Dialectical naturalism is a term coined by American
philosopher Murray Bookchin to describe the philosophical
underpinnings of the political program of social
ecology. Dialectical naturalism explores the complex interrelationship
between social problems, and the direct consequences they have on the
ecological impact of human society. Bookchin offered dialectical naturalism as
a contrast to what he saw as the "empyrean, basically antinaturalistic dialectical
idealism" of Hegel, and "the wooden, often scientistic dialectical materialism of orthodox Marxists."
Theory
The roots of dialectical naturalism are found in Hegel's own
writings on dialectical methodology, which lent itself to an organic, even
ecological interpretation. Bookchin interpreted the dialectical method's
strength as its unity of "developmental causality" with ontology.
"Dialectic," he notes, "is simultaneously a way of reasoning and
an account of the objective world, with a developmental ontology."
However, in contrast with its forebears in Hegel and Marx,
dialectical naturalism "does not terminate in a Hegelian Absolute at the
end of a cosmic development path, but rather advances the vision of an ever
increasing wholeness, fullness and richness of differentiation and
subjectivity." Thus, in the dialectical naturalist framework, there is no
"End of History," only the advancement of a
continued march of human social and individual self-understanding.
As a philosophy, dialectical naturalism stresses the
incorporation and advancement of scientific understanding as an integral part
of the development of an ecological human understanding. Bookchin rejected
"the revival of 'pre-scientific' archaisms," and stressed the
importance of incorporating a broad scientific understanding from the
literature of multiple disciplines. As such, the project of social ecology is a
holistic one, dealing with communities and ecosystems in their totalities not
just as the sum of their parts, but as the fullness of the interdependence of
the many diverse and special parts make, as the saying goes, the whole become
more than the sum of its parts. The dialectical unfolding of evolution, both
biological and cultural, leads to greater complexity and thus greater
subjectivity. Humans, the product of nature made self-aware, cannot be
conceived as the pinnacle of a food chain, but only one result of the
biological process. A process, which is so fundamentally dependent on diversity
among organic lifeforms and biospheres, requiring a "prudent rescaling of
man's hubris."
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