Reflections on the philosophical and social dimensions of the global ecological crisis

Reflections on the philosophical and social dimensions of the global ecological crisis

Final essay of the winter school in Yangon, Myanmar, January 2019
Matthias Pfaff

Background

Attentive observers of current political developments would probably agree that many societies across the globe are not in good shape. There seems to be a diffuse sense of discontent among many people from various backgrounds. They appear disillusioned with the promises of prosperity and well-being. As a result, political shifts have taken place in many parts of the globe, including the recent rise of populist political parties, a challenging of the capitalist society, xenophobia in conjunction with a fear of religious fundamentalism, and so on. All this hap- pens against the backdrop of climate change and the increased severity of other environmental problems, such as biodiversity loss, towards which many people by now only react with a sense of resignation rather than concern. The Indian-British writer Pankaj Mishra has summarized this widespread sentiment in a recent book by calling the current period the “age of anger” (Mishra, 2018).

The wide geographical and socio-cultural spread of this phenomenon begs the question of which circumstances gave rise to it. A natural direction to look in is that of material well-being. Have people come to the point where they do not accept their poor living conditions any more, or are they still too far away from the level of wealth that has been promised for decades? Proponents of the Western development model often resort to quantitative data that supposedly proves a far reaching increase in human development, including poverty reduction and improved education. While there certainly are success stories, such as recently illustrated by Roser (2019), critical voices point out that many people in the world are in fact not better off (e.g. Alvaredo et al., 2018; Stiglitz, 2002). At the same time, while quantitative analyses are useful in providing an empirical foundation of necessarily subjective perceptions, a dire economic perspective is unlikely to be refuted by being told that overall economic well-being has improved.

For those people who are economically better off, other phenomena may induce the aforementioned sense of discontent. There is a lingering threat of terrorism in many countries, the international political system seems to be more strongly headed towards disintegration than cohesion, and an increasing number of extreme weather events quite suddenly makes climate change an observable phenomenon for many people.

While the above phenomena could be described as symptoms, the underlying problem is identified by a number of authors as a failure of the Western model of political organization. For lack of a better term, I will describe this model of poli- tical organization as liberalism, despite its fuzzy connotation. The list of critiques of liberalism is long, so I will only touch on a small fraction, ranging from criti- ques of Enlightenment rationalism as the intellectual foundation of liberalism to non-Western accounts that emphasize the forgotten roles of virtue and spirituality.

This short essay attempts to draw a connection between my experiences at the winter school in Yangon in January 2019 and my interest in political philosophy. It is in part inspired by a recent radio broadcast of the German station Deutsch- landfunk, featuring the scholar of Islam Stefan Weidner, who offers in it a critical, mostly non-Western perspective on the concept of freedom in liberalism. The present essay is not intended to provide a systematic critique of liberalism, much less make a case for alternatives, but rather to argue that some of its failures are not due to bad execution of its principles but result from these very principles. Limited resources available for the completion of this essay will likely create some loose ends. However, I still hope that I can raise some interesting points. The following paragraphs will describe in more detail the critiques of liberalism which I have encountered and discuss possible new approaches which may alleviate some of liberalism’s problems.

Critiques of liberalism

Liberalism’s problems can be considered to start with its self-conception as a rational philosophy, based on “Enlightenment’s excessive faith in the power of reason, which shaded over into rationalism that could and often did undermine liberty, and equality and tolerance as well” (Galston, 2009, p.91). The reason for this lies in the absolutist character of rationalism as a guiding principle in contrast to its mystic predecessors, which could (rationally) be argued away due to their arbitrariness. If, on the contrary, rationalism and the scientific method led to certain conclusions about society, then it would be irrational to call them into question unless falsified through equally rational means. Many thinkers in this area see this as a very powerful source of legitimacy and a strong obstacle to a fundamental challenging of its validity.

Isaiah Berlin considers the pairing between uncompromising rationalism and a strong teleology as an especially problematic characteristic of liberalism’s intellec- tual heritage, since it could lead to the acceptance of great suffering in the name of some greater good in the future (Berlin, 2003). This is also one of the central arguments of Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno in Dialectic of Enlightenment, who investigate the causes of humanity’s descent into barbarism in the twentieth Century despite all economic, technological and thus supposedly social progress (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1969).

Regardless of the events in the early and mid-twentieth Century, the fall of the Soviet Union appeared to give final confirmation of the supremacy of liberalism and liberal democracy, as famously explicated by Fukuyama (1989). For the po- litical philosopher John Gray, this celebration of liberalism constitutes a case of quasi-religious utopian thinking, which has not left the perils of the earlier part of the twentieth Century behind, but is their root cause. According to this per- spective, liberal democracy, and with it free markets, finally present a solution to the problem of the human condition and progress is in this vein possible and desirable (Gray, 2008). This has cemented the view that liberalism is the only fea- sible philosophy and form of political organization and thus turned the world blind with respect to liberalism’s negative consequences as well as the contemplation of alternatives.

The conclusion to be drawn from these critical perspectives is not that libera- lism should be gotten rid of in favor of other forms of political organization, but to critically review its premises and its track record in achieving what it has promised. Liberalism’s premises are noble and most alternatives are difficult to justify if one accepts basic common denominators, such as universal human rights.¹ However, some of the premises already have theoretical problems, such as the tension bet- ween liberty and equality. It appears that their resolution is often not a matter of conscious effort but of historical circumstances, which reveals liberalism’s failures also on an empirical level. Many of today’s grievances cannot be solved through a liberal framework or, worse, are the result of the liberal order still dominated by the West. It thus appears appropriate to question liberalism’s premises and as well as its practical implementation.
In practical terms, this means that liberal societies have come to accept some of the behavioral patterns that appear to be either logical consequences of libera- lism’s premises or are at least not countered by them. These materialize in many areas of our common lives: politics and government, economics, education and science and technology. In the area of politics, the advocacy of negative liberty, among other things, has led to widespread privatism, resulting in a dissociation between citizens and the governing class. The focus on private concerns is sup- ported by ever increasing consumption choices in the economic realm, which are accompanied by a range of environmental problems. This consumption of mostly inconsequential products cannot, however, assuage new economic anxieties, for example with respect to living space, and discontent over increasing inequality. All of this is underlined by the proclaimed inevitability of globalization, while the negative consequences on the distribution of wealth are largely left untouched. In education, the focus has shifted from the “cultivation of the free person” to a new kind of “servile education”, which is geared towards the maximization of wealth and an abstract devotion to work (Deneen, 2018, p.13). At the same time, while passing through the educational system, students make the realization that the widening gap between elites and the rest of the population leaves only the choice between playing along by attempting to join the top of society or dropping out of the race and ending up at the bottom. This directly connects to the last area, science and technology, which make up the fields students are increasingly encouraged to study. In advocating this, “we still hold the incoherent view that science can liberate us from limits while solving the attendant consequences of that project” (Deneen, 2018, p.15). Deneen’s illustrations echo those of Horkhei- mer and Adorno, who already in the 1940s criticized the (intended or unintended) manipulation of society into docility and passivity while elites prosper.

What is then the result of decades in which liberalism has been the prevalent ideology and principle of political organization? Richard Norgaard provides a grave account of liberalism’s negative consequences, which is worth quoting at length (Norgaard, 1994):

• The coevolving natural and cultural worlds...became pauperized by the selective forces of modernity’s progressive, mechanical, hierar- chical life story. Looking back. . . we can now see how relatively minor differences over the best way to rationally organize people combined with personal and national egos and marred the century with world, regional, civil, and ethnic wars as well as costly arms races. While non-Western cultures gained a new shared vision, a new life story, they also lost self-respect and traditional values, knowledge, and technolo- gies disappeared in the process. All became distanced from each other as communities broke down and people became insulated by a complex web of market forces. While the new life story promised much in the future, it left most people, North and South, with an inferior status relative to the more scientifically informed. Poor countries became en- meshed in technological and financial imperialism, human creativity became trapped in bureaucratic social structures driven by instrumen- tal rationality, and within these entanglements, men dominated women by assuming the guardianship of rational thought, scientific knowledge, and its supporting enterprise. And nature in the end did not succumb but became despoiled, sullied, temperamental, ever less bountiful, ever less creative, and with all harmony with humanity lost.
•  

Looking ahead

If the liberal political order does not appear to be able to cope with the world’s problems or is even partly responsible for them, what should be done about it? Deneen (2018, p.xiv) summarizes the problem in the following way: “Liberalism created the conditions, and the tools, for the ascent of its own nightmare, yet it lacks the self-knowledge to understand its own culpability.” He thus suggests that the solutions to these problems cannot come from within liberalism itself.

This appears to also be the conclusion of mainly non-Western thinkers, who see a systematic problem with liberalism and essentially declare its failure. While they do not advocate a turn towards liberalism’s equally problematic alternatives, they shift the focus from the political to the individual level. In this, they do not so much emphasize individual rights but modes of thinking. Mishra (2004), for instance, suggests that orientation and spiritual footing can be sought in Buddhist philosophy and techniques.

Some scholars coming from the Islamic tradition advocate similar change on an individual level. Questioning the secular orientation of liberalism, Asad (2010) for instance calls for a stronger integration between religion, spirituality, their associated traditions, and politics. Hallaq (2018) goes further by rejecting the claim of a systemic character of today’s problems. Similar to Horkheimer and Adorno, he calls into question whether individuals are fully autonomous in a liberal order but at the same time does not absolve them of their structural connection to the problems. A more fundamental rethinking is thus necessary in order overcome them. This could be achieved by placing morality over the common ideals of liberalism. Using morality as a guiding principle of individual action could also entail the inclusion of other beings and thus serve as the basis for a stronger global environmentalism than the present version.

But some Western scholars, too, think in similar directions. Before Hallaq, Berlin (1969) emphasized the importance of moral notions in the sphere of politi- cal relations and therefore placed political theory in the realm of moral philosophy. Horkheimer and Adorno (1969) made the claim that despite being declared my- thical and outmoded by the forces of secularization, older rituals, religions, and philosophies have actually contributed to the positive aspects of Enlightenment and may still have something worthwhile to contribute to its heirs.

However, these are not the views of all Western commentators. A recent article in the German newspaper Su ̈ddeutsche Zeitung comes to the sobering conclusion that climate change cannot be stopped by calling for behavioral change on an individual level but has to be addressed through top-down political measures, comprising of administrative law and and price incentives (Weiss, 2019). It is thus in line with a seemingly growing consensus within the scientific and political communities, forcefully expressed by climate economist Ottmar Edenhofer of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in the run-up to the COP 24 climate conference in Kattowice, Poland, in December 2018. According to him, the only way to combat climate change is through aggressive carbon pricing, which creates economic incentives among otherwise disinterested people.

One can only hope that there is enough courage to question the premises be- hind such statements, namely that individuals understand their role in the political system mainly as defined by liberty and autonomy. Instead of taking human prefe- rences as given and appealing to systemic change, they should consider the words of yet another Western critical voice: “A better system will not automatically en- sure a better life. In fact, the opposite is true: only by creating a better life can a better system be developed” (Havel, 1992, p.162).
 

¹The philosophical foundation of universal human rights has been extensively debated with no conclusive outcome. Stammers (2015) proposes not to consult (Western) philosophy or religion for their justification, but to consider them more basically as arising from social movements. Their validity would thus arise from the fact that many people have fought for them historically, as in the case of labor rights.

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