance which certain ecologists give, of which Antoine Waechter, with the fastening of an human being at a community and its rooting in a territory.

Conclusions

The author tackles also the subject of the ecofeminism, which, while insisting on the differences between the men and the women, would tend according to him to lock up those in a natural determinism and to deny their freedom.

He approaches considerations of a more political nature by disputing the recourse to the revolution like single means of making evolve/move the company. He prefers to him a Réformisme acting within the democratic framework laic. He also considers that, in Europe, the State-nation remains an adequate framework of intervention of coordination with the levels Community and regional.

The author concludes by defining three philosophical designs from the culture:

the utilitarian vision considers works as consumables
the romanticism insists on the role of the genius of people in any work produced by an author
a third design sees on the contrary in a work it by what it is detached from the forms and the received codes from passed or of the national context.

See too

External bonds

Debate televised in connection with the book, between Luc Ferry, the Green Alain Lipietz and the regional adviser Patrice Miran, October 1st, 1992 (beginning of the debate in free access).
'' Environnement and ecology: the impossible synthesis '', article in the review the Banquet in 1993 on the book.
Regrouping of various critical texts around the '' Nouvel ecological Order '' and of Luc Ferry

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