Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
Life's Philosophy: Reason and Feeling in a Deeper World
A flourishing life expands the self until it identifies with the larger living world
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Life's Philosophy: Reason and Feeling in a Deeper World (Late (Næss's closing popular statement, written at 86)) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Partial |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | None |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Experience |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Life's Philosophy: Reason and Feeling in a Deeper World
Biographical time — the maturation of a self over a lifetime — is the implicit framework; deep time of ecological processes is the larger horizon.
Space
Life's Philosophy: Reason and Feeling in a Deeper World
Place-based — the Hallingskarvet mountain hut, the Norwegian wild — is treated as constitutive of the self, not as scenery.
Matter
Life's Philosophy: Reason and Feeling in a Deeper World
Living beings (trees, animals, rivers) are taken to have intrinsic value and to be participants in the extended self, not mere material.
Observer
Life's Philosophy: Reason and Feeling in a Deeper World
The "ecological self" — a self that identifies with the larger living community and finds its flourishing in the flourishing of the whole.
Energy
Life's Philosophy: Reason and Feeling in a Deeper World
The Spinozistic increase of power (joy) when the self identifies more widely; the decrease (sorrow) when it narrows.
Information
Life's Philosophy: Reason and Feeling in a Deeper World
Tacit, emotional, place-based knowing — the kind of cognition that arises from long-term involvement with a natural setting.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
Critics (Sylvan, Plumwood) have charged that deep ecology's "ecological self" risks dissolving moral distinctions — if all of nature is "self," who exactly is being wronged when an ecosystem is destroyed? Næss's reply is that identification does not erase distinctions but extends moral concern. The book's autobiographical register also leaves systematic questions (about animal welfare, about indigenous rights, about climate justice) under-developed.