Asian Journal of Humanities and Social Studies (ISSN: 2321 – 2799) Volume 02– Issue 01, February 2014 Asian Online Journals (www.ajouronline.com) 66 From Particular Times and Spaces to Metaphysics of Leopold s Ethics of the Land Guido J. M. Verstraeten 1,2 and Willem W. Verstraeten 3,4 1 Satakunta University of Applied Sciences Tiedepuisto 3, FI 28000 Pori, Suomi-Finland 2 Antwerp University Association, Karel de Grote hogeschool, Nationalestraat 5, 2000 Antwerp, Flanders 3 Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute PO Box 201, NL-3730 AE, De Bilt, the Netherlands 4 Wageningen University Droevendaalsesteeg 3a, 6708 PB, Wageningen, the Netherlands _________________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT-Modern rationalism transformed the modern homeland to a discursive space and time by means of institutes governing the modern society in all its walks. Based on the Newtonian and Kantian conception of space and time the discursive field is just a scene wherein any human individual adopts stewardship to create progress by reducing landscape and non-human life to auxiliary items for human's benefit. In contrast, Aldo Leopold considered humans, non human life and the landscape as mutually influencing participants and enlarged ethical care to all living participants and the landscape, called  the land . Integrity and autonomy of the homeland are the central topics of Leopold's land ethics. Baird Callicott suggested to complete it with new metaphysical conceptions of space and time. We formulated a metaphysical background for Leopold's land ethics by phenomenology of space and time based on the Leibnizian conception of space-time. The latter is constructed by particular places and events called  ecotopois  embracing all human participants, locals and foreigners in a varying symbolic temporal and spatial field of dynamic process of identification and self consciousness. Adopting Warwick Fox  transpersonal identification idea non-human life and landscape enriches these processes. Finally, it is not a matter of conquering the land, it is matter of making a community. Though landscape and participants are particular, integrity and autonomy of the homeland claim the universal status of the land. Adopting Gadamer hermeneutical way of understanding, we reject mutual and equally understanding. Only acceptance of mutual prejudice makes room for asymmetric praxis between locals and foreigners as well as between humans and non-humans. What is more, Gadamer s hermeneutics makes an ontological status of the foreigner possible and recognizes the interest of homeland's particularity. This universal status is guaranteed as a priori space-time that links subject's tradition and that of the land to actual contact with the foreigner. Transpersonal identification is a consequence of converging hermeneutical understanding of foreigner's particularity and that of the landscape. Ethics of the land evolves from the ethical status of any foreigner in the own homeland. Keywords- Metaphysical foundation of land ethics, ecotopois, hermeneutical understanding _________________________________________________________________________________ 1. 'THE NAKED APE' OR 'THE STEWARD OF HIS HOMELAND'? The provocative bestseller of Desmond Morris [1] compared the private conscious or unconscious behavior of individual human beings with look alike responses to extern or intern stimuli of animals. However, Morris did not mention the a priori boundary conditions for any animal behavior, namely the ecosystem to which the animal belongs. Human beings do not belong to a particular ecosystem or a peculiar biotope, they belong to their homeland. Though humans colonized all biomes of the planet it is the particular binding to his homeland that avoid the reduction of any man to the biological species homo sapiens sapiens [2]. The homeland roots any human in the world in which dates and places are connoted and denoted. So he becomes alienated from the world of biotic and non-biotic beings. After two thousand years of Diaspora the Jewish journalist and philosopher Jean Amery [3] [4] summarized it in next quote: Asian Journal of Humanities and Social Studies (ISSN: 2321 – 2799) Volume 02– Issue 01, February 2014 Asian Online Journals (www.ajouronline.com) 67 'Give humans a homeland so they don't need others places'. In spite of globalization the particularity of the homeland guaranties freedom of the private and coherence of the public domain. According to Margalit [5] home is the a priori condition of human's freedom. This means that it is the place of free unreflective speech, of acts and reacts on any human expression by heart and by an inartificial way. Moreover, Zerubavel [6] indentifies the homeland as the constancy of place with the prime basis of sameness. Freedom is an incontestable condition for individual ethical behavior, sameness is the boundary condition of ruling moral care for humans, non-human life and the land. Man's homeland is never animal's biotope or ecosystem. The latter is a priori to the animal. The former is the posterior result of men's privilege choices, their believes, their motivations, their aesthetic feelings and eventually their common discursive organization of space and time. Culture is the common denominator of all human interventions in order to transform a particular space in the own homeland. Culture is the social reference system containing rational and irrational elements. On discursive basis and on the basis of emotions, beliefs, inexplicable motivations and intentions, culture is the common way how humans create their homeland. Also the naked land imposes the initial and boundary conditions on which the human constructions are built. Relief, water supply, drainage, soil fertility, climate, vegetation and the other non-human habitants determine the transformation of space to homeland. Also time and lifetime represented in the geology and geography of the area and especially in the different species of biotic life as the ultimate result of million years of evolution transform under man's hand. The human contact with the given landscape and all its participants is not at face value, it is mediated by mental acts such as common understanding, common interpretations, common believe, and inter-subjective exchanges. The contacts are mediated by languages and by symbolism. This is called 'culture' by Bruner [7]. Natural language makes room for infinite opportunity of interpretation of space and split actual time in three different phases: past, present and future. What is more, by language any individual discovers his own identity by imposing his wishes, feelings, intentions and arguments in the first pronoun. The cultural network to which every human belongs creates the framework of desired and undesired responses. Symbolism that can have religious aspects or just anthropological meaning introduces the transcendence of the homeland and consequently of its residents and particularly of their identity and their human acts. This transcendence borders the 'hic und nunc' and makes room for the reality behind the mental and physical horizon. Eventually, it prescribes the moral live. Attempts to search for moral standards of humans in the landscape are done in the scope of ethics and the policy of the environment [8]. Also aesthetical considerations are presented as a basic foundation of moral prescription of humans in the surroundings [9]. A metaphysical approach should be straightforward but more complex. Indeed, neither the landscape nor the other designed participants determine completely the homeland. Therefore, humans need institutes that are the discursive represents of all rational and irrational cultural aspects. The function of institutes is to shape human's identity within the homeland. These institutes are the crystallized products of the discursive activity of common human action. They are the top of the iceberg that is the hidden context of spatial and temporal conceptions. Because this context is embedded in the cultural network of symbolism, belief and rationality, any institute of any homeland shapes the identity of the residents according to the discursive field as well as to the symbolic aspects of the common culture. 2. A METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATION OF THE `ETHICS OF THE LAND` In this discussion we claim a deep relationship between the discursive and symbolic conception of space and time on the one hand, and the common identity and the care for the homeland on the other hand. These elements determine human moral values such as freedom and in consequence the ethical conception of care for the homeland in all its aspects: institutes, all biotic residents and the landscape. The latter is for Aldo Leopold [10] a key value for all participants to the land. He emphasizes the moral need for integrity and inherent value of the land. Leopold failed to give adequate arguments as support for this eco-philosophical point of view that is rooted in Arne Naess  outstanding paper about Deep Ecology [12]. Deep ecology assigned intrinsic value on humans as well as non human life and the landscape. But all types of deep ecology struggle with the same fundamental problem: What is a metaphysical foundation of non humans and the landscape in order to assign intrinsic value because the anthropogenic roots of morality is out of the question. To provide such metaphysical Baird Callicott [13] added to Leopold's conception of the land the principle of inherent value. This concept does not imply the intrinsic value of the land – the land is not a moral value of its own – neither the moral value of the land is embedded in the instrumental or aesthetical value attributed by the self-reflective human. The land is a value for its own. This issue is that Leopold did not define the land properly. Callicott's suggested that land ethics has to be developed as a complete ecological metaphysics as discussed by Warwick Fox [13]. Therefore there is need for a renewed metaphysical conception of space and time. In the footsteps of both eco-philosophers, we develop a metaphysical fundament for space and time, based on Leibniz' conception of space-time. According to our investigations land ethics need a proper relation between subjectobject that makes room for an enlarged conception of ethical care and ethical subjects. Particularly, the position of the self reflective subject with respect to space and time and with respect to all participants needs further research. Therefore we compare the more common Newtonian space-time conception that is largely presupposed in metaphysical theories Asian Journal of Humanities and Social Studies (ISSN: 2321 – 2799) Volume 02– Issue 01, February 2014 Asian Online Journals (www.ajouronline.com) 68 like the rationalism of DesCartes and the Kantian criticism. But also religious aspects are involved. According to Rijnvos [14], Blaise Pascal's reformative concepts are involved in the Leibnizian space-time. This contrasts with the Roman and Catholic concepts which are involved in the Newtonian conception. We link the Leibnizian conception to a rather phenomenological perspective about space and time (see section 3.3). From these insight we define moral freedom as prior condition for human moral care for the land and all its participants. Though ethical claims are considered as universal, indivisible and cannot be withdrawn the care for the land is rooted in the particularity of the homeland and especially particular times and places. So we shed light on the central role of these particularities called 'ecotopoi' in the attribution of inherent value to the land in all its aspects. The 'ecotopoi' shape the identity of the residents of the land as much as the institutes. However 'ecotopoi' do have evaluating meanings, they are dressed by a perfume of indeterminate intentions, feelings and motivations and eventually surrounded by transcendental claims. Institutes need 'ecotopoi' in the way that technology needs a social logic besides its instrumental efficiency according to the Duhem-Quine principle [15]. Besides the rational discursive basis of space-time the cultural network intervenes in the practice of the ethical land care as well as religious aspects particularity in the role of the civil society that is social and political medium between private identity and the land considered as homeland. 3. NEWTONIAN VERSUS LEIBNIZIAN SPACE-TIME 3.1 Newton, DesCartes, Kant and other continental thinkers about space-time In the scope of the Newtonian space-time an observing and deliberating subject is situated outside the unique homogeneous four-dimensional space-time. The latter is just a frame to put events on a particular place and at a particular time. There is an absolute zero of space and time so that any position and instant of time is an absolute reality and all places and times are in an isotropic continuous environment. This absolute point zero is the unique beginning of space and time. This point zero makes de difference between ever-never and anywhere-nowhere. No places nor times neither space-time compartments are particularly connected to the subject observing the absolute homogeneous space-time from without. The possibility of a non-affected outside observer is a prime condition for the rational metaphysics of DesCartes and the criticism of Kant. So a dual reality of the 'res cogitans' and the 'res extensa' becomes intelligible in the scope of the Cartesian metaphysics and so does the Kantian formal conception of space-time. Time and space are no realities but transcendental conditions for observation and a priori principles of ordering. Inspired by similar conceptions of space and time The French philosopher Bergson [16] situated his vague concept of 'élan vital' in a continuous space-time organized in compartments by the subject-observer from without. Eventually, the quote of the outstanding scientist Poincaré [17] illustrates the significant influence of the Newtonian conception of space-time: "Tout ce qui n'est pas pensé‚ est le pur néant; puisque nous ne pouvons penser que la pensée et que tous les mots dont nous disposons pour parler des choses ne peuvent exprimer que des pensées; dire qu'il y a autre chose que la pensée, c'est donc une affirmation qui ne peut avoir de sens. Et cependant –étrange contradiction pour ceux qui croient au temps l 'histoire géologique nous montre que la vie n'est qu'un court épisode même, la pensée consciente n'a duré‚ et ne durera qu'un moment. La pensée n'est qu'un‚ clair au milieu d'une longue nuit. Mais c'est cet‚ clair qui est tout." [17]. Freely translated this becomes: "All what is not thought is purely nothing, because we can just think what can be thought and the words we dispose for speaking about things can just express thoughts; To say there are other things but thoughts is nonsense. However strange contradiction for those who believe in time historical geology shows us that life it selves is a short episode, while conscientious thought has no duration and is just a moment. Thought is just a moment, bright in the middle of the night. But that is it, the whole brightness" (free translation from French to English). These conceptions influenced the conception of homeland and identity as we will develop in further sections. Moreover the extern position of the subject determines the conception of freedom and the rather distant relation to nonhuman participants of the homeland. 3.2 The Leibnizian concept of space and time In the Leibnizian space-time both concepts are realized by the participating systems. The Leibnizian world has internal relations in space and time but is completely isolated from other different worlds. There is not only one Leibnizian world, there are several simultaneously existing worlds all with their particular space and time. Both concepts are relative realities with respect to an initial spatial and temporal origin that is also participating to this world. This relative beginning of time and space represents the absence of essence, creating this relative point zero is becoming. Once it is the centre of the Leibnizian world it creates being of essence. Blaise Pascal was a great supporter of the Leibnizian concepts. He claims that humans have to consider themselves as spatial and temporal essences besides others. It is out of the question to define human essence outside the Leibnizian world since human essence depends on the Asian Journal of Humanities and Social Studies (ISSN: 2321 – 2799) Volume 02– Issue 01, February 2014 Asian Online Journals (www.ajouronline.com) 69 complete ensemble of any possible spatial and temporal interaction. So does the human existence that depends on the existence of the relative beginning of space and time. 3.3 The Leibnizian space-time and the phenomenology of space and time Recent developments in phenomenology consider space as an authentic place for dwelling. Participating of the human subjects on the environment is the core idea. Space is not just the ensemble of psychological, sociological, economical and political determinants, but it creates a new reality that exceeds the sum of the parts [18]. Some phenomenological conceptions of space are useful support for human's identity and care for the land. NorbergSchulz [19] considers space as a room for human dwelling with the guarantee for organic unity and constancy. Space is the boundary condition of human activity and determines how borders, environmental organization and institutes are sustained. Space has its proper essence of sustainability, unity and integrity. Relph [20] add to this homelike conception of space the concept of extern space, the place that is foreign to humans. The homeland on the contrary is the cosy place of protection and security. The individual feelings of security are embedded in the large timelike tradition and evolution of the homeland while individual particular conceptions of space and time integrates into the social processes of identification of places and times. The Western world of institutes as frozen timeless and spaceless relicts of former tradition and evolution, however, makes room for a virtual world and renders the homeland as a formal ensemble of rules and duties, far from real space and time to which humans can participate. Jacobs [21] links the space to the land wherein humans encounter their identity. Humans are not just owners of the land, the land owns the habitants. Furthermore it implies that the homeland is not so substitutable. Consequently, Jacobs does not consider the land as an open homogenous area observed distantly by a non affected human being but as a place to which residents belong. The underlying Leibnizian conception of space and time is straightforward in this phenomenological conception of space and time. Finally, Cheney [22] considers space as the context for self understanding and the place for ethical reflection. This ethical dimension is the result of human's need for individual integrity. Since his identity is derived from the land an integer identity can only be the results of the integrity of the land as creating substance of security, protection and significant source of individual identification. Particularly Jacobs and Cheney put phenomenological claims of identity, self understanding and ethical care that presuppose the Leibnizian conception of space and time, both constituted by the interrelations of all participants and resulting in a new private integer reality of creation. This is the land that owns all participants in their mutual care for integrity. We need the metaphysical claims for deep ecology of Warwick Fox [13] in order to claim inherent value of the land and all its participants. 4. HOMELAND AS PLACE AND TIME FOR COMMON DYNAMICS The particular place of identity and ethical care forms the homeland of all residents. It is a complex network of interests and meanings evolving from human's activities. It prevents us from self alienation. The homeland is not just an instrument, it is no empty space inviting us to be filled up with activities. It is the creation of any opportunity to become participants of the land. The transcendental Kantian status of the homeland is an out of the question option since the homeland is the result of all possible interactions of its participants. The homeland is not disappearing in a globalized world. On the contrary, Peter Hay [23] claims the amplification of the homeland as answer to the homogeneous trend of globalization. This trend implies the search for a well feeling and cosy places for the own community. We quote Hay to enforce his claims we sign: "It is the alienation from home and homeness that is the most telling consequence of global technology, global communications, global architecture. Global religion. Global bureaucratization and global economy. None of this is to be confused with Marshall McLuhan`s `global villagè. The global villager ever came. Villages are human agglomerations at a scale conducive to community but global community never came. On the contrary. Along with globalization came antithesis of community the atomization of daily life. As structures, technologies, forms and processes became remote and indifferent to unique place, so society was privatized out of existence. To recover `homè is thus to recover `community`, by which is implied not simply meaningful human interaction, but the built fabric and natural processes that are essential components of one's `significant environment`. To fight for home and community is thus fight the debilitating and degrading alienation that, so many contempory prophets have rightly informed us, is the modern condition. There can be few urgent tasks..." [24]. Hay emphasizes the social action of any human to look forward to an authenticable place to protect themselves against alienation of his own identity. Referring to Clifford, Hay claims human's ethical care for his homeland as preceding condition for his identity: Asian Journal of Humanities and Social Studies (ISSN: 2321 – 2799) Volume 02– Issue 01, February 2014 Asian Online Journals (www.ajouronline.com) 70 "...to savour the symbolisms we have given nature, and to revalue our emotional engagement with places and their meaning, so that we may go on to become actively involved in their care. We have chosen to focus attention, not singularity upon natural history, archeology, architecture, social history, legend or literary traditions, but upon how each of these combine to form people's relationship with places ..." [25]. Even when people know that their homeland is not the most ideal place in the world, even when life is difficult on this place, even when the land is governed by authoritarians most people consider this land as the land of promises, their realization of their particular homeland. This land is supported by non-rational and rational constructions. The former we call ecotopois, the latter we call institutes. 4.1 Ecotopois as cornerstone of the homeland The community of all participants enforced itself by the embodiment in the space and history of the homeland. Ecotopois represent the time and the landscape of the homeland as timeless witnesses of the land. Ecotopois are mountains, valleys, fields, rivers and artifacts. These landscape elements are not just geographic or geological items, but are identified with the interactions of all homeland participants with these phenomena of our planet. The artifacts are no memorials, the latter remember the heroic fact of history. The mentioned ecotopois do not refer to a particular time or a particular event, they are for all times, for all seasons. Monuments inspired by nationalism refer to particular battles or particular heroes. Annual celebrations around those memorials create an eternal actuality because the nationalism needs a timeless atmosphere for its own legitimating. However, ecotopois are renewed at any time by attributing them new meanings according to the actual state of the participants of the land. Ecotopois are not referring to a national state but to the actual way of life of the community. This meaning is not a nationalist petrified relict that need a mythical civil and religious admiration by people in formal uniforms. Ecotopois refer exclusively to a territory, but it claims not the monopoly of this territories. For example, Irish from all over the world come to Crough Patrick. It does not matter if they are catholic or protestant. It does not matter if the have an American, Australian. British or Irish passport, it is the ecotopois of all Irish and when they are climbing up to the top all climbers belong to the Irish land at least at that moment. Monument Valley became the ecotopois of all Americans but also all people who choose for a new future in their new land. It does not refer to a particular fact, it refers to all former and actual brave citizen. On the contrary, the Lincoln Memorial refers just to the civil war. While camps of Dachau and Auschwitz refer to the industrial way of genocide, Masada, however, is the real ecotopois for the land of Israel. What is the place of the ecotopois in the public area? In both places individuals behave according to public decencies. Ecotopois enforce the communitarian feelings, while any citizen dwells in the public space as individuals. Even in institutional public place like the court or the post office and the city hall citizen behave according to a local code for individual citizen. Ecotopois invite the individual to join the land and even to join the community of non-human beings like animals and the characteristic trees of the land. The latter does not have to symbolize freedom like the lime trees of French marketplace that refers to the revolutionary acquirements, ecotopois-trees on the contrary transform the land in a common land of all participants, humans as well a non-humans. 4.2 The land as the basis of the 'Promised Land' Aldo Leopold [10] did not mention the concept of ecotopois. Nevertheless he emphasized the importance of al landscape elements to construct and to enforce the specific character of all participants of the land: "... Lack of economic value is sometimes a character not only of species or groups, but of entire biotic communities: marshes, bogs, dunes and 'desserts' are examples." [10]. The ecotopois implies the moral position of the ethical subjects. Aldo Leopold [10] express this claim in the next quote about the ethics of the land: "... All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member f a community of interdependent parts. His instincts prompt him to complete for his place in the immunity, but his ethics prompt him also to o-operate (perhaps in order that may be place to complete for). The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land..." [10]. Participants of the land do not conquer the land but construct the community. It makes its own community clock that governs all participants, while no individual no particular culture master the evolution of the land. Any participant tries to submit the land en vain, but the land submit its participants: "... In short, the plant succession steered the course of history the pioneer simply demonstrated .... Is history taught in his spirit? It will be, once the concept of land as a community really penetrates our intellectual life..." [10]. Though the participants of the land can belong to very different cultural traditions, around the ecotopois of space and time produce a collective identity so that any participant feels in the common land. Moreover, in the process of enlarged Asian Journal of Humanities and Social Studies (ISSN: 2321 – 2799) Volume 02– Issue 01, February 2014 Asian Online Journals (www.ajouronline.com) 71 ethical care the ecotopois catalyze the ethical appeal of the land and all its participants, from locals to foreigners, nonhuman life and eventually the landscape itself. 5. ETHICAL CARE TO THE LAND AND ALL ITS PARTICIPANTS 5.1 Land ethics and inherent values Community responsibility and care for the land is often articulated by religious arguments [27]. On the contrary we claim metaphysical arguments. Though metaphysical roots of the land are based on the Leibnizian space-time, moral concepts of care and values are completely anthropogenic. This implies a moral human subject. Subjectivity, however, is characterized by self identification as the result of the creative power of the land to which the subject belongs. The creative power of the land and the ethical self understanding of the self reflective human being are mutually enclosed in what is called  the homeland . Moreover, in the scope of Fox' concept [10] of transpersonal self identification any subject reach more self understanding, the more he stands in mutual relationship with his environment, particularly with participants who are able to produce self reflective behavior. But by discovering his identity as self reflective being he is faced to his power over non-reflective beings and landscapes. Care for those non-humans is a question of mastering human's power that gives more insight in human's propensities to create and to destroy. Morality is making the balance between these human powers and the more objects of moral care, the more insight in human's self understanding and individual identity. Hence, moral care for all participants of the homeland is the highway to self understanding and individuality. Morality of individuals presupposes freedom of consciousness, freedom of speech and opportunity to make freely choices, eventually there is need for a organized society of judging subjects. The latter guaranties that ethical claims are generally accepted and fulfilled inside the homeland and universally recognized abroad. At the one hand there exist formal societies and other hand there exist within any land a lot of informal societies of subjects who regulate there daily life according to respectively formal and non-formal prescriptions and rules. The latter societies, called civil societies, are governed by humans, but all these societies are linked to non-human biotic life and imply a homeland to which they belong. These societies have no intrinsic moral power but they derive their public significance from moral balance that needs calibration of a gauging reality. The homeland as the synthesis of all formal and non-formal organized society creates gauging of the social public area of all civil societies. while the integrity and autonomy of the homeland is the a priori condition for its function as gauging authority. Does moral power of the homeland imply also the need of moral standards based on intrinsic values? And are all participants of the homeland, biotic, a-biotic, human and non-human endowed with intrinsic value? And what about the homeland itself? Intrinsic value is an absolute concept that implies the possibility of a perfect and complete distance between subject and object as formulated by Newton and adopted by the Modern thinkers of the Enlightenment. As the homeland is just one Leibnizian world besides others, it has neither intrinsic value, nor do all different forms of participants. In the scope of the Leibnizian world there is no room for the absolute intrinsic being inside neither outside the land. Nevertheless it emphasizes the inherent value of the land and its participants. The inherent value of the land is generated by its creative power while the inherence of all beings is the consequence of the organic essence of the land, as place of self understanding, security and integrity. Participants are not just instruments for the physical survival of others, they guarantee the identity of others. What is more, the inherence is also implied by the fact that outside the land all participants are reduced to foreigners. 5.2 Land ethics and worlds without What about the foreigner? The foreigner does not make part of the particular land and in consequence the foreigner is not assigned any moral subjectivity derived from the gauging power of the particular land. However, in case of moral judgments provided it is a must to attribute ethical care to the foreigner according to some kind of ethical universality any foreigner can just be metaphysically and morally qualified according to the moral perspective of the particular land. In consequence prejudice is involved. Gadamer's hermeneutics and the prejudice to the foreigner [27] Understanding in the classical heritage of the Enlightenment presuppose a Newtonian world with an isolated thinking subject who is completely free of place and time. Gadamer critics the Enlightenment because it reduce understanding to a non spatial situated and timeless activity of the isolated self consistent subject, while the latter is an ambition that is rather unrealistic. Consequently it cannot result in a metaphysical claim. Indeed, it is totally out of the question for a Asian Journal of Humanities and Social Studies (ISSN: 2321 – 2799) Volume 02– Issue 01, February 2014 Asian Online Journals (www.ajouronline.com) 72 human to escape from the land without losing his identity and his inherent value. Escaping or preferring the refuge of the splendid isolation of universal observer implies the end of the mutual relations that guarantee the identity and the subjectivity of any participant of the land. As the land is a rather particular affair, so is the metaphysical status of the self understanding subject. His metaphysical status depends on the wholeness and integrity of the land that coincides with the reference system. Without the reference system the subject has no significance. Because understanding is not persistent in the scope of the phenomenological view of the land and its participants it must be transformed into hermeneutics. Contrary to classical understanding, hermeneutic understanding has a spatial and a temporal momentum, and it connects tradition to the actual context. Tradition and actual context of the land, however, are temporal and spatial situated. Tradition contains identity of the land and its participants as well as moral values [28]. The prejudice of any subject starts from the anticipating opinion with respect to the particular situation and it makes part of the tradition. It represents the tight connection of the subject with his community where he belongs to while the latter is his link to morality and his own inherent value. Tradition is no golden or iron cage to captive the subject, but is the ultimate result of continuously transfers of morale values from generation to generation all dedicated to the land. This understanding produces the metaphysical momentum of the hermeneutical process. This latter is the ontological guarantee for actual understanding. In consequence, classical understanding of the foreigner is rather an impossible act as any single subject cannot claim universal status of any ethical claim without the perspective of his homeland. The prejudice with respect to the foreigner is consequently a first hermeneutical step in order to attribute ontological status to the foreigner, his foreign tradition and his foreign land. Hermeneutical understanding of the foreigner is recognizing and accepting the existence of the foreigner's tradition and the categorical imperative of the foreigner's status. When mutual recognition and acceptance of both traditions is present, than convergence of understanding becomes a possibility Mutual hermeneutical understanding is not always straightforward. Mythical understanding e.g. can be hermeneutically understood by one land and its moral subjects, but it cannot understand the reality from without because outside the circular mythical understanding nothing else can exist. This kind of prejudices cannot converge to any other way of hermeneutical understanding. In that case we reach frontiers of understanding. Universality of ethical claims and converging understanding Claims of ethical value have a universal qualification. Within the land the self understanding participants claim universal respect and universal right of being without any prejudice. This means that ethical claims concerning any particular land involve the ethical appointment of any other land, even the latter can only understand the former within its own prejudice. Universality of ethics does not mean that the claims of one land are necessarily valuable abroad and vice versa. It just implies that these claims in other places and other times are valuable when equal temporal and boundary conditions of this particular land are fulfilled. Attributing universality of the own ethical claims needs on every time and on every place another foreigner. The above mentioned universality of ethical claims implies an ontological basis that is provided by the hermeneutical understanding of the foreigner and his foreign land. Therefore, mutual understanding of the ethical status of the foreigner and his foreign land is a necessary condition in order to guarantee the mutual ontological basis for ethical claims of both characteristics of the foreign land can prevent any form of converging hermeneutical thinking. Temporal evolution is a basic boundary condition of convergence. Moreover, linear temporal evolution is the main characteristic of the modern land [29] while cyclic time evolution is a primer feature of any mythological land. A particular land for which the ultimate reality is that tomorrow we just repeat nowadays claims values that are difficult to reconcile with land that hopes to find the ultimate value at the and of the horizon. The mutual ontological recognition is not quite out of the question, but convergence of hermeneutical thinking is rather a unrealistic ambition. The same incompatible situation we encounter in the case that a particular land petrified its tradition in eternal unchangeable institutes. Such lands reduce time to the ideology of the eternal and every time and everywhere returning actuality embedded in a national ideology. These forms of nationalism deny the real temporal evolution and are incompatible with land that recognize the ecological reality of qualitative temporal evolution. Hermeneutical convergence is not possible and in consequence the ethical claims are reduced to formal procedures or protocols in order to organize mutual contacts without ethical engagement of both sites. Only the formal existence is than mutually recognized on the basis of the mutual prejudices, but no mutual inherent value is involved. The foreigner as convergent mirror of the land and its participants and the landscape In cases of incompatible claims of ethical values it will not imply that there can be no ethical respect, ethical recognition of inherent value and even ethical engagement to individual foreigners of these foreign lands. Indeed, the individual foreigner merits inherent value because it is the foreigner who definitely enforces the inherent value of my homeland. But how to judge on the inherent value of the foreigner in the scope of the own tradition? Therefore, we Asian Journal of Humanities and Social Studies (ISSN: 2321 – 2799) Volume 02– Issue 01, February 2014 Asian Online Journals (www.ajouronline.com) 73 examine the significant value of being of the foreigner for the subject of the particular homeland. The foreigner refers to the particularity of the land and its participants. The self-reflective subject understands that any of his civil societies to which he belongs but even the land is never absolute neither straightforward nor intrinsic. It can go otherwise. The foreigner sheds light on the relative basis of any different moral society and consequently on any judgment of the good and the evil. This does not mean that any moral system of the land is just a relative network of duties and rights since each organized society claims universality of inherent values for the homeland. The foreigner obliges the land to be critical to its own coherence and the foreigner confronts the land by the fact that its moral coherence is vulnerable and only a permanent vigilance is necessary to keep the land metaphysically and morally integer and fair. Inherent values of the land must be handled with care and precaution. What is more, the foreigner encourage the land to make room for moral tolerance entitled to all land's non self reflective participants and to all foreigners. Furthermore the land is promoted to be humiliate with its power on any foreigner subject not belonging to the land. Within a foreign land the foreigner cannot be a subject with inherent value because he never belongs to the land. The value of the foreigner in the scope of a particular land depends of his role by triggering the vigilance of the land for its own integrity and its owns inherent value of all its participants. That implies that foreigner's inherent value consists just in its being as foreigner, not in its being as other subject. He can never be my partner sharing my land. Even when the foreigner is my neighbor, even the foreigner is inviting me in his home, he belongs to another institute that makes part of another homeland. On the other hand, I have no inherent value in the scope of foreigner's homeland. Conclusion: As the foreigner's land mirrors the particularity of any land and the particularity of any inherent value of its participants the inherent value of the foreigner is involved in the inherent value of his land. But accepting this particularity implies the acceptance of the impotence of any universal ethical attitude to the foreigner and his land. The ethical attitude will always be an incident of contact with the foreigner because than any subject is faced with criticism of its own ethical behavior with respect to his own land. This is the major characterizing feature of foreigner's ontological and ethical status and in extension all moral subjects because locals are foreigners outside their homeland and vice versa. From prejudice to foreigner's ontological status The prejudice makes room for the ontological status of the foreigner and his homeland. This ontological status implies respect to another modus of being, it implies even the non-intervention in foreigner's land because the latter would violate the recognition of its ontological status. The foreign land does not have to account for its different modus of being. Its ontological status gives the guarantee of respect of the others. This implies the irreducibility of the foreigner to my land. Never it becomes mine, never I become his. The ontological status of the land involves the integrity and the autonomy as inherent values while both consequences imply the intrinsic value of the status, provided the latter is the result of hermeneutical understanding of foreign homelands and the respective participants. Though we cannot understand the foreigner, neither we can entitle him with other inherent values as those derived from its own land and the particular participants. The problem arises if the ontological status of any land implies also the care for its autonomy and integrity by foreigner subjects? Does its status imply just its existence or are other lands morally obliged to support the existence and even to create opportunity for autonomous en integer survival of .the foreigner's land? In case of mutual convergence of hermeneutical understanding both lands have to promote each others interests. The mutual goal is to survive and a symbiotic project can effort mutual ambition. No intrinsic value of land's ontological status is involved, but just the own survival in integrity and autonomy. This is a rather instrumental modus of ethical care. This is not so remarkable since intrinsic value is attributed to the nude fact of foreigner's being, not to the inherent value of the existence of subjects  network of relationships within the own neither the foreigner's homeland. It is impossible to attribute care for the intrinsic value of being, since this value has a universal status while the moral subjects just have a particular status. In consequence, the moral care for extern being can just be attributed in the scope of its own integrity and autonomy. In case of divergent prejudice, however, the mutual instrumental care can formally exist but it is not possible to realize it since both lands have complete different meanings of autonomy and integrity. What with the universal ethical claims of all existing land? This universality just implies that the ethical claims must be fulfilled in space and time where they were formulated. That means that categorical ethical care must be attributed to all participants even to the foreigner. The ethical reasons why attributing ethical care to the foreigner are quite different from the ethical care attributed to inherent value carrying participants of the own land. Indeed, ethical care within the land is attributed to the foreigner not because the foreigner is carrier of inherent value but because the foreigner's homeland's inherent values have universal metaphysical and ethical claims. The foreigner is not an ethical inherent subject but the object of a universal ethical formal system. For attributing ethical care to the foreigner it does not matter if the hermeneutical understanding of both involved lands are converging or diverging, because the categorical care is an imperative due to its claims of universality. The final conclusion is that ethical subjects just have inherent value within the references of their own land but that the accompanying care claims universality. Due to this universality the foreigner is formally attributed ethical care while Asian Journal of Humanities and Social Studies (ISSN: 2321 – 2799) Volume 02– Issue 01, February 2014 Asian Online Journals (www.ajouronline.com) 74 the respective foreign land is only assisted in its endeavor for autonomy and integrity, provided both land's ambitions converge into a mutual dialogue of hermeneutical understanding. 6. CONCLUSIONS Martin Drenthen [30] developed the Ethics of the Place. He emphasised the deep role of inhabitant education to reach an engaged relationship with respect to the landscape. He adopted hermeneutics as pedagogical method for better understanding of the landscape, but he kept silence about the non human life and his approach was rather methodological. Another very recent approach is from the hand of Liszka [31] who situates the normative aspects of Leopold's land ethics in a narrative discourse. Both are outstanding contributions on Leopold's land ethics. However , our claims, based on the deep relationship between homeland and subject and the particular position of the foreigner who opens the way to an enlarged ethical care for non humans and the land, join the ideas of Baird Callicott [12] [32] in his search for metaphysical foundation of space and time as fundamentals of the land. We conclude that the metaphysic ground of land ethics is based on the Leibnizian conception of space and time. This spatiotemporal infrastructure supports the phenomenological perspective of space and time. The latter makes room for ethical concepts like freedom, responsibility and the anthropological needs like security and the feelings of belonging to a cosy place. These relationship to the land involves a proper relation between subject-object that makes room for a conception of ethical care and ethical subjects enlarged to all participants to the homeland and the land itself. Though ethical claims are considered as universal, indivisible and cannot be withdrawn, the care for the land is rooted in the particularity of the homeland and especially particular times and places. We have shed light on the central role of these particularities called 'ecotopoi' in the attribution of intrinsic value to land's ontological status and inherent value to all its participants and items. The 'ecotopoi' shape the identity of the residents of the land as much as the institutes. However 'ecotopoi' do have evaluating meanings, they are dressed by a perfume of indeterminate intentions, feelings and motivations and eventually surrounded by transcendental claims. Eventually intrinsic value is attributed to the ontological status of any land but this does not imply universal ethics. The latter would imply universal understanding, a mental activity that cannot be produced by particular subjects, living on particular places and particular times. Any participants bear inherent value because subjectivity depends on the propensity to cognitive knowledge, to emotional intentions to and eventually symbolic feelings of togetherness to any other participant of the land and the land itself. However, only land's ontological status is the bearer of intrinsic value as the foreigner's world with respect to beings of without. The subject cannot understand the foreigner because his experience with the foreigner is necessary based on prejudices. Prejudice results in a hermeneutical understanding of the foreigner. This procedure links subject's tradition and that of the land to the actual contact with the foreigner. The attributed value to the foreigner's world is intrinsic without responsibility. In case of integration of the foreigner, however, the latter is entitled to inherent value not by its being, but because the foreigner enriches the subjectivity of the moral actor of the land. 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