Abstract
The problem of the destruction of nature and the natural environment is one of
the most serious problems that confronts humanity at the end of the twentieth
century. This destruction has its basis in the dualistic way of thinking that has
dominated the Modern age: Humanity has been accustomed to think of the
world dualistically as a confrontation between subject and object, soul and
body, and spirit and nature. Both Modern natural sciences and scientific technology
in general are grounded in such a dualistic way of thinking. But this
way of thinking itself, in other words, the Modern dualistic paradigm, is now
one of the most serious problems of present-day philosophy. It has become
clear that a new relation between humanity and nature must be established.
In this paper, I will re-examine the relationship between “nature” and “spirit”
in the context of Husserl’s phenomenology in which, in my opinion, a new
concept of nature can be found. In the course of this investigation, I shall try
to elucidate the present-day situation of human spirit in a phenomenological
way.