Overview

"Is ecology in the process of becoming the object of our contemporary passions, in the same way that Fascism was in the 30s, or Communism under Stalin? In The New Ecological Order, Luc Ferry offers a penetrating critique of the ideological roots of the ""Deep Ecology"" movement spreading throughout Germany, France, and the United States. Traditional ecological movements, or ""democratic ecology,"" seek to protect the environment of human societies; they are pragmatic and reformist. But another movement has become the refuge both of nostalgic counterrevolutionaries and of leftist illusions. This is ""deep ecology."" Its followers go beyond practical critiques of human greed and waste: they call into question the very possibility of human coexistence with nature. The human species is no longer at the center of the world, but subject to a new god called Nature. For these purists, man can only soil the harmony of the universe. In order to secure natural equilibrium, the only solution is to grant rights to animals, to trees, and to rocks. Ferry launches his critique by examining early European legal cases concerning the status and rights of animals, including a few notorious cases where animals were brought to trial, found guilty, and publicly hanged. He then demonstrates that German Romanticism embraced certain key ideas of the deep ecology movement concerning the protection of animals and the environment. Later adopted by the Nazis, many of these ideas point to a profoundly antihumanistic component of deep ecology that is compatible with totalitarianism. Ferry shows how deep ecology casts aside all the gains of human autonomy since the Enlightenment. He deciphers the philosophical and political assumptions of a movement that threatens to infantalize human society by preying on the fear of the authority of a new theological-political order. Far from denying our ""duty in relation to nature,"" The New Ecological Order offers a bracing caution—against the dangers of environmental claims and, more important, against the threat to democracy contained in the deep ecology doctrine when pushed to its extreme. ""A book of intellectual power, full of insights, invention, and not without temerity, from one of the best political philosophers today.""—Le Figaro ""Few books have analyzed in depth this phenomenon of the ecological movement as the most recent book by Luc Ferry has done. . . . It is a book that absolutely must be read.""—Le Point"

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Reviews

Should animals have specific legal rights? Should trees have standing? Just how far do our responsibilities go toward nature, asks Ferry (Philosophy/Sorbonne) in this erudite and entertaining critique of environmentalism. Ferry (Political Philosophy, not reviewed, etc.) starts this study of environmental ethics back in the 16th century, when troublesome beetles and leeches were put on trial, when the rats of Autun were issued summonses - well, at least they had their day in court. Such evenhandedness was dealt a death blow by Cartesianism, that perfect model of anthropocentrism in which all rights went to man and none to nature. Then Utilitarianism became ideologically ascendant and the notion that animals should not suffer - as in the Utilitarian least suffering by the least number - became common currency. These two schools continue to shape our relationships with nature (though Ferry details other influences: Rousseau and Kant, Aristotle and Heidegger, even the National Socialists). Now environmental activists are demanding a new ecological mindset, one in which nature writ large has the same rights as humans. At the far end of this movement are the deep ecologists, who question whether humans will ever be able to live in harmony with nature. Ferry finds them appalling: antihuman, with tendencies toward authoritarianism, dogmatism, and a strong anticulture streak. And just who are they, Ferry would like to know, to decide exactly what Nature wants, anyway? Ferry's advice is to mingle cosmopolitanism with rootedness, a synthesis of raw material and cultivated ideas, to avoid any degradation in the quality of life. Humans may have trashed the Earth, says Ferry, but it is also humans who have the capacity to set things right. Though his wit can fail him ( No one really expects Brigitte Bardot to develop a coherent doctrine as to the rights [and responsibilities?] of animals, he smirks), for the most part this is a closely argued, well-documented, sensitive critique. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Luc Ferry has taught at the Sorbonne and at the University of Caen and is the former Minister of Youth, National Education, and Research in the French government. He is the author or coauthor of eight previous books published by the University of Chicago Press, including, most recently, The New Ecological Order and Man Made God.

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