Environmental Philosophy

"Summary

Modernity has impacted on the very sense of ourselves, that is, on the sense of what it means to be a human being and on our role and place on this planet. How to find meaning in a world that often appears stripped of meaning and purpose is a problem implicated in the resistance encountered to the taking of personal environmental responsibility. An ethic of environmental accountability cannot simply be prescribed; it needs to arise from something more fundamental. I suggest that the deficient relationship between humans and the natural world arises out of a loss of a sense of a fundamental earthly ground out of which humans derive significance and a personal sense of wellbeing. I contend that, as it involves an essential feature of human existence, the retrieval of this experience is a critical issue for modern western culture. The experience of ‘Being as such’ is not an ‘everyday’ experience, but a particular kind of experience that nurtures the wholeness of human beings. It tends to engage an experience of astonishment, awe and wonder at existence itself. Its absence, implicating deeper questions of existential homelessness, is a factor in mechanistic, indifferent and negative attitudes towards the environment and nihilistic worldviews.

I propose that the philosophy of Martin Heidegger may throw light on how such an experience might be reawakened and thereby open up fresh possibilities of perceiving the human place and role within nature. Within his work, particularly in his Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) , there is a transitory, transitional and transformative pathway of thinking that may well be engaged in the retrieval of a way of being whereby thinking is less influenced by everyday familiarity, indifference or negativity and the changeability of feelings, but, as it grounds the human essence, is more enduring in its worth. I propose that it becomes a manner of thinking, within a deeper sense of what it means to be, that imparts significance to the experience of relating to the world; an experience in which environmental responsibility then becomes an authentic and coherent outcome.

I explore the unfamiliar pathway of thinking, enacted in Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), which provides both the inspiration and the structural underpinnings for my questioning and reflections. As a central foundation of this ‘post-philosophical turn’ this work, together with other works of this period, demonstrates Heidegger’s own ‘crossing’, which was for him a transformation of thinking, necessary when metaphysical questioning reaches the limit of articulation and such thinking must transform itself in order to enable its continuation. Yet, rather than being an exegesis of this work as a whole, it grasps, clarifies, develops and applies the particular unique kind of thinking that arises there within a framework of identifiable, yet ineffable, connections and relationships. I examine this as a region of passage or transition of thinking, which I describe as the ‘threshold’. Here the emergence of a different way of being and thinking ‘displaces’ or ‘interrupts’ the familiarity of ‘everyday’ thinking and experience, thereby allowing the possibilities of more meaningful ways of being and doing.

The pathway itself is not chronologically and spatially sequential; therefore its nature does not make this thesis amenable to an exclusively linear progressive structure. Instead, it is approached as a developmental and tentative pathway which builds upon an emerging awareness and a different conception of truth (to empirical correctness) as a form of translation or encounter with thought. From a broadly Heideggerian perspective, I introduce the everyday ways modernity diminishes the essential experience of human existence as dwellers of the earth. This involves a forgetting or concealing of the unique experience of Being  and the human essence, which restricts the manner of relating to the world and tends to see the things and interconnectedness of the earth, and even ourselves, as mere stockpiles of resources, objects for examination or equipment.

The thinking of the “crossing” in Beiträge is then taken up, firstly by an examination of Heidegger’s conception of the primordial experience of nature by pre-Socratic thinkers.  Features of the joining moments in the crossing between what Heidegger describes as the ‘beginnings’, are then introduced via the metaphor of the threshold. The threshold is engaged as fundamental to the ongoing journey of ‘coming to be at home’ in the world. I express the indefinable ‘dimensionality’ of the threshold, its features and strata, as a transitional, transitory and transformative region of thinking, where there is an ‘interplay’ between different spheres and dimensions. It is an ‘in-between region’ where there is an ‘overflowing’ of everyday thinking beyond purely calculative, objective postures, to a thinking that is both underway and aware of what is happening to it in its transformation. Venturing the threshold requires a posture of ‘openness’ to the uncertain ground of our being, to the ‘abyss-like beyond’ of the threshold and the manner of its revealing.  Seeking the source, that which is originary and emerging, shelters the inner home of human dwelling. The nature of the human being in its essence (a non-metaphysical understanding of what we may call ‘soul’) is one of a wanderer, a seeker of Earth, which is the strange ground of human dwelling. It must always be underway towards where its nature draws it, towards an authentic homeliness and not fleeing from it. Thereby, in this seeking, the wandering soul’s being is fulfilled.

Here the ‘awesome’ beholding of nature involves a greater discernment of the essential belonging together of Being and beings and of a kind of truth that is usually hidden in the everyday. In the disposition of the threshold we find hints and possibilities for a more deeply engaged encounter with all beings of the earth, and a less belligerent and self-protective way of being that retrieves and shelters what is most precious in earthly dwelling.












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The purpose of this project is to facilitate a biblical understanding of eco-stewardship that springs forth from a life of eco-spirituality. This lifestyle, centered upon the cross and resurrection of Christ, equips others to have increased opportunities to practice personal evangelism. The lessons included give a biblical knowledge of how holistic God’s kingdom is in scope and depth, with the result being increased effectiveness in evangelism within the context of current ecological concerns and issues.

The creation of new wetlands along rivers as an instrument to mitigate flood risks in times of climate change seduces us to approach the landscape from a 'managerial' perspective and threatens a more place-oriented approach. How to provide ecological restoration with a broad cultural context that can help prevent these new landscapes from becoming nonplaces, devoid of meaning and with no real connection to our habitable world. In this paper, I discuss three possible alternative interpretations of the meaning of places and place attachment in these ‘new nature’ projects, and show how all three imply a different view on human identity and history.

""The proliferation of studies bearing on the intellectual movement known as the "new materialisms" evinces that a material turn is becoming an important paradigm in environmental humanities. Ranging from social and science studies, feminism, to anthropology, geography, environmental philosophies and animal studies, this approach is bringing innovative ways of considering matter and material relations that, coupled with reflections on agency, text, and narrativity, are going to impact ecocriticism in an unprecedented way.
In consideration of the relevance of this debate, we would like to draw for Ecozon@'s readers an introductory map of the new paradigm and introduce what can be called "material ecocriticism." We will illustrate what we consider to be its main features, situating them in the conceptual horizons of the new materialisms. From this genealogical sketch, we will examine the re-definitions of concepts like matter, agency, discursivity, and intentionality, with regard to their effects on ecocriticism and in terms of their ethical perspectives.""

This essay investigates the correlation between theological investigations of culture and those of the natural world. A fruitful question emerges when reflecting on how theological thinking resides between these subjects: how does our theological reflection on art meaningfully inform our consideration of nature? The path to exploring this question takes the form of questioning three different works of art: Willem Moreelse’s A Portrait of a Scholar, Francis Bacon’s Landscape, and Joseph Beuys’ Lightning with Stag in Its Glare. Exploring the interconnection between these works, a hermeneutical mediation between art, place, and the spiritual is suggested.

In this paper I attempt to develop several ways Merleau-Ponty’s ontology might contribute to an environmental ethic through a redefinition of his concept of flesh in terms of a general theory of affectivity. Currently accepted interpretations of the concept such as those in Abram, Toadvine, Barbaras, and Dastur rely upon conceiving flesh as a perceptual experience. I contest this interpretation and argue that a more productive conception of flesh emerges when understood in terms of Heidegger’s philosophy. The paper concludes with a consideration of the normative significance of flesh by examining the role of “wildness” within a place-based ethic.

Even though  artists and philosophers sometimes succeed in finding words for the meaning that places can have for us, we can never fully identify the meaning that places have for us. Nicole Note is right in arguing (using the work of Arnold Burms) that the ineffable plays a key role in the meaningful relations we have with the world, and that the experience of meaning can only emerge if there is a real risk that it fails to appear. Therefore, meaning cannot be ‘produced’. I have argued, however, that we can be confronted with a far more radical loss of meaning when most at first meaningful interpretations of place turn out to be consciously produced by marketeers and lobbyists. Yet, even this very feeling of estrangement can lead us to a sensitivity for the otherness of nature as a transcendental source of meaning.

The main aim of this paper is to make some remarks about how Paul W. Taylor’s renowned ethics of respect for nature might support a desirable integration between human ethics and environmental ethics. I claim that its belief-system, its attitude of respect, and its system of rules and standards cannot only be compatible with, but complementary to human-centered ethics. I argue that developing Taylor’s concepts and arguments could be decisive in helping to tackle both the wide perception of anti-humanism that surround the contemporary deep environmental concern and the different crises related to the Western way of life and thinking.

This paper considers some of the recent legislative developments concerning the rights of nature and argues that the environmental rights movement would benefit from more strenuous critical engagement with the question of nature's potential legal ‘rights'.

Although recent work in philosophical aesthetics has brought welcome attention to the beauty of nature, the aesthetic appreciation of animals remains rarely discussed. In this essay, I trace the existence of this gap in aesthetic theory to certain ethical difficulties with aesthetically appreciating animals. I suggest that these can be avoided by focusing on the aesthetic quality of ‘looking fit for function’. I defend this approach to animal beauty by arguing against the view that ‘looking fit’ is a non-aesthetic quality, and by replying to Edmund Burke’s famous critique of the connection between fitness and the beauty of animals.