Biocentric Environmental Ethics and Vaiṣṇava Philosophy
By Krishna Keshava Das, researcher and assistant to serving director, Bhakti Vedanta Institute of Spiritual Culture and Science. Originally published in Religions.
Establishing an environmental ethic that sincerely intends to prioritize collective well-being must recognize the unique individual capacities that inevitably serve as vital functions within the community and the individual rights necessary to allow those unique capacities to flourish.
For a theistically conscious biocentric environmental ethic, it is essential that the qualified moral agents who properly discern ecologically progressive and socially tolerable decisions embrace the path of self-realization. Within the field of environmental ethics, a gentleman named Arne Naess established a conceptual framework called deep ecology or ecosophy, which heavily relies on the idea of self-realization. This complements biocentric values by emphasizing the importance of self-realization for comprehensive environmentally conscious decision-making. An individual informed by these views is fit to enter the economic arena and make unbiased choices that benefit the ecological community as a whole.
Based on everyday observations, Naess described that the self has a fluid boundary. It not only encompasses one’s own person—yourself or myself—but also the clothes one wears, the computer one uses or the house one lives in, and even our loved ones. He ultimately suggested that the self be identified with all those in the ecological community where “the interest or interests of another being are reacted to as our own interest or interests” (Naess 1985, p. 225). In Naess’ initial conception, the emphasis remains on self-centered interest, but the negative ecological implications of selfishness are bypassed by theoretically extending the self to include all living entities. This is what he considers the practical state of self-realization to be. By considering Vaiṣṇava philosophy from ancient India, we are able to penetrate deeper into the ecological implications of the ideas that Naess initially raised, going beyond self-centered motivation.
Interestingly, the basis for Naess’s conception of self is the Sanskrit word ātman. Further, his idea of the highest attainment of self-realization comes from Bhagavad-gītā verse 6.29. Naess offers four translations that roughly amount to the same interpretation of this verse. Here is the first translation offered: “He whose self is harmonized by yoga seeth the Self abiding in all beings and all beings in Self; everywhere he sees the same.” Inspired by this verse, Naess concludes that the “absolute maximum” of self-realization is “the mature experience of oneness in diversity” (Naess 1985, p. 224). Here, it is significant that Naess is not advocating some mystical oneness in which individuality is annihilated. This was the basis for our argument against Leopold’s land ethic in Section 1. Naess clearly rejects “mystical traditions [that] stress the dissolution of individual selves into a nondiversified supreme whole. Both from cultural and ecological points of view diversity and individuality are essential” (Naess 1985, p. 225). This position is in line with the Vaiṣṇava perspective, which will be significant in what follows. Naess’ conclusion regarding “oneness in diversity” is respectable, but the translations that he offers do not clearly communicate the theological import of the verse in question. The well-known Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava leader Śrīla A. C. Bhaktivedānta Swāmī Prabhupāda offers the following translation of verse 6.29: “A true yogī observes Me in all beings and also sees every being in Me. Indeed, the self-realized person sees Me, the same Supreme Lord, everywhere” (Prabhupāda 1972, p. 337). As Prabhupāda says, this verse is meant to describe the simultaneously immanent and transcendent omnipresence of God, Who is the infinite Self and not a finite self. Naess’ translation of the verse spelled Self with a capital S; therefore, it is possible he understood the meaning of this verse as referring to the infinite Self which contextualizes and unifies the diversity of finite selves, although he chose not to emphasize its significance. This Bhagavad-gītā verse reorients the finite self from self-centeredness to Absolute-centeredness. How this is relevant to regulating human behavior in environmentally beneficial ways becomes clear with a further analysis of Vaiṣṇava theology, which recognizes that God or Kṛṣṇa (the Name of God, meaning “all-attractive”) is an Organic Whole.1
In Section 2, we offered a framework for ecological decision-making, arguing that living entities have intrinsic value and non-living entities (inert matter) have instrumental value dependent on the living. Justified from observations of defending and healing behavior of cells and organisms, this man’s-eye-view admittedly has a restricted scope from a higher perspective. While living entities contain their value within themselves, they are fundamentally limited due to their continued existence requiring energy exchange with the external environment. Ecosystems rely on an exchange of energy with the organisms that inhabit it and surrounding ecosystems, while individual organisms depend on each other and the environment. Beyond energy exchange through breathing and nutrition, organisms further rely on other organisms to create them via reproduction. In nature, we observe that life comes from life, i.e., biogenesis. The law of biogenesis has been affirmed by leading 19th century scientists such as Louis Pasteur and Rudolf Virchow, who concluded that “all life is from life” (omne vivum ex vivo) and that “every cell comes from another cell” (omnis cellula e cellula), respectively (Steele et al. 2018, p. 5; Wright and Poulsom 2012, p. 145). Further, 20th-century planetary scientist Carl Sagan (1974) defended distinguishing between biogenesis and abiogenesis—life coming from matter.2
Due to modern scientists’ understanding of matter as a mind-independent substance (Das 2023, pp. 84–85)—which differs from the processual understanding of matter as a moment of the continuum of ever-becoming Spirit offered in forthcoming paragraphs—claiming that the origin of life is matter divorces life from being inherently connected to mind, cognition, or consciousness.
- Dr. B. Mādhava Purī, Serving Director of the Princeton Bhakti Vedanta Institute, is the individual presenting Organic Wholism, the scientific presentation of how ancient Vaiṣṇava teachings anticipated developments of 21st century biology and how Hegelian philosophy serves to clarify the dialectic dynamic relationship between whole-part, subject-substance, and matter-spirit in natural systems and processes (Purī 2009, p. 1; 2013, p. 3). [↩]
- “[T]here has been an increasing misuse of the word ‘biogenesis’. […] ‘Biogenesis’ is being used as its own antonym: ‘Biogenesis’ is the origin of life from life; ‘abiogenesis’ is the origin of life from non-living matter. The distinction should be preserved. […] The distinction goes back at least as far as Huxley […] who wrote in a work entitled Biogenesis and Abiogenesis…” [↩]
Discover more from Harmonist
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Related Posts
Homeward Bound →
Mystic Poetry and Yogic Enlightenment →
Śrīla Jīva Gosvāmī →
