Resumen:La reducción de la ética ambiental a una mera aplicación de principios a priori ha llevado, según Næss, al fracaso de la disciplina. La amplia moralización en el contexto de las políticas ambientales, además, ha provocado la pérdida de un interés genuino por la casa común. En este sentido, para recuperar y refundar una filosofía ambiental tout court, para Næss es necesario volver a partir de una renovada epistemología, vinculada a una ontología profunda. El punto central de esta nueva ontología (...) es la recuperación de nuestras experiencias espontáneas en la naturaleza, que revelan que nuestras relaciones con la naturaleza son más profundas que las explicadas por las ciencias duras. Dichas experiencias se expresan a través de distintas formas culturales, que tienen, para Næss, un valor en sí. De allí que surge el imperativo ético de preservar a dichas culturas y de repensar nuevos imaginarios que vayan más allá de las principales tendencias en ética ambiental. Este artículo intentará mostrar estas conexiones (epistemológicas, ontológicas y éticas) en la ecosofía de Arne Næss, que se configura como “algo más” que un paradigma de la Environmental Ethics.Palabras clave: Næss; Filosofía ambiental; Experiencia espontánea; Culturas. (shrink)

Ecology, Community and Lifestyle is a revised and expanded translation of Naess' book Okologi, Samfunn og Livsstil, which sets out the author's thinking on the relevance of philosophy to the problems of environmental degradation and the rethinking of the relationship between mankind and nature. The text has been thoroughly updated by Naess and revised and translated by David Rothenberg.

There is nothing, either in the recent developments of philosophy or in the development of the sciences, which should prevent philosophy from continuing its role of mother-science and the sciences from influencing methods and conclusions of philosophers. The inquiring mind respects no boundaries between disciplines except those which are imposed by differences in questions raised. But basic questions, whether raised by philosophers or by scientists, tend to have components requiring co-ordination of research or analysis of highly different disciplines. Both Anglo-Saxon (...) and continental developments in philosophy justify, however, a distinction between cultivating philosophy and being engaged in solving or resolving a philosophical problem, the former comprising the latter. (shrink)

These eight essays present Chinese ideas and help build bridges to our Western ways of thinking.

Each philosopher is preceded by an account of his life, academic career, and known extra-scholarly influences.

Well over half a century before the development of contemporary experimental philosophy, the Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss conducted a number of empirical investigations intended to document non-philosophers’ convictions regarding a number of topics of philosophical interest. In the 1930s and 1950s, Næss collected data relevant to non-philosophers’ conceptions of truth. This research attracted the attention of Alfred Tarski at the time, and has recently been re-evaluated by Robert Barnard and Joseph Ulatowski. In this paper I return to Næss’s research (...) on truth in order to better develop an account of how such empirical data does or doesn’t bear on the philosophical study of truth. I examine Næss’s findings from his various studies on truth, and challenge the interpretation of those studies offered by Barnard and Ulatowski. (shrink)

_Arne Næss and Ingemar Hedenius as Dramatic Intellectuals: A Case Study for a Shared Theory of the Sociology of Knowledge and the History of Knowledge_ In terms of their substantive research interests and their epistemological approach, the sociology of knowledge and the history of knowledge show significant enough similarities to allow shared theory development. In this article, I argue that the recent work by Jeffrey C. Alexander on ‘dramatic intellectuals’ can offer a useful point of departure for such an undertaking. (...) Alexander’s interest in the way intellectuals provide meaning-making narratives for their audiences can be seen as not unlike the interest of historians of knowledge in examining how knowledge circulates in society. Indeed, one can go as far as to claim Alexander’s postulates about dramatic intellectuals to constitute a theory of knowledge circulation. To demonstrate the point and the relevance of his work to the sociology and history of knowledge more in general, two brief case studies are presented: that of the Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss and that of the Swedish philosopher Ingemar Hedenius. Many of their activities in the early post-war period, it is shown, can be viewed as attempts at meaning-construction through narratives formulated to help the broader public orient itself in the world in difficult times. The argument is made that the sociology of knowledge and the history of knowledge need, accordingly, to pay more attention to the central category of meaning in the study of intellectuals and their audiences. This can be profitably done by departing from the observation of Alexander’s that what enables knowledge to circulate in society is its dramatic conveyance through well-formulated meaning-making narratives that help social actors make sense of their circumstances. (shrink)

This is the compelling story of one of the most fascinating thinkers of the twentieth century- a richly toned portrait of a modern-day Thoreau.

In this paper, we discuss Næss’s concept of ecological self in light of the process of identification and the idea of self-realization, in order to understand the asymmetrical relationship among human beings and nature. In this regard, our hypothesis is that Næss does not use the concept of the ecological self to justify ontology of processes, or definitively overcome the idea of individual entities in view of a transpersonal ecology, as Fox argues. Quite the opposite: Næss’s ecological self is nothing (...) but an echo of the theme of the home and of belonging to a place, and, therefore, it deals with a positive relationship of the individual with its environment. This allows us to reshape environmental ethics starting from environmental ontology, and recalling the primacy of the latter on the former: the very theoretic background of an ethical view might only be a suitable interpretation of human nature and properties, starting from a relational viewpoint that may help understanding us our asymmetrical relationships with the world. (shrink)

[full article, abstract in English; only abstract in Lithuanian] The aim of this paper is to focus on Arne Nass’s phenomenological method and some of its anthropological and cosmological implications. Nass’s Ecology, Community and Lifestyle, in fact, can be fruitfully read as an example of phenomenological inquiry, in which the notion of “spontaneous experience” plays a fundamental role. This method leads Nass to develop a “relational ontology,” in which the “ecological self” is seen as a “relational junction within the (...) total field.” In addition, I show how Tymieniecka’s philosophical thought can offer us the proper eco-phenomenological perspective to better understand Nass’s Ecosophy T. (shrink)