로빈슨제퍼스의 인간관과 생태의식

Robinson Jeffers` View of Humanity and Ecological Consciousness

Although Robinson jeffers declares in a circumscribed mode that his Inhumanism is “a shifting of emphasis and significance from man to not-man; the rejection of human solipsism and recognition of the transhuman magnificence,” it is evident that his misanthropic opinion and despair gives rise to his Inhumanism. The leading motive for Jeffers` committing himself to Inhumanism results from his recognition that humanity and humanism involve self-destructiveness, leading to a mode of domination over both the human and non-human worlds. For Jeffers, humanity represents nothing less than egocentric selfishness, which refuses to harmonize with the outer world and concentrates on only its own concerns. He sometimes likens humanity`s obsession with inwardness to incest, finding both qualities propelled by narcissistic self-love. And Inhumanism aims at overturning the dominant traditional faith that humankind or human consciousness is always the center of creativity, meaning, and value in the universe. Jeffers wants people to turn outward to appreciate their genuine place in the universe. His Inhumanism is a radical challenge to the mainstream of Western thought. Jeffers` aversion to humanity is an expression of disgust he feels in human history and civilization. The disgust forces him to find possible alternatives in the irrevocable dichotomy between nature and humanity. His ecological vision predicated upon the dichotomy is a program for decentering humanity as well as realizing what nature really is. Thus, it can be said that his ecological vision begins with or reacts to his fundamental distrust of humanity. Taking the figure of saviors as the typical exemplar of the inevitable effect of self-consciousness, Jeffers reveals the potential danger of human self-consciousness. He contends that self-enclosed humanity brings about the illusion of both human narcissism which rejects external reality and human pride in the omnipotent power which he reveals in the figure of saviour. In many of his works, therefore, Jeffers reiterates that the only and best possible way to escape from the self-destructive humanity is to turn from humanity itself toward the outer world. With this Inhumanism, Jeffers intends us to recognize our real place in the universe and the ontological way of nature. His ecological vision strives for the objective truth of the universe. In other words, Jeffers tries to relocate human beings from self-entitling center of meaning and truth to inconsiderable beings in nature, by comprehending and teaching the ontological and self-managing principle of nature, which prefigures our contemporary ecological manifesto.