Ethics & the Environment

In “Building Dwelling Thinking,” Heidegger discusses a bridge and a farmhouse as gathering things. He also suggests, but does not develop, that farming builds things by “nurs[ing] and nurtur[ing] the things that grow” (1975, 151). I show below that Bill McKibben’s work does develop, consciously or not, this sense of farming as a focal thing, to use the terms of Albert Borgmann. Furthermore, I will position McKibben’s environmentalism in light of Heidegger’s, Borgmann’s, and my work on technology and things. Aside from his work on climate change and farming as a thing, McKibben’s valuable contribution to this discussion, I find, is his compelling use of testimony on behalf of these focal things.