Ethics as a situated modulation of natural processes, not a rejection or blind obedience to them.

Thinkers Who Reject the Nature/Ethics Dichotomy Entirely

John Dewey

Dissolves the distinction between humans and nature; ethics is intelligent participation in natural processes, not battling them. He writes that “nature includes man and his works,” so ethical life is adaptive and experimental, not oppositional.

Alfred North Whitehead

As a process philosopher, Whitehead sees value and moral feeling as extensions of natural creativity. There is no cosmic battle between “natural struggle” and “ethical restraint”; ethics arises from the same relational flux.

Hans Jonas

In The Imperative of Responsibility, Jonas argues that ethical responsibility emerges from biological life itself. Rather than opposing nature, ethics deepens our obligation to maintain the conditions of life.

Ecological and Evolutionary Thinkers Who Reject “Nature as a Free Fight”

Peter Kropotkin

His Mutual Aid is the classic rebuttal to the “nature is pure struggle” myth. Cooperation is not morally imposed against nature—it is a natural strategy for survival and flourishing.

Evelyn Fox Keller

Highlights how models of competition were projections of Victorian ideology onto biology. She argues that we need an ethically and politically aware ecological frame that doesn’t treat “nature” as inherently antagonistic.

Lynn Margulis

Her endosymbiosis theory radically undermines the vision of nature as fundamentally competitive. Evolution proceeds through integration, merger, and co-constitution: sometimes with the grain, sometimes against.

Donna Haraway

Her work (especially Staying with the Trouble) argues that ethical life consists of “response-ability” within multispecies entanglements. Not opposing nature; not submitting to it; staying inside it and modulating relations.

Anti-Reductionist Anthropologists and Philosophers of Nature

Tim Ingold

Argues that humans do not stand apart from nature but are “along with” it. Ethical skill is learning when to align with flows and when to diverge.

Philippe Descola

Rejects the “naturalism” that draws a hard boundary between humans and nature. For Descola, morality follows from relational ontologies, not a war against biological determinism.

Bruno Latour

Objects to the modern divide between Nature and Culture. Ethics is a negotiation with forces, not an external constraint applied to them.

Thinkers Who Warn Against the Hubris of “Combating Nature”

Rachel Carson

In Silent Spring, she exposes how the belief that humanity must “overcome” natural dynamics leads directly to ecological harm. The moral task is to understand and work within ecological systems.

Aldo Leopold

His land ethic is built on the idea that humans must “think like a mountain”—that ethics should align with the grain of ecological processes, not impose a counter-natural regime.

Val Plumwood

Her ecofeminism critiques the logic that sets “human ethical reason” against “natural struggle.” That framework leads to domination. She advocates an ethic of respectful engagement with ecological processes.

Relevant Biopolitical and Critical Thinkers

These thinkers don’t talk about ecology per se, but their critiques support a stance against a dominionist, anti-natural ethics.

Giorgio Agamben

His critique of biopolitics shows how the state’s claim to “correct” the natural order leads to domination and harm.

Michel Foucault

Rejects any fixed “nature” that ethics must either fight or follow; ethics is a practice of self-formation within complex power relations.

Isabelle Stengers

Warns against the “sorcery” of technocratic control—humanity trying to combat or override nonhuman processes. Advocates situated, partial, humble forms of engagement.

Modern Thinkers Who Articulate Your Position Almost Exactly

Deborah Bird Rose

Develops an ethic of “mutual flourishing” based on attentiveness to multispecies life. Not harmony, not warfare—careful relating.

Anna Tsing

In The Mushroom at the End of the World, she shows how survival and ethics are shaped by contingency, entanglement, and improvisation across species.

Jane Bennett

Her “vital materialism” argues that we navigate a field of forces, sometimes resisting, sometimes aligning, never outside nature.

Philosophers Who Would Support Your Caveat Against Huxley

These thinkers would back your critique:

Cora Diamond – ethics as sensitivity to life, not mastery over it.
Martha Nussbaum – rejects reductive biological accounts of nature.
Amartya Sen – ethics as capability enhancement within constraints, not domination.

Below is a curated list of non-Western thinkers and traditions that echo the core of your view.

1. Classical Chinese Philosophy (extremely close to your position)

Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu)

Zhuangzi rejects the idea of opposing nature and rejects the idea of obeying it blindly.
Instead, he advocates wandering skillfully within the flows, sometimes resisting, sometimes aligning.
He emphasizes:

shi-fei (this/not-this) judgments as situational,
responsive adaptation,
following the grain (shi) of things,
knowing when action disrupts more than it heals.

This is almost the direct ancestor of your “sometimes with, sometimes against” position.

Daoism (general)

Daoism views ethical life as situated responsiveness, not as a struggle against cosmic processes. The Dao is not a moral order but a relational unfolding.
Human action should:

harmonize when appropriate,
resist when necessary,
but always remain embedded in larger forces.

Daoism is not passive; it is discerning.

Wang Yangming (Neo-Confucian)

Ethics arises within natural heart–mind (xin), not against nature.
Morality is relational responsiveness, not domination.

2. Classical Indian Thought

Buddhist (especially Mahāyāna) Ethics

Buddhism does not oppose nature but sees human ethical activity as arising from dependent co-arising (pratītyasamutpāda).
Violence and compassion are both natural possibilities; ethical life is the skillful modulation (upāya) of these possibilities.

Your stance is essentially “ethical upāya”: action tailored to the situation, neither anti-natural nor naively naturalistic.

Aśvaghoṣa, Śāntideva

They argue that compassion does not contradict nature; it emerges from understanding interdependence.
Avoids moral heroics against nature and avoids biological determinism—very close to your position.

Advaita Vedānta / nondual Tantric thought

Reality is not split into nature and ethics; action is a modulation of forces already present.
Not identical to your view, but structurally similar: non-separation, discernment, embeddedness.

3. Indigenous Philosophies (Americas, Australia, Africa)

Plenty Coups (Crow Nation)

His philosophy, interpreted by Jonathan Lear, emphasizes “radical hope” as adaptive modulation
—thinking within natural patterns but altering them when survival requires.
Not submission, not combat: discernment in a collapsing world.

Yoruba Ifá Philosophy

In Ifá, good action is about alignment with ase (life force) and knowing when to redirect or resist flows.
Ethics is contextual, relational, and ecological: not a fight against nature, but not blind obedience either.

Aboriginal Australian thought (especially via Deborah Bird Rose)

Ethics is “mutual care in country”: responding to land as a sentient network.
Human action sometimes intervenes strongly, sometimes gently—it is always situated.

Māori Cosmology

The world is genealogical; humans are part of nature’s kin networks.
Ethics = maintaining right relationships, which sometimes means resisting harmful forces (e.g., storms, predators) and sometimes cooperating.

Your view is extremely close to whakapapa-based ethics.

4. Japanese Philosophical Lineages

Watsuji Tetsurō

Ethics (rinrigaku) arises from betweenness, aidagara—the relational field between human and climate (fūdo).The environmental concept, spelled fūdo (風土), combines the words for "wind" and "earth" to represent the interconnectedness of nature, culture, and human character.
Moral action is context-sensitive: sometimes resisting environmental forces, sometimes embracing them.

Nishida Kitarō (Kyoto School)

Ethics as “place” (basho): humans are not outside nature but self-aware nodes of its unfolding.
Opposition and alignment are intertwined.

Zen Buddhist thinkers

Emphasize non-duality between humans and nature; ethical life is about responding appropriately to conditions, not fighting the cosmos.

5. Korean Philosophical Thought

Yi Hwang (Toegye) and Korean Neo-Confucianism

Ethics arises from the interplay of li (principle) and qi (vital force).
Sometimes qi needs cultivation (working “against” a tendency), sometimes support (working “with” it).
This is a direct analog of your view.

6. African Philosophical Traditions

Ubuntu (Southern Africa)

Not a sentimental idea of harmony with nature—Ubuntu says moral life is relational, embedded, and sometimes requires resistance to destructive forces.
Ethics is modulation, not opposition.

Akan Philosophy

Kwame Gyekye and others interpret Akan thought as seeing humans as part of a moralized cosmos, but one in which agency must navigate competing forces.
Not obedience, not combat: judicious participation.

7. Middle Eastern / Islamic Philosophical Parallels

Al-Fārābī and Ibn Rushd

Both reject the idea that human reason is outside nature; instead, reason is nature-reflexive.
Ethics is guided modulation of natural impulses, not their annihilation.

Sufi Thought (e.g., Ibn ‘Arabī)

The cosmos is a theophany; human ethical life is participation in the flow, sometimes restraining, sometimes aligning.
Not dualistic.

The Common Thread Among These Non-Western Thinkers

Almost all of them reject the tendency to make nature:

a chaotic struggle
or
an idealized harmonic order.

Instead they propose:

Ethics as situated responsiveness within a relational, interdependent cosmos.
This sometimes means resisting natural impulses; sometimes aligning with them; always remaining within them.

Saturday, 29 November 2025