3: The Dialectic of Nature and Culture

It is likely that Reclus’ most enduring intellectual legacy will be his contribution to the development of the modern ecological worldview and his role in the creation of radical ecological social thought.[61] More specifically, he is important for introducing a strongly ecological dimension into the tradition of anarchist and libertarian social theory. This tradition, like Western thought in general, has been marked by humanity’s alienation from the natural world and its quest to dominate nature. Yet it has been, on the whole, more successful than most others in uncovering the roots of this alienation, looking beyond the project of planetary domination, and attempting to restore humanity to its rightful place within, rather than above, nature. Reclus made a powerful contribution to introducing this more ecological perspective into anarchist thought.

It is noteworthy that social geography had an impact on anarchist theory at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, just as social ecology has had a certain influence on anarchist thought in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century.[62] While this historical parallel is occasionally noted, the connection is usually made through reference to Kropotkin as a forerunner of ecological anarchism. Few commentators have understood that Reclus, much more than Kropotkin, introduced into anarchist theory themes that were later developed in social ecology and eco-anarchism. Indeed, Reclus explored these social ecological issues with considerable theoretical sophistication— more than a century ago.[63]

Béatrice Giblin, in her article “Reclus: An Ecologist ahead of His Time?” contends that Reclus “had a global ecological sensibility that died with him for almost a full half-century.”[64] This sweeping generalization is in some ways even an understatement of the case. The kind of ecological perspective that Reclus developed, especially in his great culminating work, Man and the Earth, effectively disappeared from mainstream social thought early in the century and did not reemerge significantly until well into the 1970s, in response to growing public awareness of the ecological crisis. In the meantime, ecological thinking remained an undercurrent of anarchist and utopian thought and practice, as, for example, in the work of such communitarian groups as the School of Living of Ralph Borsodi and Mildred Loomis.[65] However, it did not become a central theme in anarchist and utopian theoretical discussion until the ideas of Paul Goodman and Murray Bookchin began to have a noticeable influence in the late 1960s.[66]

It has been noted that Reclus begins the first volume of his magnum opus of social theory with the epigraph “Man is nature becoming selfconscious.”[67] This concept—literally, that humanity is “nature taking consciousness of itself”—captures the essence of Reclus’ message: that humanity must come to understand its identity as the self-consciousness of the earth and that it must complete the process of developing this consciousness in history. In effect, he proposes a theoretical project of understanding more fully our place in nature and of unmasking the ideologies that distort it, and a corresponding ethical project of assuming, through a transformed social practice, the far-reaching moral responsibilities implied by that crucial position. On the basis of this approach, he seeks to explain the development of human society in dialectical interaction with the rest of the natural world, and he expounds a theory of social progress in which human self-realization and the flourishing of the planet as a whole can finally be reconciled with one another.

Reclus always had a strong sense of humanity’s intimate connectedness to the natural world. Even in his early work, he eloquently describes humanity’s character as an expression of the earth’s creativity and our kinship with all of life. “We are,” he says, “the children of the ‘beneficent mother,’ like the trees of the forest and the reeds of the rivers. She it is from whom we derive our substance; she nourishes us with her mother’s milk, she furnishes air to our lungs, and, in fact, supplies us with that wherein we live and move and have our being.”[68] Throughout his works, he remains true to this integral, holistic vision of humanity-in-nature. While his studies became increasingly scientific, technical, and minutely detailed, he never abandoned the esthetic, poetic, and even spiritual aspects of his attitude toward nature but rather synthesized these dimensions in his farranging, integrative perspective. Such a fusion of forms of rationality and imagination that have so often been opposed to one another in Western thinking is one of the most noteworthy dimensions of Reclus’ thought.[69]

Similarly, Reclus seeks to integrate a theoretical and scientific understanding of nature with an awareness of the practical implications of such an understanding. His social geography is a thoroughly political geography, constantly exploring the question of what one might call “the politics of self-conscious nature.” Yves Lacoste, the contemporary French geographer who has perhaps done most to revive interest in Reclus, contends that while Reclus was “the greatest French geographer,” he has been “completely misunderstood” because of the “central epistemological problem of academic geography: the exclusion of the political.”[70] Lacoste finds it ironic that recent discussions of social geography systematically “forget” Reclus’ massive six-volume work in which social geography is the “main thread.”[71] The situation parallels in some ways the reception of social ecology and radical political ecology today. Such perspectives are sometimes granted validity to the extent that they point out that “all things are connected,” including ecological and social realities, but they often lose credibility when they begin to explore the nature of that connection—and dare to find the roots of ecological crisis in the existence of the centralized nation-state and the corporate capitalist economy.

Such parallels should not be surprising, for the connections between Reclus’ social geography and social ecology in particular are in many ways quite striking. To the extent that social ecology remains radically dialectical, one of its fundamental interpretive principles is the concept that every phenomenon incorporates within itself the history of that phenomenon. Reclus uses much the same concept to guide his social geography when he observes that “present-day society contains within itself all past societies.”[72] He also applies it to human nature, expressing a variation on the idea that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. In his formulation, “man recollects in his structure everything that his ancestors lived through during the vast expanse of ages. He indeed epitomizes in himself all that preceded him in existence, just as, in his embryonic life, he presents successively various forms of organization that are more simple than his own.”[73]

There is thus for Reclus a continuity of development in both natural and social phenomena, in which the earlier stages are preserved in the later ones. This does not, however, imply any sort of strict deterministic outlook. Rather, our knowledge of continuities and determinants is seen as contributing to the increased freedom that results from an accurate understanding of the nature of things. Interestingly, Reclus does not hesitate to recognize similarities between “monarchy” in human society and “monarchy” within animal species, as in the case of some primates species with groups having dominant individuals, or, as he depicts them, “recognized chiefs.”[74] Bookchin, on the other hand, completely rejects any such attributions on the ground that many essential features of human hierarchies do not exist in the animal communities that are described as hierarchical. He seems to fear that the use of such terminology might imply that human institutions are biologically based and therefore not subject to social transformation. Reclus would certainly recognize the significant differences between human and primate hierarchies, yet he sees the use of such terminology as no threat to his anarchist principles or his hopes for humanity. In his analysis, such language draws attention to a certain continuity between phenomena in the human and natural worlds. Yet from the history of humanity one can learn that social hierarchies are contingent, historically developed institutions that may be rejected if human beings choose to organize their communities in other ways.

Although Reclus believes we can learn much about existing social phenomena through the study of the evolution of all forms of life, his primary focus is on discovering the nature of these phenomena through the examination of their evolution over the history of human society in particular. Such an analysis will guide us in understanding both the structure of and the contradictions within present-day societies. In his analysis of these societies, he discovers that each of them “is composed of superimposed classes, representing in this century all successive previous centuries with their corresponding intellectual and moral cultures,” and that when they are “seen in close juxtaposition, their vastly differing conditions of life present a striking contrast.”[75] Through the investigation of these classes, Reclus seeks to uncover certain fissures in the social structure that are usually concealed by the dominant integrative ideologies. It can thus be shown how the hidden legacy of social domination reveals itself in contemporary social conflicts.

For Reclus, it is necessary to develop a critical consciousness of past historical development if we are ever to transcend the legacy of domination. Such an awareness is a precondition for the conscious creation of a future collective history, a process conceptualized by Reclus as humanity’s attempt “to realize itself through one form that encompasses all ages.”[76] As the species comes to see itself as part of a historical and geographical whole, it attains both self-consciousness and a corresponding freedom. We gain the ability “to free ourselves from the strict line of development determined by the environment that we inhabit and by the specific lineage of our race. Before us lies the infinite network of parallel, diverging, and intersecting roads that other segments of humanity have followed.”[77] It is thus by comprehending the great diversity of human experience that humanity can achieve a unifying vision of its own history.

Just as in society unity is achieved through a recognition of diversity, in nature a unifying harmony is attained through diverse and often discordant elements. Although the ecological perspective has often been identified with a rather one-sided emphasis on harmony, balance, and order, recent discussions in ecological theory have challenged the dominant (ecosystemic, “balance of nature”) model. Indeed, some theorists, inspired by postmodernist thought, have embraced the opposite extreme, seeing only disorder and chaos in nature. Reclus long ago supported a more judicious and theoretically balanced dialectical view that avoids the extremes of overemphasizing either order or chaos.[78] There is indeed, according to Reclus, a harmony and balance in nature, but it is one that operates through a tendency toward discord and imbalance. He notes that “as plants or animals, including humans, leave their native habitat and intrude on another environment, the harmony of nature is temporarily disturbed”; however, these introduced types either die out or adapt to the new conditions, making a contribution to nature as they “add to the wonderful harmony of the earth, and of all that springs up and grows upon its surface.”[79] Thus, to the extent that there is a “balance of nature” it is not a simple balance of elements but rather a complex balance of order and disorder.

Reclus’ deeply holistic account of natural processes often prefigures contemporary ecological analyzes. An example is his discussion of the function of forests in global ecological health. He laments the reckless and destructive actions of the “pioneers” of both North and South America, who burned huge expanses of ancient forest in order to establish agriculture, “at the same time burning the animals, blackening the sky with smoke, and casting to the wind ashes that scatter over hundreds of kilometers.”[80] He notes that while this action was shortsighted even from a narrowly economic point of view, the great loss is that the forests have been prevented from playing “their part in the general hygiene of the earth and its species,” which is “an essential role.”[81] Reclus sounds strikingly contemporary in proposing a health model of ecological soundness in which human health is linked to the health of ecosystems. Using strongly organicist imagery, he suggests that the earth “ought to be cared for like a great body, in which the breathing carried out by means of the forests regulates itself according to a scientific method; it has its lungs which ought to be respected by humans, since their own hygiene depends on them.”[82] He also incorporates the esthetic dimension in his holistic view of nature when he describes the earth as “rhythm and beauty expressed in a harmonious whole.”[83] His discussion is strongly reminiscent of Aldo Leopold’s land ethic, which stresses concern for “the health of the land,” in the sense of “the capacity of the land for self-renewal,” and famously defines “rightness” in terms of what “tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.”[84]

Recent ecological thought has devoted a great deal of attention to the problem of anthropocentrism, a view that places human beings in a hierarchical position over all other beings and reduces all value in “external nature” to a merely instrumental one in relation to human ends. Reclus may sometimes sound rather anthropocentric, particularly when he focuses on the various “conquests” involved in human progress. However, his social geography actually constitutes a great step in the direction of incorporating humanity fully into the life and history of the planet. What is striking about his viewpoint is the degree to which he was able to transcend many of the dominant ideas of his century in shifting from an entirely humancentered to a more earth-centered perspective. The comments of an early commentator, Edward Rothen, in a memorial tribute, indicate the extent to which Reclus’ approach could seem even in his own day to constitute a break with the dominant human-centered ideology. According to Rothen, Reclus “completely rejected that anthropomorphism which made man, the image of God, the sovereign of a world created only for the satisfaction of his needs and his whims.”[85] Reclus “thought it stupid to deny a soul to animals, to plants and to all that is still termed ‘insensible matter,’ as if such matter could be found anywhere in the universe.”[86] His view constitutes, according to Rothen, an “infinite pantheism” that “perceives an immense solidarity between all that lives.”[87] Considering his recognition of the continuity and underlying unity of all being, and the awe with which he contemplated nature, this certainly captures an important dimension of Reclus’ outlook. Reclus did not choose to use the term “pantheism” to refer to his worldview. Nevertheless, one finds in his works such passages as the following, from his chapter on “Bathing” in his History of a River: “It seems that I have become part of the surrounding milieu; I feel as if I am one with the floating aquatic plants, one with the sand swept along the bottom, one with the current that sways my body.”[88] The sensibility expressed here is certainly close to what is sometimes called “nature mysticism” or “pantheism.”

What is clear is that Reclus wished to situate humanity within the context of a larger reality of which it is a part. Far from being anthropocentric, Reclus’ view of humanity’s place in nature is dialectical, critically holistic, and developmental. In a sense, it might be called an “emergence” theory, if it is understood that for him humanity is emerging within nature rather than out of it. His analysis in some ways parallels the division of the natural world made by Bookchin and various other social and political ecologists who adopt the ancient distinction between a “first nature” and a “second nature,” corresponding more or less to the natural world and the social world, both of which are seen as developing dimensions of a larger “nature.”[89]

Reclus also delineates such realms of being in nature, but his analysis is a bit more complex than these. There is, on the one hand, that sphere of nature that can exist independently of humanity, and that had, indeed, existed for eons before nature began to “become conscious of itself” through the development of humanity. As humanity emerges, it remains in intimate interrelationship with an external sphere of nature, and the complex relationships of interdependence between the two realms take on an increasingly planetary dimension. Reclus calls the realm of natural being that has arisen and related itself to the rest of nature “the human social milieu.”

However, the social world does not constitute for Reclus merely a “second nature,” for it is itself dual and thus might be said to encompass both a “second” and a “third nature.” He calls the former “the static milieu” or “the natural conditions of life,” while he labels the latter “the dynamic milieu” or “the artificial sphere of existence.” The first sphere, even though it is shaped by human culture, constitutes our most immediate embeddedness in nature and thus has a certain degree of natural necessity. The second sphere is much more subject to human direction and is therefore more a realm of social contingency. For Reclus, there is “a quite marked distinction between the facts of nature, which are impossible to avoid, and those which belong to an artificial world, and which one can flee or perhaps even completely ignore. The soil, the climate, the type of labor and diet, relations of kinship and marriage, the mode of grouping together, these are the primordial facts that play a part in the history of each man, as well as of each animal. However, wages, ownership, commerce, and the limits of the state are secondary facts.”[90] In defense of the contingent nature of the institutions he associates with “secondary facts,” he observes that many earlier societies managed to exist without them. He argues for the theoretical priority of the “static milieu,” since it has always existed and has often had a determining force in social affairs. Although he admits that “quite often in the case of individuals the artificial sphere of existence prevails over the natural conditions of life,” he thinks that “it is necessary to study the static milieu first and then to inquire into the dynamic milieu.”[91]

The subtle relationship between the two spheres is, however, dialectical. For Reclus, this means that the influence of nature and of the “static milieu” is much greater than historians and social theorists have recognized. In the development of society over history “nothing is lost,” because “the ancient causes, however attenuated, still act in a secondary manner, and the researcher can discover them in the hidden currents of the contemporary movement of society.”[92] While superimposed political and economic factors are often given primary recognition as social causes, “this second dynamic milieu, added to the primitive static milieu, constitutes a whole of influences within which it is difficult, and often even impossible, to determine the preponderance of forces. This is all the more true because the relative importance of primary and secondary forces, whether purely geographical or already historical, varies according to peoples and ages.”[93] Once again, a phenomenon—including even the social whole—can only be understood as the cumulative product of its entire history. Indeed, humanity itself, “with all its characteristics of stature, proportion, traits, and cerebral capacity,” is “the product of previous milieux multiplying themselves to infinity” since the origins of the species.[94]

In short, we reflect the earth and the regions of the planet in which we arose and developed. In Reclus’ words, “The history of the development of mankind has been written beforehand in sublime lettering on the plains, valleys, and coasts of our continents.”[95] While bioregionalism has only recently reintroduced this concept and brought it to the center of ecological thought, Reclus long ago developed the theme that human beings are, at the most fundamental level, regional creatures.[96] The relationship between humanity and the earth and its regions is a dialectical one, resulting from mutual interaction, as the earth expresses itself through humanity, and as humanity acts upon the earth. For Reclus this interaction includes not only harmonious interaction but also humanity’s struggle with the rest of the natural world. It is important to recognize that “the accordance which exists between the globe and its inhabitants” cannot be described adequately through a one-sided focus on terms like “harmony,” “balance,” and “oneness” that stress the existence of order since that very order “proceeds from conflict as much as from concord.”[97] Once again we find in the world a dialectic between order and chaos, in this case in the human relationship to nature.

Reclus is especially interested in analyzing the side of the interrelationship between humanity and nature that has been neglected by much of social thought throughout the modern period: the conditioning of the “social” by the “natural.” His position on this subject should not be confused with the tradition that begins with Montesquieu’s famous reflections on the influence of climate on society.[98] In such discussions, the appeal to natural influences becomes little more than an attempt to give an “objective” basis to the writer’s social and cultural prejudices, so that characteristics attributed to various peoples become essential qualities dictating strict limits for possible social change. This tradition culminates in such theories as Huntington’s “human geography,” in which the appeal to nature becomes the ideological justification for white supremacy and European hegemony.[99]

Reclus’ analysis should be distinguished from such views not only on the basis of his differing value commitments but also by his radically different methodology. In stressing the dialectical relationship between nature and culture, he focuses on the interaction between many natural and social factors in shaping human society, on the inevitability of change and transformation, and on the open-ended character of human and natural history. Far from attributing inherent, immutable qualities to peoples and cultures, he hopes that by understanding the determinants of the social world, all peoples can ultimately transform themselves into active, conscious agents in shaping their own liberation and self-realization, and that of the entire planet. His radically libertarian analysis illustrates the fact that the investigation of the influence of the natural world on cultural practices and social institutions does not necessarily have reactionary, authoritarian, or racist implications.

An example of Reclus’ analysis of the influence of natural geography on social institutions is his treatment of the history of ancient religions. He hypothesizes that the monotheism of the ancient Near East reflects the austere character of that region’s terrain. He remarks that one might generalize “that throughout the Semitic countries the splendid uniformity of tranquil spaces, illuminated by a violent sunlight, must have contributed mightily to giving a noble and serious turn to the concepts of the inhabitants. They learned to see things simply, without searching for great complications.”[100] He contrasts this unifying vision to the unity-in-diversity expressed in Indian religion and suggests that the latter corresponds to the natural features of India. Near Eastern mythology “bore no resemblance to the chaos of divine forces leaping out of nature in infinite variation that one finds in India, with its high mountains, great rivers, immense forests, and climate whipped into rages by the abundant rains and the fury of storms.”[101] Reclus notes that the “Hindu spirit” also perceived an underlying order and unity but that it naturally expressed this “single force” in “an infinite variety” of manifestations.[102]

Reclus also discusses the dialectic between nature and humanity, geography and society, in his discussion of the development of early Greek society. He notes that Greece consists of many basins or watersheds (to use bioregional terminology) divided from one another by rocky or mountainous terrain, and that “the features of the ground thus favored the division of the Greek people into a multitude of independent republics.”[103] On the other hand, the ubiquity of the sea, with the long coastline, many inlets, and surrounding islands, exerted a unifying force. The sea “acts as a binding element” and has “made the maritime inhabitants of Greece a nation of sailors—amphibiae, as Strabo called them.”[104] There is thus a dialectic both between the unifying and diversifying natural factors, and also between these natural factors and the social ones.

Reclus does not, it should be stressed, attempt to reduce the complexity of social phenomena, whether in ancient societies or any others, to a mere reflection of geographical qualities. Indeed, he often puts great emphasis on the significance of the economic, the technical, and other “material” determinants, not to mention the political and cultural ones, in shaping all aspects of society. Reclus lived in an age in which social analysis tended toward either an idealism in which material determinants were ignored or a materialism in which economic and technological determinants were attributed almost exclusive importance. In this context (which encompassed not only mainstream ideological thought but also most of radical social theory, in both its Marxist and anarchist varieties), Reclus wished to rectify the general neglect of the influence of the natural world on human history. His thought is therefore noteworthy for the degree to which it draws attention to natural and geographical factors that have been of historical importance in shaping human societies and that still exercise an influence both immediately and through the sedimentation of their effects within inherited social institutions.

Nature thus shapes humanity at the same time that humanity reshapes the natural world. While modern civilization has devoted much attention to the latter side of this dialectic, the power of humanity to transform nature, it has failed, however, to recognize the moral significance of nature as a dynamic realm of meaning, value and creativity. With this moral failing in mind, Reclus therefore launches a scathing critique of humanity’s abuse of the earth. In “The Feeling for Nature” he writes of the “secret harmony” that exists between the earth and humanity, warning that when “reckless societies allow themselves to meddle with that which creates the beauty of their domain, they always end up regretting it.”[105] He warns that when humanity degrades the natural world, it degrades itself. His analysis of this phenomenon is reminiscent of the view of Thomas Berry, who argues that the diversity and complexity of the human mind reflects the richness and complexity of the earth and its regions, so that in damaging the earth we harm ourselves not only physically but in our “intellectual understanding, esthetic expression, and spiritual development.”[106] Reclus states that “where the land has been defaced, where all poetry has disappeared from the countryside, the imagination is extinguished, the mind becomes impoverished, and routine and servility seize the soul, inclining it toward torpor and death.”[107] Of course, Reclus does not neglect the more obvious material damage to human society caused by ecological degradation. He notes that “the brutal violence with which most nations have treated the nourishing earth” has been “foremost among the causes that have vanquished so many successive civilizations.”[108]

Reclus believes that despite such abuses of the past there are many ways in which humanity can pursue its own good while achieving an ecologically sound and ethically grounded relationship with the natural world. One means of achieving this goal is to grasp the close link between the ethical and the esthetic and apply this understanding to our social practice. He believes that whether or not we carry out our ethical obligations to the natural world will have much to do with our esthetic appreciation of it. An ugly, degraded world will not be fulfilling to human beings, while a beautiful one will contribute to our own satisfaction and selfrealization. One of his most eloquent statements of the connections among the human good, human ethical choice, and the beauty of nature is found in his History of a Mountain. He says that

every people gives, so to speak, new clothing to the surrounding nature. By means of its fields and roads, by its dwellings and every manner of construction, by the way it arranges the trees and the landscape in general, the populace expresses the character of its own ideals. If it really has a feeling for beauty, it will make nature more beautiful. If, on the other hand, the great mass of humanity should remain as it is today, crude, egoistic and inauthentic, it will continue to mark the face of the earth with its wretched traces. Thus will the poet’s cry of desperation become a reality: “Where can I flee? Nature itself has become hideous.”[109]

Nevertheless, human transformative activities need not have such negative effects. Doing what is right from an ethical perspective can be identical with the creation and preservation of the beauty and integrity of the natural world. We can, Reclus says, find beauty in “the intimate and deeply seated harmony that exists between our own work and that of nature.”[110] Thus, as we contribute to the flourishing of the natural world we make our own lives richer and more fulfilling. It is quite possible to “assist the soil instead of inveterately forcing it,” and to achieve “the beautification as well as the improvement of his domain,” by giving “an additional grace and majesty to the scenery which is most charming.”[111] When this is done, human creative self-expression will be in accord with the creative self-expression of nature. We will have succeeded in “mak[ing] our existence as beautiful as possible, and, as best we can, adapt[ing] it to the esthetic conditions of our environment.”[112]

Reclus gives a number of examples of the ways in which humanity cooperates with the earth in producing goodness and beauty, rather than ruthlessly seeking to impose its will upon it. Although agriculture always involves significant human transformation of the landscape, there is no need for it to be a process of mining the soil. Reclus believes that it is quite possible for farmers to “comprehend” the land and to “humor” it by discovering which crops suit it best, and he contends that some forms of traditional farming have achieved this goal. He praises the Shaker communities for their symbiotic, mutualistic practices that make agriculture a “ceremony of love” in which all aspects of nature are “cherished.”[113] Writing in the 1860s, he remarks that there are also good examples in Europe of the way in which agricultural productivity can be reconciled with the beauty of the landscape. He remarks that “a complete alliance of the beautiful and the useful” has been attained in certain areas of England, Lombardy, and Switzerland, places where agriculture is in fact “most advanced.”[114] As other instances of such a beneficial alliance, he cites the draining of marshes in Flanders to produce farmland, the irrigation of the barren Crau region, the planting of olive trees along the slopes of the Apennines and Alps, and the replacement of Irish peat bogs by diverse forests.[115] In History of a Mountain he notes that ancient alluvial deposits near the Pyrenees were transported by canal in order to build up and enrich the “naked plains” of the Landes, or moors, of southwest France. He comments that in such undertakings one “certainly” must see “considerable progress.”[116]

Reclus makes a strong case that such undertakings have increased natural beauty of certain kinds in addition to being useful for human society. He can thus be looked upon as a forefather of bioregional agriculture as later developed in the work of thinkers such as Wendell Berry and Bernard Charbonneau.[117] However, it seems that in discussions such as those just cited, Reclus exhibits a bias in favor of more humanized rather than relatively wild landscapes. In general, he seems much less sensitive to the natural beauty of the austere terrain of rugged mountains and plains or the rich wildness of a swampland than to the appeal of more pastoral landscapes. Similar questions have been raised concerning later theories that tend toward an “ecological humanism,” as, for example, Bookchin’s version of social ecology. However, if social geography and social ecology seem at times to exhibit a one-sided pastoralism, this is a quality of specific versions of these theories, rather than a fundamental limitation of either. Both theories in their strongest formulations encompass a dialectical view of the relationship between humanity and nature and a grasp of the importance of nondomination, spontaneous development, and unity-in-diversity in the self-realization of the whole. They are therefore in principle fully capable of recognizing the importance of both humanized and pastoral landscapes as well as wilder and biologically more diverse ecosystems.[118]

Throughout Reclus’ works, there is a tension between his expression of an emerging holistic, ecological perspective and his retention of certain aspects of the dualistic, human-centered outlook that was so common in his age. In an early work, he exhibits the latter tendency rather strongly when he remarks favorably that science is “gradually converting the globe into one great organism always at work for the benefit of mankind.”[119] This rather extravagant conception of the earth’s processes as a vast conspiracy to benefit our species is far from Reclus’ later, more dialectical analysis.

There, humanity is integrated into the planetary whole as the consciousness of the earth, and the healthy functioning of the earth’s metabolism is seen to benefit humanity as one part of that flourishing whole. The idea that science might control the entire earth in any way vastly exaggerates the power of technological processes. Reclus claims that these processes have the capacity to make the earth into “that pleasant garden which has been dreamed of by poets in all ages.”[120] Such an image of the earth errs through an overemphasis on stasis, neglecting the element of dialectical tension that must always characterize human confrontation with the otherness of nature. This imagery tends to legitimate the destruction of the ecologically necessary wildness and freedom of the natural world, and to idealize a domesticated, highly humanized natural world that is far from being an authentically ecological conception. Fortunately, such tendencies became more muted in Reclus’ later works, though they do not disappear entirely.[121]

It should be recognized that Reclus was from the outset a forceful critic of various assaults on nature that were accepted with complacency by his contemporaries. He judges that in civilization’s dealings with nature, “everything has been mismanaged,” so that what is left is “a pseudo-nature spoiled by a thousand details—ugly constructions, trees lopped and twisted, footpaths brutally cut through woods and forests.”[122] He judges that in view of humanity’s ravaging of the natural world, it will be necessary to undertake an extensive process of ecological restoration, a topic that has only recently gained widespread attention in ecological thought with the rise of conservation biology. Reclus states that “a reckless system has defaced [nature’s] beauty,” and it will therefore be necessary for “man” to “endeavor to restore it” and to “repair the injuries committed by his predecessors.”[123]

Reclus sees the project of moving from an exploitative relationship to nature to an ecologically sound one as having both subjective, ideological as well as objective, institutional aspects. He points out that human interaction with nature has not been guided by “a sentiment of respect and feeling” for nature but rather by “purely industrial or mercantile interests.”[124] For a fundamental change to take place in humanity’s relationship to nature, a revolution in values must certainly take place. But the ideological transformation that will result in the triumph of “respect and feeling” can only succeed if there is a complementary process of social transformation, a change that would overturn the dominance of those “industrial or mercantile interests.” According to Reclus, a “complete union of Man with Nature can only be effected by the destruction of the boundaries between castes as well as between peoples.”[125] This implies for Reclus (as will be discussed in chapter 6) the destruction of the system of economic inequality and exploitation embodied in capitalism, the system of political domination inherent in the modern state, the system of sexual hierarchy rooted in the patriarchal family, and the system of ethnic oppression rooted in racial hierarchies. In short, the domination of nature will continue as long as humanity remains under the sway of a vast system of social domination.

In his analysis of the effects on nature of such an exploitative society, Reclus showed a level of awareness of the dangers posed by the destruction of biodiversity and by ecological disruption that was unusual for his time. In The Earth, he presents examples of the extinction of species caused by human “destruction,” “slaughter,” and “butchery,” concluding that human activity has caused a “rupture in the harmony primitively existing in the flora of our globe.”[126] Long before wilderness preservation became an organized movement with the establishment of the Wilderness Society in 1936, and indeed even before the establishment of the first national park in the United States in 1872, Reclus was in the 1860s warning of the dangers to ancient forest ecosystems in North America. He laments the destruction of “colossal” and “noble” trees such as the sequoias of the West Coast, a process that has resulted in “perhaps an irreparable loss” in view of the “hundreds and thousands of years” that will be necessary for the forest’s regeneration.[127] In History of a Mountain he attacks the clear-cutting of forests and asks whether one “is not tempted to curse” those who carry out such logging practices.[128] He also discusses the damage produced through the introduction into ecosystems (whether by intention or negligence) of exotic plants and animals, without consideration of their effects on ecological interrelationships. Here again, he focuses on a major ecological problem that has only recently gained widespread attention among those concerned with environmental issues. Reclus cites the poignant comment by the Maori of New Zealand that “the white man’s rat drives away our rat, his fly drives away our fly, his clover kills our ferns, and the white man will end by destroying the Maori.”[129]

On the other hand, Reclus’ discussions of demography and population growth seem to show less than adequate ecological insight, at least from today’s perspective. It was his opinion that the human population of 1.5 billion in his time was not only easily supportable but even “still very minimal, relative to the habitable surface of the earth.”[130] He did not seriously consider the possible impact on the biosphere if the human population were to double several times over the next century. At one point, he minimizes the significance of increases in human population by noting that if each person were given a square meter of space, everyone could fit into the area of greater London. Such a fact is, of course, entirely irrelevant from the standpoint of social geography. We could stand several persons in each square meter, some even on the shoulders of others, without learning very much about the interaction between human communities and the earth.[131]

Fortunately, his discussion of population is often much more nuanced than this, though still tinged with progressivist optimism. He is well aware of the fact that there is no optimal human population that can be calculated by means of arithmetic and plane geometry, or even discovered through more complex natural and social sciences. In this recognition, he was already far ahead of some contemporary advocates of simplistic conceptions of “carrying capacity.”[132] He notes that if the world consisted of a population of hunters, the earth could perhaps support a population of only 500 million, or one-third the actual population at the time he was writing. He cites various estimates of the possible sustainable human population and comments favorably on Ravenstein’s view that a population of six billion is a possible limit.[133] Nevertheless he expresses skepticism about all such estimates since there are numerous variables that cannot be predicted with any certainty. As an example he cites changes in methods of production, most notably in the area of agriculture. In his view, such changes would probably allow a much greater human population to be supported. He believes that when farming attains “the intensive character that science dictates,” the population will increase at “a completely unforeseen rate” and that “the expanse of good land, which is presently quite limited, cannot fail to grow rapidly, whether through irrigation, drainage, or the mixing of soils.”[134] Reclus did not consider the possibility that if vastly increased social and ecological costs of increased technological development led to a slowing of growth in productivity, the per capita supply of arable land dwindled with population growth, and ecological degradation caused the quality of the soil to deteriorate, exactly opposite conclusions concerning population would follow. Today, the significant slowing of population growth in much of the global South can be seen as a response to such problems, which have been aggravated by the additional burdens imposed by the neoliberal restructuring of the global economy.

Reclus shared with many of his progressivist contemporaries certain pronatalist attitudes and saw a decline in birth rates in parts of Europe as a sign of decadence. He moralizes about the fact that in the more affluent areas, natality drops drastically. He cites the examples of the départements of l’Eure and Lot-et-Garonne, where the death rate had surpassed the birth rate for most of the century, despite the fact that these are among the départements “whose soils have the greatest fertility.”[135] He attributes to the egoism of affluence the failure of the citizens to reproduce at a level that he thinks appropriate, and he presents the phenomenon as an example of how under capitalism the pursuit of individual self-interest conflicts with the general good. He notes that proprietors who fear the division of their land among numerous heirs find that having few offspring better serves their self-interest, and that the same holds for functionaries with modest incomes who want to move up in social status.[136] No doubt there is truth in his observations. But what he fails to note is that where egoism reigns, all social phenomena (including both the desire for offspring and the desire to limit the number of offspring) take on an egoistic coloring, and that their egoistic character in such a context says little about these phenomena “in themselves.”

Despite his pronatalist tendencies, Reclus did not share the widespread view that an increase in population was an unmixed blessing to society. He says that although “growth in numbers has been, without doubt, an element contributing to civilization, it has not been the principal one, and that in certain cases it can be an obstacle to the development of true progress in personal and collective well-being, as well as to mutual good will.”[137] It is likely that he would see significant population growth much more as an “obstacle” today, as ecological devastation accelerates, as the accompanying social crisis intensifies, and as a rapidly increasing human population has now surpassed the limit of six billion that even he, living in an optimistic age, considered plausible. Moreover, the conditions of production have changed in a sense contrary to the one he hoped for: their development under conditions of capitalist hegemony shows little promise of bestowing abundance on a rapidly expanding global population, while it threatens to destroy the biotic preconditions for supporting existing human and nonhuman populations at an “optimal level,” if indeed at any level at all.

An area in which Reclus was far in advance of his time, and in which he anticipated current debate in ecophilosophy and environmental ethics, is his effort to raise both ethical and ecological issues concerning our treatment of other species. His ideas are important in view of the fact that he was not only a pioneer in ecological philosophy but also an early advocate of the humane treatment of animals and of ethical vegetarianism. Even today, after several decades of discussion of “animal rights” and “ecological thinking,” there are few theorists who have attempted to think through the interrelationship between the two concerns. Yet more than a century ago, Reclus offered some highly suggestive ideas about how a comprehensive holistic outlook might encompass a serious consideration of our moral responsibilities toward other species.

Reclus observes that all social authorities, in addition to public opinion in general, “work together to harden the character of the child” in relation to animals used for food.[138] This conditioning, he says, destroys our sense of kinship with a being that “loves as we do, feels as we do, and might also progress under our influence, if it does not regress along with us.”[139] Much like the utilitarian defenders of animal welfare since Bentham, he objects to the suffering inflicted on individual animals raised for food, but from a larger perspective he also censures the injury caused to the species by the process of domestication. The flourishing and adaptive development of species that takes place in the wild is halted and then reversed, as the animal is increasingly reshaped or reengineered in conformity with its single role as a food resource.

As has been noted, Reclus links the ethical and the esthetic in his analysis of our relation to the phenomena of nature. He observes that the abuse of animals that we find to be morally repugnant is also repellent to our sensibilities. In this connection, he touches on the question of intrinsic value, a concept that is central to current debates in environmental ethics. He states that the “regression” of animals under human influence “is indeed one of the most deplorable results of our carnivorous practices, for the animals sacrificed to man’s appetite have been systematically and methodically made ugly, weakened, deformed, and degraded in intelligence and moral worth.”[140] Such a reduction of “moral worth” might refer to two aspects of the moral problem: first, that human treatment of animals reduces them to a level at which their lives and experience seem less valuable to human beings; and second, that the “debasing” treatment to which they are subjected reduces the animals’ capacity for the attainment of their own peculiar good and for experience that has value in itself. Reclus’ general discussion of animal issues indicates that he has both aspects in mind.

The importance of ethical vegetarianism for Reclus is that it “recogniz[es] the bonds of affection and kindness that link man to animals” and “extend[s] to our brothers who have been dismissed as inferior the feelings that have already put an end to cannibalism within the human species.”[141] In a letter he explains that there are spheres of moral obligation extending out from one’s own society, to humanity as a whole, and finally to all sentient beings:

For my part, I also include animals in my feeling of socialist solidarity. But I also say to myself: everything comes in degrees and our primary obligations begin immediately around us! Let us realize justice in the largest circle in which we can possibly do so: in the civilized circle first, then in the human circle. Every partial realization of an ideal increases our sensitivity and delicacy and makes us more capable of realizing a larger ideal. All that we accomplish for our neighbor moves us closer to those who are now distant from us. I am firmly confident that our harmonic society should embrace not only humans but also all beings that have consciousness of their lives.[142]

Though Reclus refers in such passages to an “extension” of our moral sentiments, his position goes far beyond the “moral extensionism” of certain ethical theorists who merely apply conventional, nonecological ethical concepts to nonhumans. Reclus instead undertakes a fundamental rethinking of the ethical. He believes that our treatment of other species reflects our level of awareness of our connectedness to the whole of nature and of our development of feelings that are in accord with such awareness. In his view, our growing knowledge of animals and their behavior “will help us to delve more deeply into the life sciences, increase our knowledge of the nature of things, and expand our love.”[143] Elsewhere he expresses his “fervent love of the justice that extends to all that lives, to the entire expanse of beings,”[144] and he refers to “the bond of solidarity” that unites him not only with “those beings that I respect and love” but also with “all that lives and suffers.”[145] For Reclus, we develop morally as the scope of our knowledge expands and as our attachment to the larger whole of life is strengthened.

Once again, the centrality of the concept of love to Reclus’ worldview is evident. His view of human moral development is noteworthy in relation to recent discussions of the distinction between the ethics of abstract moral principles and the ethics of care.[146] Reclus is unusual among nineteenth-century radical social thinkers in that he focuses so strongly on the importance of the development of moral feeling, compassion, and the practice of love and solidarity in everyday life. In his time, much of the radical opposition to the dominant order was fueled by a sense of injustice and outrage at the oppression and exploitation produced by that system. While this opposition certainly had an authentic ethical dimension, it also succumbed to the reactive mentality and spirit of resentment that Nietzsche so perceptively diagnosed in many versions of socialism, communism, and anarchism. Reclus’ outlook achieves a remarkable synthesis between, on the one hand, the concern for justice, knowledge and rationality, and on the other hand, the need for social solidarity and the development of care and compassion. In this, he has much in common with contemporary feminist ethicists who wish to restore the balance between these two sets of concerns.

Reclus’ conception of love and solidarity is also relevant to issues in contemporary ecophilosophy. While various recent theorists have offered “identification” with nature as an antidote to anthropocentric attitudes and practices, such proposals have sometimes remained on a rather idealist level at which identification has the character of an act of will, if not that of a leap of faith. Reclus is closer to the position of social ecology and bioregionalism on this issue, as in many other areas. For him, it is our growing knowledge (in the sense of both savoir, understanding; and connaître, being acquainted with) of the earth and its human and nonhuman communities that offers an expanded scope for identification and solidarity. As we come to know each realm more adequately, we achieve greater identification with our own species, identification with all the inhabitants of the planet, and finally, as “the conscience of the earth,” identification with the living, evolving planet itself. In this insight, Reclus anticipated some of the most profound dimensions of contemporary ecological thought.