Dr. Alan Drengson has been at University of Victoria, in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada since 1968. He is currently Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Graduate Studies, and an Adjunct Professor of Environmental Studies. His areas are Eastern philosophy, comparative religion, environmental philosophy and multicultural technology studies.
Alan is a glass artisan and enjoys many other crafts. He is a practitioner of martial arts based spiritual disciplines such as Aikido and Tai Chi. Meditation for harmony with nature is something he both teaches and practices. Wild dancing, skiing, wilderness journeying and mountaineering are among Alan’s passions, and he practices the Wild Way Art daily.
Much of his life has been inspired by an insatiable curiosity ignited in Alan as a young scout. Since, experimental practices have been at the fore of his life. Among them, constant tests with his brother on different ways to climb, ski and build. He has also been an experimental subject a number of times, and is currently participating in a long-range study on aging and health.
In Print
Among his many published articles and books are the nonfiction trilogy Beyond Environmental Crisis: Shifting Paradigms; The Practice of Technology; Wild Way Home; an ecotopian novel, Doc Forest and Blue Mt. Ecostery; and three Sacred Journey poetry books.
Alan is the Associate Editor of the ten volume Selected Works of Arne Naess (SWAN) published in 2005 by Springer. And he is co-editor of five anthologies:
- Philosophy of Society
- Deep Ecology Movement
- Ecoforestry: The Art and Science of Sustainable Forest Use
- Ecology of Wisdom: Writings by Arne Naess
- Wild Foresting: Practicing Nature’s Wisdom
In 1983, Alan founded the now online Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy and, later, Ecoforestry. He presented in the Massey Symposium at the University of Toronto’s Massey College in March 2005, and in spring 2008, he was a Visiting Professor at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC, in Canadian Studies. There he taught “Multiculturalism, Sense of Place and Personal Identity.”
The Wild Way
In his recent book, Wild Way Home: Spiritual Life in the 3rd Millennium, Alan explores wild journeying as a whole art called the Wild Way. Whole Arts unify practices and disciplines that follow certain, often cross-cultural, universal principles.
Experimental practices have featured heavily in Alan’s life since he was a scout. With his brother and some of their friends, he would test different ways to climb, ski and build. The Wild Way expands on these practices, and is an approach to life that uses walking daily, in nature or in the city, with or without aids, to tune into the many energies of the wild world: birds and other beings, trees, wind, weather and other people. Being in harmony in the here and now is the ultimate aim.
An Interview with Dr. Drengson
Sophia Schwandt, a Philosophy 12 student, interviewed Dr. Drengson about Deep Ecology for final project. PDF »