From a childhood during the First World War through the study of psychoanalysis in Freud's Vienna, through the mid-century hardening of ideologies to the most recent decades with the emergence of ecology as a political force, his exuberant life in the throes of nature has always been characterized by a drive to embrace precise and clear thinking in the face of the great contemporary dilemmas.

Deeply touched by the thought of Spinoza and Gandhi, he coined the term "deep ecology" to express a vision of the world in which we protect the environment as a part of ourselves, never in opposition to humanity. Deep sensitivity to nature is the articulation of something that every child understands. And for Naess, knowledge of the deepest kind should bind humanity to nature, and not push us further away from the tactile object of its study.