The environmental philosophy that has grown from the ecological movement has often been accused of providing no rational arguments for the holistic concepts it embraces. This is the first book to consider the metaphysical foundations of ecological ethics. The author seeks to provide a metaphysical support for the basic institutions of the "one-ness" and the interconnectedness of everything, the fundamental principles of the ecological movement. The Ecological Self considers and rejects the dominant atomistic metaphysics associated with the classical physics of Newton. By drawing upon modern physics and the cosmology of Einstein, the systems theory of Gregory Bateson and others, and the philosophy of Spinoza, Freya Mathews is able to elaborate a new metaphysics of "interconnectedness."