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A Review Essay on Marti Kheel’s Nature Ethics and Its Implications for a More Integrative Approach to Transpersonal Psychology

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A Review Essay on Marti Kheel’s Nature Ethics and Its Implications for a More Integrative Approach to Transpersonal Psychology
A Review Essay on Marti Kheel’s Nature Ethics and Its Implications for a More Integrative Approach to Transpersonal Psychology

Introduction

In Nature Ethics: An Ecofeminist Perspective (2008), ecofeminist Marti Kheel critically analyzes the contributions of four holistic environmental philosophers. Kheel argues that in basing their moral recognition of the value of other than human beings and the natural world on abstract constructs (e.g. species, ecosystems, or the transpersonal Self) these scholars have held masculinist orientations that neglect to adequately care for individual beings. This review essay will focus on Kheel’s criticisms of Warwick Fox’s (1995) Toward a Transpersonal Ecology and concepts from the field of transpersonal psychology more generally. Drawing from feminism, animal advocacy, environmental ethics, and holistic philosophy, Kheel suggests an approach to an ecofeminist holist philosophy, which “never transcends or denies our capacity for empathy and care, our most important human connection with the natural world” (p.251). Kheel emphasizes the importance of empathy and care for specific individual human and other than human beings, which entails enactment through concrete actions. In the following paragraphs brief overviews of Fox’s transpersonal ecology and transpersonal psychology will first be presented. These will be followed by a summarization of Kheel’s criticisms, which will be followed by a discussion of these in the context of ongoing debates and dialogues between proponents of the deep ecology movement and ecofeminist and transpersonal scholars, including a call to address the ecological crisis.
Fox’s Transpersonal Ecology
In the prologue to Toward a Transpersonal Ecology (1995), Fox stated his hope the book will inspire in readers further interest in gaining an ecocentric, i.e. nature-centered worldview and the lifestyles and political actions that might flow from such an orientation. Fox introduced the term



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