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Review article
Deep Ecology: Contemporary Bioethical Trends 1
Sandra Mijač 1, Goran Slivšek 2*, Anica Džajić 3
1 Department of Microbiology, Molecular Diagnostics Unit, Synlab Croatia, Zagreb, Croatia
2 Department of Intensive Medicine, Anaesthesiology, Intensive Medicine and Pain Management Clinic,
Clinical Hospital Centre Rijeka, Croatia
3 Department of Translational Medicine, Children’s Hospital Srebrnjak, Zagreb, Croatia
*Corresponding author: Goran Slivšek, goran.slivsek@xnet.hr
Received: Oct 15, 2022; revised version accepted: Feb 8, 2022; published: Apr 27, 2022
KEYWORDS: bioethics, ecological and environmental concepts, sustainable development,
One Health, public health
Abstract
Deep ecology emphasizes the importance of the ecological problems as a practical issue, and its
importance is in changing the human understanding of everything, including even man’s
understanding of who he is.
The aim of this paper was to present deep ecology, what it represents and how it has become a
significant ecological movement of the 20th century and to indicate the connection between
bioethics as new environmental ethics and deep ecology, as well as other environmental movements
which, in the contextualization of bioethics, emphasize changing the outlook on life, giving a better
knowledge of it, and allowing questioning of social actions and looking at events from different
aspects. The idea is to emphasize that man is not only an active, but also a responsible being which
is capable of making a paradigm shift in responsibility, and therefore, taking responsibility for all life
on Earth.
Content analysis and comparative method were introduced and applied for the requirements of
making this review.
Based on the obtained results, the review points to the need to create new ethics which could
introduce a general value system for all living and non-living things - a paradigm shift involving man
as part of nature and not opposed to it, and to successfully address these complex issues. It will take
a profound shift in human consciousness to fully comprehend that it is not only plants and animals
that need a safe habitat - because they can live without humans, but humans cannot live without
them.
(Mijač S, Slivšek G, Džajić A. Deep Ecology: Contemporary Bioethical Trends. SEEMEDJ 2022; 6(1); 129-
139)
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Introduction
From the beginning of man’s life on Earth, every
invention and discovery he had made to ease life
was about subduing nature for his benefit (1). The
reason why the problem began to appear, back
in ancient times, is the importance of the
presentation of the course of human thought
and how changing this thought has led to the
consciousness that in its expression subjugated
the entire world around itself (2). Deep ecology
emphasizes the importance of ecological
problems as a practical issue, and its importance
is in changing the human understanding of
everything, including man’s awareness of
himself (3). The result produced would be that
deep ecology, pointing to the value of all living
things, also wants to point to the responsibility
that people have in their environment. The new
ethics must also have the dimension of
sustainability, which can be accomplished in the
frame of bioethics, as an interdisciplinary area of
science. It is necessary to change awareness so
that people can re-establish a relationship with
nature without perceiving nature as a resource
from which man will have a (short-term) benefit
(4). In that sense, international nature and
environment protection laws are deficient in
practice, and citizens also need to contribute to
ecological awareness.
By unifying human approaches in the
relationship to nature, this review aims to show
that this relationship has become threatened.
The aim was to determine whether deep
ecology finds its justification in the change of
awareness regarding human relationship to
people and nature and to show how and to what
extent environmental and nature protection
which exceeds ecology in its complexity is
carried out.
Deep Ecology
Scientists have the most significant
responsibility when it comes to preservation and
strengthening of the ethical principles in their
research and institutions, to act beneficially
upon this crossroad of fate from where one can
either crash into eternal doom or finally get into
the haven of peace (5). Increased interest in the
problem of the environment (i.e., the ecological
problem) began to appear during the 1970s, and
considering the need for new ethics, some
scientists and ecologists came up with the idea
of said ethic. That considered, Rand Aldo
Leopold, a forester, philosopher, writer, teacher,
and one of the greatest American biologists
called such ethics the ethics of the Earth, which
would, by expanding the boundaries of the
community, contain everything - from earth to
animals (1). He explained the base of his ethics,
which was to protect wholeness and stability,
and only then can the righteousness of the
matter itself be discussed. Arne Næss expanded
the thought behind such ecological movement
with the diversity between surface and deep
elements, where the surface elements mark our
avoidance to contaminate the environment
exclusively for our own benefit. In contrast, the
deep elements represent the protection of the
whole biosphere, regardless of the benefits a
human being could have (6). This division in the
surface and deep elements, that is, shallow and
deep ecology, points to the meaningful division
within contemporary ecological thought (7).
According to that, shallow ecology represents
the anthropocentric thought in which a human
being is above nature, and nature has only
instrumentalist value, while deep ecology goes
for the highest ecological norm: preservation of
the vital needs of everything living (8).
The maker of the term deep ecology, Arne
Dekke Eide Næss, who was born in 1912 and died
in 2009 in Oslo (1). He was one of the most
famous Norwegian philosophers, who taught at
the University of Oslo between 1937 and 1970,
where he also graduated and completed a
master’s degree. He taught semantics and
gathered a group of young philosophers and
sociologists who were applying empirical
methods to affirm the meaning of philosophical
terms. He also taught the philosophy of science
and the philosophy of Spinoza and Gandhi (9),
who also had a significant impact on him. As a
hiker and a tour guide of the first expedition to
the Tirich Mir mountaintop in the Islamic
Republic of Pakistan, his motivation for nature
and environmental protection was no wonder.
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Although it is not about the motivation founded
on the reformist current of the ecological
movement, which only wants to prevent
contamination, Naess should be given a closer
look as a supporter of the revolutionary current,
who supports the original current, but who also
builds his philosophy seeking for new
metaphysics, cognitive theory, and ethics which
would solve the relationship between a human
being and nature. He called this (eco)philosophy,
which is contained in the term deep ecology and
synonymous with the terms fundamental
ecology, a new philosophy of nature, ecosophy,
or ecophilosophy T. In that regard, ecosophy T is
built starting with oneself, the change within
oneself – to act upon welfare as a whole (1). The
core of Næss’s philosophy is about connecting
everything into a whole, that is, the idea that
nothing works independent of the whole,
meaning that the relationships between people,
plants, and animals depend on one another.
According to that, two fundamental principles of
that philosophy stand out, as well as those of the
ecological movement: self-fulfilment and
biospheric equality (5). Contrary to health and
welfare of the population, more precisely the
population which lives and acts in the developed
industrial countries as a central theme of the
contemporary society fighting against the
contamination of the environment, Næss turns
to the inner knowledge of norms, values and
ethics, meaning that ecological science will
bleed into interdisciplinary practical life wisdom
(3). Naess called that transition deep ecology (9).
Furthermore, Næss and the American
philosopher George Sessions (who also referred
to the new ecological ethic which Næss
discovered in 1972 and referred to as deep
ecology) shaped and exposed the principles
which would work for the deep ecology
platform, in eight chapters in an article from
1984. Some of those principles are:
1. The welfare and the success of human
and non-human life on Earth have their own
values (synonyms: intrinsic value, inherent
value). Those values do not dependent on the
usefulness of the non-human world for humans.
2. The richness and diversity of life forms
contributes to the realization of these values.
People have no right to jeopardize that richness
and diversity unless the goal is to satisfy life
needs (6).
The authors state that, although those principles
relate to life when we talk about the term
biosphere, they are also meant to include the
unliving, like rivers, environment, and finally the
ecosystem. Naess replaces the term biosphere
with the term ecosphere, and that way he does
not limit himself to the form of life in the
immediate or global surroundings (9). In addition,
he replaces the term environment with the term
co-world to mark the place of a human in the
most truthful way possible.
Deep ecology increases the meaning of the
principle of letting the being be (10) while trying
to bring ecological consciousness to a higher
level and achieve a healthier ecological life.
Among other things, deep ecology is founded
on Darwinist thought, which tries to move the
human away from the centre of life and into a
natural circuit of existing (9). Because of that, the
Darwinist element presented in the deep
ecology builds a complex and contradictory
relationship. Deep ecology postulates that
exiting from evolutional and acceptable
circumstances, which Darwinism sets as an
imperative in the way of life, damages the
human civilization and nature (1). It exposes the
human being and breaks the illusion that
humans are wise enough to rationally manage
their physical and social environment, not taking
into account the evolutionary processes (9).
Another relevant characteristic of deep ecology
is its attitude towards wilderness, the only real-
world left, around which, because of its
ecocentric orientation, exists a cult of wilderness
(11). According to that, it advocates
ecoregionalism and condemns urbanization and
hypermobility. It is clear that deep ecology
nearly revises that pantheistic belief and
divinifies nature, but what needs to be
underlined is that it does not replace religion,
cults, or a mystical worldview, even though it has
mystical aspects. The possibilities and the
controversy of deep ecology are manifested
even in its basic statement about the concept of
intrinsic values, which states that every part of
nature is valuable in itself, and not because of
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higher goals (human, for instance). In that regard,
humans are a part of nature and not its highest
achievement (9). However, nature is formed
hierarchically, with humans on top, which
subjects this concept to criticism and doubt (11).
By replacing the term biospheric egalitarianism
– in principle – with the term biospheric equality,
Næss equalizes all the organisms in the
biospheric community, and their equality is a
consequence of a relational interconnection,
which gives them an intrinsic value. The fact that
humans are at the top of the pyramid does not
mean that they are not responsible for it.
Understanding that a human being must satisfy
its needs to survive, Næss does not deny those
needs, but only for existential purposes, and
when human secondary needs and vital needs
of another species come into conflict, a human
being should sometimes abandon egoism
before the needs of other living beings (12).
The authors of the book Deep Ecology, Bill
Devall and George Sessions, think that all
organisms and entities in the ecosphere, as parts
of an interconnected whole, are equal by
intrinsic value. A question arises how all these
living, but diverse beings are equal by their
intrinsic value. Furthermore, one criticism may
be that even if there is an intrinsic value relating
to the whole, the book does not say anything
about the values of individuals. No individual is a
necessity for the survival of the ecosystem as a
whole (6). It is concluded that the ethics of the
deep ecology does not answer the questions
concerning the value of life of individual living
beings. The reason may be that the wrong
questions are being asked: ecological ethics
might be more acceptable when applied to the
level of species and ecosystem. In trying to
establish that value based on the ecological
ethics, a certain holistic feeling arises, a feeling
that a species or the ecosystem is not just a total
of individuals, but an entity in itself (3).
Authors like Lawrence E. Johnson, Frey
Mathews, and James Ephraim Lovelock include
species and ecosystems as holistic entities or
selves with their own form of realization (6). If the
species and the ecosystem can be considered a
type of an individual with its own interest, the
ethics of deep ecology must face the problems
of determining the moral value of the species or
the ecosystem again, regardless of the value
which it has because of its importance for
sustaining life (9). The fact that the biosphere can
react to events in ways that look like a self-
sustainable system does not show that the
biosphere wants to contain itself consciously (1).
This fact underlines that the ethics of deep
ecology must reject its moral base because the
argument stemming from the intrinsic value of
plants, species, and the ecosystem is
problematic (6). This, of course, does not mean
that the argument for protecting intact nature is
weak, but the argument based on the difference
between the feeling and non-feeling creatures
is firmer than the division between the living and
non-living (5). The arguments should show that
the value of preservation of the last significant
areas of untouched nature significantly
overcomes economic values (6).
A human must acknowledge that value as an
ethical category for that to happen, and
therefore, confirm its responsibility (13). If a
human’s realization of interests for his benefit is
acknowledged as an intrinsic value, then it must
also be acknowledged for other living beings
who are ensuring their well-being (11). Also, the
concept of the “right of nature” is doubtful
because it enters into a new manipulation. The
right to preserve natural resources is
contradictory to the concept of preservation of
intrinsic values (13). The task of intrinsic values is
building the marvel towards the wholeness of
existence which is independent of humans (11). It
stems from the fact that due to the prevalence
of big cities and mechanicalized environment,
such marvel cannot be seen or felt towards the
non-human, which is what the deep ecology
wants to revive. One of the objections to deep
ecology is humanist voluntarism, which
postulates that humans can change things by
their own will. Nevertheless, ecological
destruction occurred because of actions of
generations, and that is also why one generation
cannot change it.
The stumbling stone of deep ecology is that if it
cannot change people’s awareness, it cannot
lead to radical change (10). Modern ecology
states that nature existed before the first
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humans and that it will continue to exist, which is
different from the understanding of tribal
societies, and this is something that can be the
encouragement for treating nature with more
respect. Tribal life, which deep ecologists
advocate, is unacceptable for most people. In
that regard, bioregionalism is unenforceable in
the global world (11). Talking about a relationship
of a human being towards nature that is filled
with awe, a German physician, theologian and
philosopher Ludwig Philipp Albert Schweitzer is
the most noted expert in defending ethics by
expanding on sensitive beings (9). Using the
phrase “awe before life”, he builds the ethics of
awe, which is based on having equal awe before
every life, as well as one’s own life (11). He
shaped the first and extensive attitude of
philosophical biocentrism (7), but his ethics finds
itself before the question: What is it like in the
cases in which human life can be preserved only
then when another human life has to be
destroyed instead (14)?
Deep ecology sets a unique view of the
relationship towards evolutionism. Generally,
the attitude of the deep ecologists is that
modern life in industrial societies is not
evolutionarily adjusted (11). Tomislav Markus
understands that people did not kill nature, but
they abandoned the environment of
evolutionary adaptation. As the author points
out, deep ecology is closer to science and
philosophy, and it is not a moral lesson for
wealthy individuals (10). Markus points out that
knowledge in biology and ecology is essential
for understanding the relationship between
humans and nature. So is the awareness of the
pressure modern industrial societies put on the
environment, which means that evolutionary
adjustment to the environment is impossible.
Therefore, the author sets an imperative in
creating a new view of nature, human nature,
and human inadaptability to evolution (11).
Since the base of the humanist disciplines lies in
dualism, a human as a being is separated from
nature with its history about the self-creative
process, which is founded on biophobia and
ecophobia. The solution is found in the human
need to escape into the circumstances of an
organic existence (9), representing the escape
from environmental destruction. According to
that, deep ecology is the escape from
consumerism, hyperurbanism, hyper-
population, and all other significantly destructive
orders of the modern industrial society (15). The
solution might be seen in accepting naturalness
as a characteristic of human nature, which could
decrease environmental destruction. To stop
environmental destruction, in favour of life
preservation, deep ecology emphasizes the
change of the paradigm (1). That would mean
that the paradigm, which positions the human
being in a superior position looking at nature
exclusively as a resource, should change by
accepting the evolutionary insights about
people’s lives. It is trying to rise above
consumerism as one of the characteristics of
technical civilization. Markus thinks that there are
too many people living on this Earth who are not
one with nature and who, by that, challenge it by
destruction (11). The solution is in the tribal
communities, and the precondition is decreasing
the population. It is the tribal communities who
have the lowest rate of intervention in the
environment, as opposed to industrial societies
which replace life through the technical and, by
doing so, they put pressure on the environment.
According to Næss, the quality of life of an
individual and of an entire population cannot be
considered if the size of that population is
excessive. He agrees with decreasing the
population in a non-violent way through
voluntary birth control (12). Also, he thinks that
there should be a 100 million people less on
Earth. Numerous deep ecologists believe that
diseases, wars, and lack of food will more likely
lead to decreasing the population than the
rational, controlled way (10). For instance, when
Næss wrote about the solutions for
depopulation, there were six billion people in the
world, while today that number has exceeded
seven billion and is still growing. As partially
shown before, the two attitudes were
determined according to ecoethics: shallow and
deep ecology, which try to solve the problems
regarding human violations against nature (16).
Various ecological ethics or ecoethics appeared
because of the care for nature and the paradigm
change, as is the case with deep ecology. Deep
ecology, by pointing to the value of all living and
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non-living beings, also wanted to indicate the
responsibility of all towards the environment (17).
That term, as well as others, lay the foundation
of bioethical principles, and the relationship
between bioethics and deep ecology (5).
Bioethics and Deep Ecology
Bioethics is a term that came into use in the
1970s, relating to ethical questions in the areas
of biology, medicine and psychology in order to
provide answers to the challenges of new
knowledge. Although the term bioethics, i.e.,
“bioethik”, was first used by Paul Max Fritz Jahr in
an article from 1927, the credits for
conceptualizing and preparing the term go to
Van Rensselaer Potter II, who built the
foundation for the development of bioethics in
his work in the 1970s (15). Since the meaning of
life is broader than the human or medicinal
aspect, bioethics questions the responsibility of
human action towards humans themselves, but
also towards all life on Earth, or better said
towards the biosphere (18). Namely, Potter
thought that ethical values cannot be separated
from biological facts, and he considered
bioethics to be a bridge between science and
humanity (19) which includes all living beings or,
in other words, a biosphere essential for
guaranteeing a future (20). Numerous
discoveries have brought new knowledge,
which he believed could not in itself be
completely bad or good, but that it represented
power, and, therefore, once available, it would
mostly be used for power (21). It is therefore
essential to know how to use new knowledge,
and that is possible only by possessing the
wisdom on how to use new knowledge (22). On
that end, he believed that bioethics as a science
of survival would provide the wisdom on how to
ensure sustainability (21). However, despite that,
bioethics is often synonymous with clinical,
medical or, the commonly called, biomedical
ethics, which is wrong and inconsistent with
Potter’s original idea of a global bioethics which
deals with man’s relationship with himself, but
also with the ecosystem (23). Bioethics cannot
be only clinical ethics because the concept
simultaneously contains elements of
environmental ethics — it is concerned with the
survival of man, but not any survival - the survival
which considers the survival of the ecosystem
that has its value, entirely independent of man
(24).
Finally, according to Potter, bioethics implies the
inevitable interconnectedness of man and the
rest of the living world (25), or in other words, an
interconnected biosphere (20). Deep ecology as
a part of environmental ethics understands
people as an indispensable part of nature or a
link in the chain of life, it points to the
interconnectedness and interdependence of all
parts of the ecosphere, emphasizes the
primordial value of all species regardless of
human needs, and it focuses on wisdom and
balance (26). Deep ecology can be seen as a
form of a radical environmental critique of the
technological civilization which reacts to
technolatry, anthropocentrism, instrumentalism
and resourcism, consumerism, and linear
progressivism which overtook society with the
emergence of new knowledge (27). Naess
considered deep ecology to be an ecosophy
developed under the influence of Leopold,
focused on wisdom, that is, the wisdom of the
Earth, which focuses on ecologically wise and
healthy living (28). It is shown that ecological
ethics, ecoethics, or environmental ethics gather
different theories, some of which are mentioned
here. For example, ecocentrism, biocentrism,
pathocentrism, or their mixed forms such as
ecocentrism and ecofeminism, as well as the
ethics of deep ecology from which each of them
stems, try to set a frame in order to discuss the
moral relationship between humans and
inhuman entities, by expanding the human
moral obligation to animals, plants or certain
areas of nature or life in general (29). Despite the
critics and the deficiencies to which deep
ecology subjected, the framework for building a
new theory is the concept of responsibility, more
precisely the responsibility of acting, as in
lighting the effects of knowledge (30). Also, new
ethics must have a dimension of sustainability,
which bioethics as an interdisciplinary field of
science can realize within the scope of its
content, and its strength can be seen in
generating a new sensibility and creating a new
awareness which goes past particular
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dimensions and tries to preserve life to stabilize
all the segments of society (29).
In the works of Leopold and Potter, it is evident
that bioethics and environmental ethics share a
common source. The connection between
bioethics and deep ecology as part of the
environmental ethic is in their vision of an
interconnected biosphere (20). People are a part
of the natural world, and not just bystanders, and
based on that, the responsibility towards the
world around and towards each individual is
evident (31). Bioethics and environmental ethics
also share wisdom as a common root (21), mostly
because of new knowledge. It is precisely
because of that high complementarity between
bioethics and environmental ethics that, in 1988,
Potter proposed the introduction of the new
term global bioethics (32). Potter coined the term
global bioethics in an attempt to protect the new
science of survival from a growing transition into
a predominantly clinical ethics, but also to
further expand it with even more elements of
environmental ethics, especially under the
influence of Leopold’s legacy (33). However,
despite all that, bioethics and deep ecology
have over time developed into two separate
fields (20), which has led to the creation of a gap
between bioethics and environmental ethics
(34). Namely, bioethics has mostly developed
into clinical ethics, where the focus is on the
individual health of a human patient, while
environmental ethics has developed more with
the focus on biosphere health and not on
individual health, that is, on the health and
sustainability of the overall ecosystem (35).
Public Health Ethics as a Bridge Back to
Potter’s Bioethics
Public health ethics is a relatively new field,
coming into its own somewhere at the beginning
of the 21st century, and it is still in its
developmental stage but in recent years it has
become one of the fastest growing
subdisciplines of ethics (34). It is deeply rooted in
bioethics, clinical and research ethics, and also
in environmental ethics (36). Public health ethics
is primarily focused on policies, programs and
laws for the protection and promotion of public
health, and the focus is not on the individuals but
on the community (i.e., the population) when it
comes to achieving the common good (34).
Since health is a state of complete physical,
mental and social well-being and not merely the
absence of diseases or infirmity (20), the
complexity of public health, and thus of public
health ethics, is evident. The fact that human
health depends on the environment has been
known since the beginning of time, and today it
is increasingly clear that it also depends on
animal health, because the convergence of
humans, animals, and their products is more
pronounced than ever before (37). The current
coronavirus pandemic shows the importance of
interconnectivity of the domains of people,
animals, and the environment as a group of
interconnected circles when it comes to public
health, but also when it comes to the future of all
living things (38). Severe acute respiratory
syndrome coronavirus 2 is most likely the
product of ecological conditions created by
humans, while the related pandemic is a product
of the number, density, and connectivity of the
human species and its interaction of the
environment (39). It is obvious that the health of
humans is connected to the health of animals
and the environment, and, therefore, we can say
that the health of each of those three domains is
the product of interactions of triangles of their
health which, in fact, forms public health (40).
That kind of public health – the One Health
approach (41) – is in line with Potter’s vision of an
interconnected biosphere; hence it can be
considered as a planetary vision of One Health
(42) or Global One Health, and, consequently, we
can talk about the global public health ethics
(Figure 1) (43).
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Figure 1 The expanded model of the Global One Health concept
Potter sought to include health, survival, and the
environment in the new ethics, which will
combine knowledge and deliberation in the
human constant quest for wisdom, that is, the
knowledge of how to use new knowledge for
the survival and progress of humankind (44).
Those qualities are contained and encouraged
by public health ethics, which on one hand
overlaps with bioethics, and on the other hand
with deep ecology as part of the environmental
ethics, while in its origins contains features of
global ethics (20). Public health ethics shows that
human health is strongly and inseparably linked
to the health of the planet (the biosphere) and
that the health of the community is essential for
the health of individuals, which in turn has a
strong impact on the health of the population
(45). That is not surprising since public health
deals with the health of the individual, but also
with the health of the environment, in order to
achieve the best possible health of the
population (20). The case of the coronavirus
pandemic underlines the need for a
fundamental shift in the human conception of
health, sustainability, and humanity, which is
only possible by returning to Potter’s bioethics,
which evaluates and considers all living beings,
or in other words, the biosphere (46). Based on
everything mentioned above, public health
ethics can be used to bridge the gap between
bioethics and deep ecology as part of the
environmental ethics to restore the values of
Potter’s bioethics for a brighter future of all living
things (34).
Conclusion
The history of ecology starts with the Neolithic
Revolution, although it seems that it was only
after the revolution that we heard about
ecological problems. It has been confirmed that,
at the same time when the human
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anthropogenic activities started to change his
organic and wild environment, to which he is
genetically adjusted, began the alienation of the
wilderness that he has gotten used to (13). Of
course, it was not just humans who conditioned
the (negative) changes in nature; there were also
volcanic eruptions, asteroid collisions,
earthquakes, and floods – in other words, a
multitude of natural disasters to which most of
the living world is not adjusted and most of
which happened long before human existence.
With the development of civilization, the shaping
of cultures, and usage of technology, human
beings genuinely become active factors in
affecting nature. From Greek philosophy to
Cartesianism, nature was thought to be the
starting point for questioning everything (47).
Experiencing nature as a devalued magnitude
and the subject of knowledge conditions the
forming of new things, more specifically new
age humans. The new age products are modern
science and technology, in which science is the
beholder and technology is the executioner (48).
The role of technology is to satisfy the needs of
life as quickly and pleasingly as possible, and
through that, the consumer society is created,
which also affects the expansion of the
ecological crisis. It is no wonder that the
relationship of a human being and nature is
altered because of the eternal nature of modern
science and technology (49). Numerous
archaeological studies have shown that the
ecological problems started with the Neolithic
domestication, which has increased in intensity
in the last few centuries and led to an ecological
crisis (50). Although the ecological crisis does
not affect everyone equally, it is a problem that
significantly influences life and demands an
urgent solution, regardless of those who think
that the ecological crisis is either a reflection of
capitalism or industrialization, contrary to those
who believe that technology could solve the
problems of humanity (51).
Ecology contains many areas affected by
biosphere processes, which should be
contained to access the solution to its problems.
This should be done with the help of sustainable
development, which presents the principles of
sustainability of the system, a way of
development that does not degrade or violate
nature (50). However, to achieve progress, it is
people’s attitude towards nature that must
change, not their attitude towards themselves,
which is how Næss formulated it in his
philosophy, known under many other terms, but
mentioned here most often under the term
“deep ecology” (52).
The concept that emphasises the value of every
life — in (new) bioethics, ethics of life, which due
to its interdisciplinary area of impact can be
applied in reality, is enriched through that
responsibility (53). In recent years, it has come to
light that public health ethics can be used to
bridge the gap between bioethics and deep
ecology as part of the environmental ethics, thus
enabling the return to Potter’s bioethics which
has built-in values of deep ecology (54).
Although much has been done in recent years,
deep ecology is to a great extent still in its very
beginnings.
Acknowledgement. None.
Disclosure
Funding. No specific funding was received for
this study.
Competing interests. None to declare.
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Author contribution. Acquisition of data:SM, GS, AD
Administrative, technical or logistic support: SM, GS, AD
Analysis and interpretation of data: SM, GS, AD
Conception and design: SM, GS, AD
Critical revision of the article for important intellectual
content: SM, GS, AD
Drafting of the article: SM, GS, AD
Final approval of the article: SM, GS, AD