Profile: Robinson Jeffers

Mon, 29 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962) was an American poet whose philosophy of “inhumanism” examined the non-human world and rejected anthropocentrism. Writing from his stone tower home in Big Sur, California, Jeffers articulated perspectives that influenced deep ecological thinking.

Jeffers’ “inhumanism” proposed shifting attention from humanity to the non-human world. He suggested that human self-focus diminishes capacity to appreciate mountains, oceans, and wild processes of nature. His poetry depicts nature with geological and cosmic scope, situating human events against backgrounds of deep time and vast space.

Essay: Beyond Anthropocentrism – By John Seed

Fri, 08 Jan 1988 00:00:00 +0000

from the book Thinking Like a mountain - Towards a Council of All Beings - Seed et al by John Seed, Joanna Macy, Arne Naess & Pat Fleming, New Society Publishers, Philadelphia, 1988

First published in ECOPHILOSOPHY 5 (Sierra College, California) and reprinted in PANTHEISM; OIKOS; AWAKENING IN THE NUCLEAR AGE and several Australian journals.

“But the time is not a strong prison either. A little scraping of the walls of dishonest contractor’s concrete through a shower of chips and sand makes freedom. Shake the dust from your hair. This mountain sea-coast is real For it reaches out far into the past and future; It is part of the great and timeless excellence of things.” (1)

Anti-Anthropocentrism on deep ecology

Profile: Robinson Jeffers

Essay: Beyond Anthropocentrism – By John Seed