Herr Murray Bookchin´s revolution in science

"Dude, another all-knowing Hegelian?!
And in America this time!"

"The Philosophy of Social Ecology" is a collection of five essays written by Murray Bookchin, detailing the philosophical basis of his home-spun ideology, known as Social Ecology. Bookchin calls his philosophy "dialectical naturalism". It seems to be freely based on Hegel. Another source of inspiration might be Hans Jonas, but Bookchin mentions him only in passing.

I'm not sure why the author calls his philosophy "dialectical", since he seems to reject Hegel's logic and criticizes Engels for mechanical thinking. He does talk about "speculative reason" which sees the "potentialities" in phenomena. However, it's difficult to see in what sense Bookchin's speculative reason is different from common sense reason. For instance, he rejects determinism, which means that the future can never be predicted in advance. If so, how can Bookchin *really know* which "potentialities" exist in a phenomenon? He cannot, unless they have already been actualized (in whole or in part), i.e. become accessible to the reason of ordinary mortals. But then, what's the *point* of calling the exercise "dialectics"?

Hegel, Marx and Engels divined the inevitable future with their dialectics (or at least claimed to do so). Perhaps Bookchin wanted to believe that Social Ecology and libertarian municipalism really were inevitable or somehow cosmic? Or perhaps the "dialectical naturalism" is a residue from Bookchin's own Marxist past?

Bookchin believes that both reductionist materialism and deep ecology are equally "dualist", the former calling for human conquest of nature, the latter preferring Nature's conquest of Man. The author's alternative is to regard human "second nature" as an evolutionary product of "first nature". While humans are in one sense qualitatively different from animals and plant, they are nevertheless rooted in nature, which in turn means that the potentiality for reason, rationality, freedom and cooperation exist in nature itself. As the highest product of nature, humans have a responsibility to become custodians of nature, not simply for their own benefit, but somehow on behalf of all living creatures. Since ethics can be based on the tendency within nature to ever-increasing freedom, rationality and cooperation, God or a supernatural realm don't have to be postulated. Hence Bookchin's philosophy is wholly naturalist.

But here, various contradictions creep in. Thus, in the introductory essay (presumably written after the four others), Bookchin claims that destructive and evil human behaviour is a product of our remaining "animality", while cooperation is suddenly connected to our "humanity". This sounds like a throwback to the dualism attacked in the earlier essays ("nature red in tooth and claw"). In the essays, Bookchin writes in an extensive footnote that nature is neither hierarchic nor egalitarian, but characterized by complementarity and mutualism, two terms that the author claims are neutral and purely descriptive. To be honest, I don't believe him! I think Bookchin really does want to believe in Kropotkin's positive vision of nature as characterized by "mutual aid".

"The Philosophy of Social Ecology" also contains Bookchin's usual attacks on deep ecology, primitivism and New Age flim flam. He does score some points, but at bottom Bookchin's dialectical naturalism is also a kind of "spiritual" position. It could be seen as a species of pantheism. An evolutionary and teleological form of pantheism, perhaps?

Personally, I consider these essays in this book to be badly written, somewhat rambling and frankly boring. I was also somewhat surprised that Bookchin's social ecology was an entire ideology, based on a specific philosophy. I originally assumed that Bookchin was simply one of many anarchistic red-greens. Apparently, the man had somewhat higher ambitions...