The emergence of Thomas Berry

Thomas Berry (not to be confused with Wendell Berry) was a Catholic priest of the Passionist order and the president of the American Teilhard Association. However, his interpretations of both Christianity and Teilhard strike me as somewhat idiosyncratic. In fact, there is very little distinctively Christian about Berry's book "The Great Work". Nor is it particularly Teilhardist, although some influences are visible. Essentially, Berry was a Green pantheist, and his book will strike a familiar chord among deep ecologists, ecofeminists, some Neo-Pagans and perhaps some Buddhists. Indeed, Berry never mentions his formal Catholic identity in "The Great Work", although he does reference Teilhard a number of times.

Berry doesn't explicitly deny the existence of a transcendent divine reality, but he doesn't seem to regard it as central. The universe is the only self-referential, self-explanatory object within the "phenomenal world". Indeed, the universe *is* the phenomenal world. Therefore, humans should relate to and commune with the universe, and all human ethics should be derived from the universe. Indeed, they should be subordinated to the "creation processes" of said universe. Berry is opposed to a religion which centres on the transcendent. "Creation processes" are more important than "redemption processes". We must stop to look upon the world as something imperfect we must seek release from, or radically change in our image. Instead, we should embrace it as it is.

Berry sees the universe as poised between two forces, one expanding, creating and wild, the other opposing, limiting and contracting. (Coleridge?) None of the forces are consistently "good" or "evil", although Berry seems to prefer the expanding force of wildness. The universe is ever-evolving and presumably poised between the two forces in a somewhat uneasy manner. Berry admits that evil and suffering are part of the universe, but regards this as the inevitable by-product of the creative force.

Further, the author argues that evolution is emergent and in some sense teleological. Humans are a natural part of the universe, in a sense its "highest" part. In humans, the universe finally becomes conscious and celebrates itself. Conversely, humans can find fulfilment only by communing with the rest of the universe. Thus, while Berry shares the progressive evolutionary perspective of Teilhard (and the hard-nosed attitude to the inevitability of evil and loss), he never follows his mentor all the way to the Omega Point. Teilhard's speculations about the noosphere and the Cosmic Christ sound anthropocentric in the extreme. In my opinion, Berry has problems squaring emergent evolution with deep ecology, according to which humans *aren't* fundamentally different from everything else. Indeed, if the universe is the only thing that exists (de facto), why reject a new, techno-utopian or otherwise super-transcendent phase of emergent evolution? Why stop at something resembling pre-modern society? Ray Kurzweil or Ken Wilber are more consistent believers in emergence as a fundamental property of the cosmos.

One of Thomas Berry's fundamental notions is harmony. Everything in the universe has its proper place, and all living organisms have inherent value and rights. So have biota. Berry bemoans the fact that the U.S. constitution doesn't give nature rights and legal standing. But this, too, is contradictory since (of course) there cannot be harmony in a constantly evolving universe. There must of course be ecological balance, but this can be accomplished in several ways. Here's one example: when humans exterminated the great auks, the fish population in the northern Atlantic must have increased dramatically, making it possible to establish commercial fishing on a large scale. However, as long as there is no over-fishing, there is still an overall ecological balance. This might be tough for great auks, but so what? The universe doesn't seem to mind! Here is another example, more hypothetical this time: imagine that the reserves of oil won't peak until the year 2300. Imagine further that some form of carbon sequestration works, and that electricity can be generated from thorium reactors. Add genetic engineering to this spicy dish (perhaps algae can be made to produce oil?), and you get my point. Berry would oppose a super-artificial, super-technological civilization like this, but at least hypothetically, it could create some kind of balance with a (radically altered) environment. Sure, it will collapse one day, but hey, so did the dinosaurs, Neanderthals and Romans. Evolution, anyone?

Thus, the inherent value Berry believes exist in every living organism (and the biosphere itself) cannot really be derived from his evolutionary perspective. Logically, Berry should have a static view of the universe, similar to that of René Guenon and the Traditionalists. The author has problems accounting for the human species, which doesn't seem to have a "proper place" in the first place! However, if humans are natural products of evolution, then their exotic ability to change their environment is just as natural as the rest of the biosphere. Berry is opposed to the idea that we don't really belong here, that we are some kind of aliens (alien spirits?) trapped in a hostile world, but if we are natural, then an artificially created balance or harmony is neither more nor less desirable than the pre-modern or pre-human balance. It's neither good nor evil. It just is.

Of course, "The Great Work" is right that our present civilization is unsustainable. That conclusion, however, can be reached on purely pragmatic grounds. The real question is how to justify the deep green ethics of the author, provided we believe they can and should be justified? Ironically, they can't be justified merely by pointing to the immanent "creation processes" of a material or panpsychist universe. These processes also include extinction events which doesn't affect the whole, and other things Berry would no doubt found unacceptable. Even Berry's philosophy needs a transcendental dimension (presumably some kind of deep ecology deity) to be consistent. But it's precisely this transcendental perspective that the author has rejected in an attempt to create an Earth-centred pantheism!

Without transcendence, Thomas Berry is left with the wild evil and suffering of emergent evolution.