Dear friends,
Arne Næss called himself an optimist for the 22nd century, and his profound trust was anything but naive. He understood that we can still regnerate thriving cultures built on the realization that the human is deeply woven into the breathing fabric of life. Arne reminded us that our destructive behaviors are not inevitable; they are cultural choices. They are stories we live by. And being stories, our cultural contracts can be questioned, rewritten, and lived differently.
Philosophy, then, is not a distant or abstract pursuit. It is the art of choosing stories that bring us into deeper relationship—with each other and with the more-than-human world. Philosophy is a practice of reclaiming our agency. We can yet shape societies where care, curiosity, and participation are not just ideals, but lived realities.
In this sense, Arne insisted, philosophy belongs in the hands and hearts of everyone. It becomes a shared work of reimagining the possible, and refusing the narratives that deaden our aliveness.
This is the task.
We come to know this most deeply not in the lecture hall, but in the forest, by the sea, under an open sky—in those moments when our own animal bodies sense our belonging inside this breathing whole.
This is where philosophy begins—not as theory but as a lived encounter, a felt recognition that we are woven into something vast, alive, and ongoing. From here, the next step is to ask, with care and honesty: What kind of world are we building together? What moral choices are stitched into the fabric of our economies, our schools, our laws? If we see that these choices are harming life, then philosophy calls us not just to reflect, but to act—to shift the foundations, to commit to cultures that nourish rather than deplete. This is the work of the Arne Næss Foundation: to foster deep experience, deep questioning, and deep commitment, so that philosophy does not stay in books but walks with us into the heart of society, where it belongs.
Arne Næss was not only a philosopher but a nation-builder in the deepest sense, offering Norway a vision of itself beyond oil wealth, beyond convenience, beyond the quiet contradictions of modern life. Like Ibsen and Nansen before him, he called forth a courage that is both personal and collective—the courage to shape a society that does not just sustain life but actively regenerates it. This is the task before us now: to carry his legacy forward, to root Norway’s future in the wisdom of interconnection, and to forge a new cultural contract—one that is not merely just, but truly life-affirming.
The work begins now.
Stay close,
the Arne Næss Foundation
Arne Næss