From 'Self-realization' to Interdependent Arising -- Seeking an Alternative to Deep Ecology

통각에서 연기론으로 -- 심층생태론의 대안 모색

Arne Naess' ecocentrally-oriented worldview of 'Self-realization' has been continually attacked by sociocultural critics since it was launched in the early 1970s. Especially ecofeminists and social ecologists criticize that the concept of Self-realization cannot accept social & cultural particularity enough. In other words, they assert that Deep Ecology cannot efficiently resist interpersonal hierarchy. Concentrating their criticism on compassion just for nonhuman beings, the interpersonal equality-oriented critics claim that Deep Ecology should incorporate voices of marginalized humans within their eco-centered world view. Even if Naess recently recognizes necessity to draw more attention to sociohistorical particularity, still unchanged remains essentialism in his neological term 'Self-realization.' Compared to exclusiveness in Naess' Self-realization, the Buddhist worldview of Interdependent Arising(pratityasamutpada) favors both intraspeciel egalitarianism and interpersonal equality as well. The very insight that all beings dependently co-originate reasons compassion for historically marginalized humans as well as nonhuman beings. Accordingly, today's environmentalism might better its efficiency as it goes toward the inclusive Buddhist world view of interdependent arising. For the human being tends to respond more readily to his or her individually urgent problems than their remote social matters.