Deep Ecology
écologie profonde / Soi écologique (deep ecology, ecological self)
A philosophical movement and stance coined by the Norwegian Arne Naess in 1973, in contrast to "shallow" ecology. Shallow ecology fights pollution and resource depletion, but in service of the health and prosperity of humans in wealthy countries: nature remains a stock to be managed for our comfort. Deep ecology, on the other hand, challenges the very image of "man-in-his-environment" in favor of a total relational field where organisms are nodes. Its inner driving force is *Self-realization*: the expansion of the narrow self, the ego, into a *Self* that identifies with a far vaster field of life. *Deep ecology* and *ecological Self* are the usual French loan translations.
The Shallow Ecology movement: Fight against pollution and resource depletion. Central objective: the health and affluence of people in the developed countries.
Here’s the translation, preserving all Markdown, links, italics, and symbols while aiming for idiomatic English:
The term deep ecology was introduced by Arne Naess in 1973, in an article with a programmatic title—The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement—which he revisits in this work. The entire gesture hinges on the opposition between two depths. “The Shallow Ecology movement: Fight against pollution and resource depletion. Central objective: the health and affluence of people in the developed countries.” Shallow ecology combats pollution and resource depletion, but its ultimate goal remains the health and prosperity of humans in developed nations. Nature here is merely an environment to be managed for our sake. “Écologie profonde” is nothing more than the French calque of deep ecology.
What Naess calls deep is the rejection of the “man-in-his-environment” image in favor of a relational, total-field image: organisms are not set against a backdrop but are nodes within a field of relations. The driving force behind this shift has a name—Self-realisation, rendered in English as “realization of the Self.” Naess capitalizes Self to distinguish it from the ego: we need not cultivate the ego (…) in order to realise our potentialities. (…) The sources of joy go deeper and farther. To realize oneself is not to retreat into the narrow self that seeks to “win”; it is to expand the child’s constricted self into a structure that encompasses other beings and forms of life. The “ecological Self” is this expanded Self, which identifies with a field larger than itself.
To be distinguished from shallow ecology: not because the latter is false, but because it remains anthropocentric—it tends to the planet as one maintains a reserve, for the benefit of affluent humans. Deep ecology shifts the center.
Also to be distinguished from the ecological Self and the ego: the expanded Self does not dissolve the individual. Naess insists—“do not think the individual self or ego is dissolved in the larger Self.” The diversity of beings remains; what changes is the scope of what the self recognizes as bound to it. Altruism then becomes superfluous: if one has truly expanded to include other living things, their well-being is already part of one’s own interest.