The eternal stranger

Neil Evernden's book "The Natural Alien" is a complex philosophical book defending a form of deep ecology. Still, the book is relatively easy to read, certainly for a philosophy book!

Only a bare outline of the argument is possible here.

Evernden criticizes the reductionist and materialist scientific worldview. It has denuded the world in general and nature in particular of value and meaning. The scientific perspective isn't "wrong" but it's grossly incomplete. Ultimately, all worldviews are equally "subjective" or perspectivist, the worldview of a tick as much as the worldview of the scientist. Besides, human worldviews usually include value and meaning as an immediate perception - only the reductionist analysis of modern science reduces the world to a collection of mere objects, ready to be exploited at will by a subject that stands outside and above them. The author believes that only a return to a more holistic perspective (the immediate and spontaneous perspective of man) can end our destruction of nature.

Philosophers referenced by the author include Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Martin Heidegger and Martin Buber. Mary Midgley and Marjorie Grene are also mentioned. Evernden is also inspired by R.D. Laing's book "The Politics of Experience". Another source of inspiration is M.D. Abrams' classical analysis of the Romantic movement, "Natural Supernaturalism". The author could perhaps be described as an existentialist neo-romantic and deep ecologist.

Evernden believes that humans have evolved in a curious direction compared to other animals. Humans are "natural aliens", "eternal strangers" or "exotics" everywhere, even in the environment where they first evolved. Humans are creatures without a niche, organisms without a predetermined role, who must create and recreate themselves anew in each generation. We are born open-ended and are characterized by a kind of eternal youthfulness. Culture is therefore a biological imperative: man must create a culture as his special niche, in order to survive and thrive. This is both an opportunity and a tragedy, since it means that humans always have a potential to become alienated from nature. Western civilization has made matters worse by its reductionist science, taking away the whole point of culture, i.e. its meaning and values.

While I agree with some of the points raised by the author, I'm not "Green", at least not in the sense the term is traditionally used. Rather, I would like to see a synthesis of the modern and the premodern, a synthesis pointing towards the future rather than nostalgically sighing for a lost, Romanticized past (the real position of this book).

However, since "The Natural Alien" is an interesting and competent exposition of a Green philosophy, I nevertheless recommend it.