BY Sonja Haugaard Christensen
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS
LIVING ACCORDING TO NATURE
Human activity is having a significant and increasing impact on the planet with a great acceleration that includes loss of biodiversity and ecological degradation, coupled with increasing social polarization and inequalities. Current paradigms of ‘progress’ are proving unsustainable, and the intensity and speed of change is having a detrimental effect on the planet and all living beings. Globally, there have been many education initiatives to address environmental sustainability; however, from the evaluations of the United Nations Decade for Education for Sustainable Development, social, political, and ethical issues are not being integrated and addressed to the same extent as environmental ones. To find new ways of sustainable development the focus also needs to be on individual responsibility. An excellent model for such practice has been suggested by the ancient Stoics in “living according to nature”.
Universal Sympathy
The ideal of “living according to nature” is a philosophy that invites men to take their relationship with the world seriously. In order to achieve wisdom, it has established principles, some of which seem to have an ecological value. While considering nature as an organic and spiritual entity in which parts together form a whole, stoicism posits that it constitutes the destiny whose laws are inescapable and instructs men never to rebel against the already established order. With the principle of “universal sympathy”, the Stoics see everything as intertwined and interdependent so that one cannot touch other elements of the cosmos without acting on the whole. The idea is that development takes place by the principle of oikeiôsis, i.e. the appropriation of oneself, a familiarity with what is close, extending from the human species to other natural beings, to the whole earth. The process leads through the education of virtue, consisting of a habitus animus, a disposition of the soul in a certain way, which naturally implies ecological behavior.
The Stoic ideal: “to live in harmony with nature” naturally implies a relationship of harmony and balance between men and nature and has a positive impact on the latter in terms of reducing the exploitation of resources, brief in terms of protection of nature. The unity and order of nature must be respected, the universal sympathy expresses the link between the elements of nature and the familiarity of man. Above all, it will be a question of showing that a virtuous life has a positive impact on nature.
Hierocles´ Circles of Concern
The ancient Stoic understanding that all of humanity is united by the capacity for virtue led to the conviction that all human beings belong and participate in a cosmopolitan society. This universal connection was graphically illustrated by the Stoic Hierocles through a set of “circles of concern”, with the self and expanded outwards to family friends, and wider society.
Hierocles stressed the idea that we should bring each circle of concern inward to reflect the healthy aspects of humanity that constitute the self and the self’s role in humanity. In this way, Stoicism provides the foundation for a society built on harmony whilst also accepting the fact that humans naturally feel a more direct or pressing connection (and sense of responsibility) towards some people than they do with others.
By integrating this circle into your daily practice, you acknowledge your connection to the living Earth, as the environment that necessarily sustains and supports all preceding circles. You provide yourself with the conceptual basis to tackle the environmental crisis and in doing so you align your thoughts with the ancient Stoic understanding that happiness is attained by “living according to nature”.
Seeking unity with natural processes and extending our care towards animals, plants and their habitats helps us to re-evaluate our priorities. Our concern for justice extends to those human beings and other living creatures who cannot, or who are unable, to defend their communities and way of life against the Western world’s encroachment. It can help us re-consider the role of consumerism’s perceived link to happiness if that “happiness” causes us to destroy pristine rainforests only to construct expansive landfill sites once we are sufficiently bored with what we were told would make us happy. Thinking on a planetary level can also cause us to make wiser decisions about how we view and reconcile those attitudes and actions that have resulted in climate breakdown or widespread plastic pollution.
Finally, extending the circles of concern to include the environment explicitly highlights the moral obligation we have to use our capacity on behalf of the plants, animals, and the planet generally, to ensure our collective well-being (theirs and ours). This is even more necessary given that humankind has, through intensive fossil fuel extraction and mass deforestation, amongst other things, negated, or sufficiently reduced, nature’s ability to offer providential care and support our ability to flourish.
The Stoic goal of “living according to nature” – illustrated in Hierocles´ Circles of Concern – is a challenging process that involves deprivation and self-control elaborated in the comprehensive Stoic virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. The road to new insight and change of the negative consumer patterns for the citizens of the Baltic Sea Region and the Nordic countries in general involves comprehensive education of Lifelong Learning in schools, universities, and other institutions supported by EU: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/infographics/lifelonglearning/
