Environmental hermeneutics is a relatively recent stance within environmental philosophy that built on the insights and theories from philosophical hermeneutics. Philosophical hermeneutics starts with the idea that humans are essentially interpretative beings that seek to understand meaning. Hermeneutics traditionally focuses on the understanding and interpretation of texts; environmental hermeneutics seeks to expand this scope to include environments and landscapes. The starting point is the idea that the world we inhabit is always already (...) interpreted and infused with meanings, and that environments matter to people as normative context that help them make sense of their lives. Environmental hermeneuticists examine the role of interpretation and conflicts of interpretations in human relations with environments and explicate how these are intertwined with notions of environmental identity. This chapter presents and discusses some key thoughts and ideas from philosophical hermeneutics, focusing on Gadamer and Ricoeur and examines how these might bear on environmental philosophy. (shrink)

Local, national, and international conflicts over the use of forests between logging companies, governments, environmentalists, native peoples, local residents, recreationalists, and others—e.g., the controversy over the spotted owl in the old-growth forests of the Northwestern United States and over the rain forests in South America—have shown the need for philosophical reflection to help clarify the basic issues involved. Joining other philosophers who are addressing this problem, my own response takes the form of a sketch of the rough outlines of a (...) critical environmental hermeneutics. I apply hermeneutics, narrative theory, and critical theory to environmental ethics, and use this hermeneutical theory as a method to illuminate the “deep” underlying issues relating to the perception and use of forests. In applying this method, I first take up the analytical problem of identifying, clarifying, and ordering the different interpretive narratives about forests in terms of the underlying epistemological, ethical, and political issuesinvolved. I then address the critical problem of deciding conflicts between these different interpretations of forests by working out a set of legitimation criteria to which all parties concerned would ideally be able to subscribe. (shrink)

Local, national, and international conflicts over the use of forests between logging companies, governments, environmentalists, native peoples, local residents, recreationalists, and others—e.g., the controversy over the spotted owl in the old-growth forests of the Northwestern United States and over the rain forests in South America—have shown the need for philosophical reflection to help clarify the basic issues involved. Joining other philosophers who are addressing this problem, my own response takes the form of a sketch of the rough outlines of a (...) critical environmental hermeneutics. I apply hermeneutics, narrative theory, and critical theory to environmental ethics, and use this hermeneutical theory as a method to illuminate the “deep” underlying issues relating to the perception and use of forests. In applying this method, I first take up the analytical problem of identifying, clarifying, and ordering the different interpretive narratives about forests in terms of the underlying epistemological, ethical, and political issuesinvolved. I then address the critical problem of deciding conflicts between these different interpretations of forests by working out a set of legitimation criteria to which all parties concerned would ideally be able to subscribe. (shrink)

The analysis of fundamental texts such as “Architecture and Narrativity” and Memory, History, Forgetting aims to fill a gap in studies of Environmental Hermeneutics. Indeed, the analogy between space and narrative, through parallelism with the process of triple mimesis, is usually deduced by environmental hermeneuticists from the works Time and Narrative and Oneself as Another. However, Ricœur himself took it upon himself to make this transposition in a direct and elaborated way from a phenomenological and hermeneutic analysis (...) of the built space and the inhabited space, opening the way for a broader and more grounded epistemology of environmental hermeneutics. The introduction of the critical concept of landscape, as seen today by constructivist and cultural geography, legitimizes the claims of an environmental hermeneutics as an interpretive process of formally non-textual objects. Indeed, landscape in its connection to territory has its own semiotic and semantic character, which is appealed to for reading and interpretation. (shrink)

Modern environmentalism has come to realize that many of its key concerns "wilderness" and "nature" among them are contested territory, viewed differently by different people. Understanding nature requires science and ecology, to be sure, but it also requires a sensitivity tom, history, culture, and narrative. Thus, understanding nature is a fundamentally hermeneutic task.

It has become commonplace to interpret 'Easter Island' in terms of an environmental allegory, a Malthusian morality tale of the consequences of over-exploitation of limited natural resources. There are, however, ethical dangers in treating places and peoples allegorically, as moralized means (lessons) to satisfy others' edificatory ends. Allegory reductively appropriates the past, presenting a specific interpretation as 'given' (fixed) and exemplary, wrongly suggesting that meanings and morals, like islands, are there to be 'discovered' ready-formed. Gadamer's hermeneutics suggests an (...) alternative understanding which expresses something of the ethical ambiguities involved in giving meaning to the environmental history of Easter Island. (shrink)

The value‐action gap poses a considerable challenge to normative environmental ethics. Because of the wide array of empirical research results that have become available in the fields of environmental psychology, education, and anthropology, ethicists are at present able to take into account insights on what effectively motivates proenvironmental behavior. The emotional aspect apparently forms a key element within a transformational process that leads to an internalization of nature within one's identity structure. We compare these findings with studies on (...) environmental activists, which appear to a significantly lesser degree hampered by the value‐action gap, thereby attempting to understand what provides them with the drive to act more consistently on their moral attitudes. Hermeneutics is found to play a crucial role in the processes that lead to lasting and consistent motivation toward proenvironmental behavior. An empirically informed hermeneutical approach could therefore provide a promising impetus for contemporary environmental ethics. (shrink)

The value-action gap poses a considerable challenge to normative environmental ethics. Because of the wide array of empirical research results that have become available in the fields of environmental psychology, education, and anthropology, ethicists are at present able to take into account insights on what effectively motivates proenvironmental behavior. The emotional aspect apparently forms a key element within a transformational process that leads to an internalization of nature within one's identity structure. We compare these findings with studies on (...) environmental activists, which appear to a significantly lesser degree hampered by the value-action gap, thereby attempting to understand what provides them with the drive to act more consistently on their moral attitudes. Hermeneutics is found to play a crucial role in the processes that lead to lasting and consistent motivation toward proenvironmental behavior. An empirically informed hermeneutical approach could therefore provide a promising impetus for contemporary environmental ethics. (shrink)

In this paper, I seek to provide building blocks for a reconciliation of the ethical care for heritage protection and nature restoration ethics. It will do so, by introducing a hermeneutic landscape philosophy that takes landscape as a multi-layered “text” in need of interpretation, and place identities as build upon certain readings of the landscape. I will argue that from a hermeneutic perspective, both approaches appear to complement each other. Renaturing presents a valuable correction to the anthropocentrism of many European (...) rural cultures. Yet, heritage protectionists rightly point to the value of narratives for Old World identities. I will conclude with a short reflection on how such a hermeneutic environmental ethic can be helpful in dealing with environmental conflicts. (shrink)

This article surveys and classifies the kinds of appeal to the Bible made in recent theological discussions of ecology and environmental ethics. These are, first, readings of `recovery', followed by two types of readings of `resistance'. The first of these modes of resistance entails the exercise of suspicion against the text, a willingness to resist it given a commitment to a particular (ethical) reading perspective. The second, by contrast, entails a resistance to the contemporary ethical agenda, given a perceived (...) commitment to the Bible. This initial typology and the various reading strategies surveyed are then subjected to criticism, as part of an attempt to begin to develop an ecological hermeneutic, a hermeneutic which operates between recovery and resistance with an approach that may be labelled `revision', `reformation' or `reconfiguration'. (shrink)

In this text, I discuss the environmental education project "Legible Landscape ", which aims to teach inhabitants to read their landscape and develop a closer, more engaged relationship to place. I show that the project's semiotic perspective on landscape legibility tends to hamper the understanding of the moral dimension of reading landscapes, and argue that a hermeneutical perspective is better suited to acknowledge the way that readers and texts are intimately connected.

In the worlds of philosophy, linguistics, and communications theory, a view has developed which understands conscious experience as experience which is 'reflected' back upon itself through language. This indicates that the consciousness we experience is possible only because we have culturally invented language and subsequently evolved to accommodate it. This accords with the conclusions of Daniel Dennett (1991), but the 'hermeneutic objection' would go further and deny that the objective sciences themselves have escaped the hermeneutic circle. -/- The consciousness we (...) humans experience is developed only within the context of crossing the 'symbolic threshold' (Percy 1975; Deacon 1997) and one of the earliest and most important symbols we acquire is that of the self, or 'the subject of experience'. It is only when we achieve self-awareness that the world, as such, comes to exist for us as an object (which contains categories and sub-categories of objects). Any consciousness imputed to prelinguistic stages of development is based on projection and guesswork, since we can know nothing directly of it. It can be said that any experience which does not separate an inner subject from an outer world is probably a continuum of sensation in which environmental stimulus and instinctive response are experienced as a unity; it may be 'lived experience' but it is experience 'lived' non-consciously. -/- Speech requires assertion and by learning to speak we find ourselves asserting, in essence, our selves into the world. The narrative form of language allows us to develop life stories, self-knowledge, and, most important, narrative memory coincident with narrative time. All this is made possible with the intersubjective 'net' of language which allows us to know ourselves by first identifying with the viewpoint of others; and, later, such allows us to identify with other minds as we anticipate their reception our communication. These three, assertion, narrative, and intersubjectivity are the essence of what language is and are the keystones that make culture possible outside of nature. (shrink)

The article puts forward the thesis that Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutics can be useful for conceptualising the issue of the Anthropocene. Both speculative features of hermeneutics generally and specific Gadamerian insights are helpful for this matter. As for the speculative features of hermeneutics, the concept of understanding may be used, as well as Gadamer's analysis of prejudices and of the history of effect. Further, Gadamer's ecological insights anticipated some problems raised by the philosophy of the Anthropocene and are (...) therefore also helpful in our current articulation of the concept. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hermeneutics, Neuroscience and PsychiatryMichael T. H. Wong, MBBS, MD, MA, MDiv, PhD, FRCPsych, FRANZCP, FHKAM (bio)Hermeneutic practice in mental health has been a theme in Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology (PPP) since its very beginnings. In this essay I argue that hermeneutics, the theory and practice of interpretation, promotes therapeutic interaction between mental health professionals, patients and their family.Why does this patient present in such a way at (...) this particular point in time? The distressing symptoms are there. The changes in behavior are obvious. Impairments of functions are hurting. A mental illness clearly runs in the family. There were early losses of loved ones, physical abuse at home, bullying by peers and self-medication with drugs and alcohol. Three in four adults with a mental illness first experienced that before they turned 24. The brain goes through major reorganization during adolescence and early adulthood. If synaptic pruning went wrong, psychoses emerged. When stresses activated the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis the elevated cortisol level impacted the size and function of the hippocampus and amygdala in the genetically vulnerable; anxiety, depression, bipolar, and personality disorders developed. The patient needs a voice/language to describe all these experiences and events and the psychiatrist needs a discourse to make sense of them.Eisenberg laments the swings between "brainlessness" and "mindlessness" in psychiatry. Engel argues for a "biopsychosocial" discourse. The major challenge for psychiatry is how to organize clinical information of different nature (categories, dimensions, narratives; i.e., objective vs. subjective, personal vs. interpersonal) into a coherent and comprehensible account for us all. Mental illnesses are not only neuropsychiatric spectrum disorders but also dysfunctions of social relationship and environmental/ecological adaptation. Psychiatry as a clinical neuroscience per se lacks the semantics to address the rich interactions between the physical, psychological, social, cultural, and spiritual in the illness experience of our patients. Explanation in the diagnostic formulation (objective scientific discourse on cause and effect) and understanding in the patient narrative (subjective ordinary everyday discourse on significance and meaning) are irreducible to each other (Wong, 2018). They instead interact with one another to achieve an integrative formulation, not through merging different discourses into a single assertion/monologue but via the dialectic/dialogue of "explaining more in order to understand better," as Ricoeur puts it, and between "the whole and the parts," as Schleiermacher highlights.This "therapeutic hermeneutic circle" of "explanation vs understanding" and "the whole vs the parts" includes symptoms behavior function and life events. It correlates between bio-psychosociocultural-spiritual dimensions/perspectives and does not reduce them to any particular/single [End Page 13] stance. The whole integrates the parts and the parts enrich the whole. It explains but does not explain away. It understands through an articulation of meaning and significance. This discourse is a multilayered (bio-psycho-social-cultural-spiritual) personal narrative that formulates diagnosis and care in a correlative (linking different voices/discourses) and non-reductive (no particular voice/discourse is prejudiced against) manner that is comprehensible to us all (Wong, 2021).PPP will be an excellent forum for discussing clinical hermeneutics in the future. In this digital era of social media and virtual reality, hermeneutics has the never-ending task to tackle the unprecedented challenges to meaning illness and health posed by polarizing discourses.Michael T. H. Wong Michael T.H. Wong, MBBS, MD, MA, MDiv, PhD, FRCPsych, FRANZCP, FHKAM, is Hon Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, School of Clinical Medicine, LKS Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, HKSAR, China. Michael is Chair, Section of Philosophy & Humanities in Psychiatry, World Psychiatric Association. He is an Organizational Partner & International Lead with The Collaborating Centre for Values-Based Practice in Health and Social Care, St Catherine's College Oxford. He is Advisor to the Chinese Health Foundation of Australia.ReferencesWong M. T. H. (2018). Ricoeur and the third discourse of the person: From philosophy and neuroscience to psychiatry and theology. London: Lexington Books. Google ScholarWong, M. T. H. (2021). Values, meanings, hermeneutics and mental health. In Stoyanov, D., Fulford, K. M. W. F., Stanghellini, G., Van Staden, W., & Wong, M. TH. (Eds.), International perspectives in values-based mental health practice: Case studies and commentaries (pp. 341–349... (shrink)

In consequence of significant social, political, economic, and demographic changes several wildlife species are currently growing in numbers and recolonizing Europe. While this is rightly hailed as a success of the environmental movement, the return of wildlife brings its own issues. As the animals arrive in the places we inhabit, we are learning anew that life with wild nature is not easy, especially when the accumulated cultural knowledge and experience pertaining to such coexistence have been all but lost. This (...) book provides a hermeneutic study of the ways we come to understand the troubling impacts of wildlife by exploring and critically discussing the meanings of 'ecological discomforts'. Thus, it begins the work of rebuilding the culture of coexistence. The cases presented in this book range from crocodile attacks to mice infestations, and their analysis consequently builds up an ethics that sees wildlife as active participants in the shaping of human moral and existential reality. This book is of interest not only to environmental philosophers, who will find here an original contribution to the established ethical discussions, but also to wildlife managers, and even to those members of the public who themselves struggle to make sense of encounters with their new wild neighbors. (shrink)

This article re-examines the theoretical basis for environmental and heritage interpretation in tourist settings in the light of hermeneutic philosophy. It notes that the pioneering vision of heritage interpretation formulated by Freeman Tilden envisaged a broadly educational, ethically informed and transformative art. By contrast, current cognitive psychological attempts to reduce interpretation to the monological transmission of information, targeting universal but individuated cognitive structures, are found to be wanting. Despite growing signs of diversity, this information processing approach to interpretation remains (...) dominant. The article then presents the alternative paradigm of hermeneutics through the works of Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger and Gadamer, to provide a broader interpretation of interpretation. This not only captures the essence of Tilden’s definition but construes heritage interpretation as a more inclusive, culturally situated, critically reflexive and dialogical practice. (shrink)

We explore how story has the potential to encourage environmental engagement and a sense of agency provided that critical discussion takes place. We illuminate this with reference to the philosophies of John Macmurray on personal agency and social relations; of John Dewey on the primacy of experience for philosophy; and of Paul Ricoeur on hermeneutics, dialogue, dialectics and narrative. We view the use of fiction for environmental understanding as hermeneutic, a form of conceptualising place which interprets experience (...) and perception. The four writers for young people discussed are Ernest Thompson Seton, Kenneth Grahame, Michelle Paver and Philip Pullman. We develop the concept of critical dialogue, and link this to Crick's demand for active democratic citizenship. We illustrate the educational potential for environmental discussions based on literature leading to deeper understanding of place and environment, encouraging the belief in young people that they can be and become agents for change. We develop from Zimbardo the key concept of heroic resister to encourage young people to overcome peer pressure. We conclude with a call to develop a greater awareness of the potential of fiction for learning, and for writers to produce more focused stories engaging with environmental responsibility and activism. (shrink)

In rejecting the ethical authority of those social institutions that attempt to define and impose norms of belief and behavior, radical environmentalism has many parallels with past antinomian protests. It is characterized by a 'hermeneutics of suspicion' directed towards the establishment in all its forms and extending to all its attempts to 'lay down the law.' Those nomothetic models which represent environmentalists as, (a) seeking to extend current legal/bureaucratic frameworks to 'nature,' or (b) drawing moral conclusions from 'natural laws' (...) are guilty of ignoring radical environmentalism's antinomian ethos. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Thinking with Heidegger:Rethinking Environmental Theory and PracticeKevin Michael DeLuca (bio)Environmentalism is tired. It is a movement both institutionalized and insipid. The vast majority of Americans claim to be environmentalists while buying ever more SUVs, leaf-blowers, and uncountable plastic consumer goods. Indeed, environmentalism itself has become just another practice of consumerism, a matter of buying Audubon memberships, Ansel Adams calendars, and 'biodegradable' plastic bags with one's Sierra Club credit (...) card. As a practice of everyday life, environmentalism has devolved into another lifestyle choice.On the political front, carbon-copy blow-dried presidential candidates proclaim their allegiance to the environment, an allegiance that is more a sign of fealty to opinion polls than a concern with environmental issues. In the world of real-politic, environmental regulations are gutted as corporations write legislation for the politicians they have bought. Outspent and outmaneuvered, mainstream environmental groups preach at the altar of broken promises about the potential of lobbying and insider access while awaiting the blandishments of the next candidate. As [End Page 67] a political practice, mainstream environmentalism has degenerated into a marginal special-interest group.On the intellectual front, a confusing array of reform environmentalists, deep ecologists, social ecologists, ecofeminists, wilderness advocates, social justice activists, social constructionists, and Christian ecologists offer a cacophony of competing paradigms and programs while exchanging charges and countercharges of wrong-headedness and infidelity. If on the level of practice an exhausted environmentalism has achieved both institutionalism and irrelevance, intellectually environmentalism has reached several stasis points. This is crucial, for at a level that is unusual for social movements, environmentalism has always highlighted the importance of how we think about the environment, that ideas of nature are powerful because practices follow from ideas. In other words, how we think about nature guides how we act toward nature. In the midst of this melee I want to suggest we reconsider the work of Martin Heidegger.I want to think Heidegger in distress: in the distress of machination; in the distress of the technological enframing of the earth; in the distress of the environmental crisis. In rejecting a Heideggerian hermeneutics, a piety to textual exegesis, I hope to stress Heidegger in order to stress environmental theory. With few exceptions,1 two insufficient responses typify the reception of Heidegger in environmental thinking. One is to champion Heidegger as some proto-environmentalist. Certainly, quotes from such works as Being and Time, Contributions to Philosophy: From Enowning, "The Question Concerning Technology," "Building Dwelling Thinking," and "The Age of the World Picture" inspire such a reading. Such readings, however, present a simplified Heidegger. For example, a poor reading of an essay such as "The Question Concerning Technology" produces the conclusion that Heidegger was anti-technology.2 These misreadings are not merely accidental but a result of the goal of the citation. The challenge of Heidegger is not engaged to develop environmental theory; rather, Heidegger is cited to lend some borrowed legitimacy to the fledgling enterprise. The most prominent example of this move occurs in Devall and Sessions' Deep Ecology, wherein Heidegger joins a potpourri of thinkers, including Dogen, Job, St. Francis of Assisi, Giordano Bruno, Spinoza, Thoreau, Chief Seattle, Herman Melville, John Muir, Aldous Huxley, Gandhi, Rainer Maria Rilke, Aldo Leopold, Robinson Jeffers, Mary Austin, Rachel Carson, Barry Commoner, Stanley Diamond, and [End Page 68] David Brower from a host of traditions, including Taoism, Hinduism, Zen Buddhism, Christianity, Native American thought, Romanticism, and ecological science (1985, 79–108). The result is confusion, at best.On the other hand, in a second response Heidegger serves as a kind of bogeyman, a Nazi used to tar the more radical environmental groups. The syllogism is simple and simplistic: Deep Ecologists are bio/ecocentric; Deep Ecologists quote Heidegger; Heidegger was a Nazi; Therefore, Deep Ecologists are Nazis/fascists. (To push this thinking to its logical extreme, then, all nonanthropocentric thinking is fascist.) Both responses may be useful for polemics but serve to prevent a possibly productive exploration of Heidegger for the engagement of the difficult problems that have stumped environmentalism on multiple levels.Violating HeideggerAs a prefatory word, even a cursory glance at Heidegger's work reveals him to be a thinker who... (shrink)

Mugerauer seeks to make deconstruction and hermeneutics accessible to people in the environmental disciplines, including architecture, planning, urban studies, environmental studies, and cultural geography. Mugerauer demonstrates each methodology through a case study. The first study uses the traditional approach to recover the meaning of Jung's and Wittgenstein's houses by analyzing their historical, intentional contexts. The second case study utilizes deconstruction to explore Egyptian, French neoclassical, and postmodern attempts to use pyramids to constitute a sense of lasting presence. (...) And the third case study employs hermeneutics to reveal how the American understanding of the natural landscape has evolved from religious to secular to ecological since the nineteenth century. (shrink)

This collection of essays explores the meaning of the interpretive turn in the philosophy of the human sciences for a variety of contemporary philosophical debates. While hermeneutics seems to be firmly established as a tradition and methodology in the human sciences, interpretive philosophy seems to be under increasing pressure in recent philosophical trends such as the "posthuman turn," the "nonhuman turn," and the "speculative turn." Responding to this predicament, this book shows how hermeneutics is gaining new force and (...) fresh applications today by bringing together a group of leading interpretive philosophers to address such timely topics as the entanglement of social science, culture, and politics in liberal capitalist societies, the extremism with which some identities are held within those societies, the possibility of genuine, non-relativist dialogue in a "post-truth" era, the nature of the strong moral judgments people tend to make in that era, the significance of interpretation for understanding nonhuman life forms, and the inherently hermeneutic dimension of such practices as work and productive action, testimony and witnessing, and measurement in scientific practice. Updating the Interpretive Turn will be of interest to researchers working in critical social science, social philosophy, ethical theory, environmental philosophy, philosophy of work, philosophy of testimony, philosophy of measurement, and philosophical hermeneutics itself. (shrink)

On ground shared by environmental hermeneutics, critical social theory, and environmentally minded feminism, this article attempts to conciliate between the nearly antithetical ethical viewpoints of environmental philosophers David Abram and Steven Vogel. It will demonstrate first that Abram’s linguistic arguments for extending ethical considerability to nonhuman nature succumb to two of Vogel’s debilitating critiques, which it labels the social constructivist critique and the discourse ethics critique, and secondly that Abram fails to guard against the problem of human-human (...) oppression. The article also points out, on the other hand, that while Vogel evades the problem of human-human oppression, his view fails to protect against the problem of dangerous anthropocentrism. Operating within the boundaries that Vogel establishes, it will seek to avoid the pitfalls of Abram’s view, to address the underlying ideology that leads to both types of oppression, and to eliminate the problem of dangerous anthropocentrism. To do so it draws upon the arguments of Trish Glazebrook, contending that Abram’s appeals to the “speech” of nature can be more effectively conceptualized as erotic appeals, and that engaging in this call-and-response eros promotes the development of virtues that undermine our current ideology and extend to both the human and the nonhuman. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Thinking with Heidegger:Rethinking Environmental Theory and PracticeKevin Michael DeLuca (bio)Environmentalism is tired. It is a movement both institutionalized and insipid. The vast majority of Americans claim to be environmentalists while buying ever more SUVs, leaf-blowers, and uncountable plastic consumer goods. Indeed, environmentalism itself has become just another practice of consumerism, a matter of buying Audubon memberships, Ansel Adams calendars, and 'biodegradable' plastic bags with one's Sierra Club credit (...) card. As a practice of everyday life, environmentalism has devolved into another lifestyle choice.On the political front, carbon-copy blow-dried presidential candidates proclaim their allegiance to the environment, an allegiance that is more a sign of fealty to opinion polls than a concern with environmental issues. In the world of real-politic, environmental regulations are gutted as corporations write legislation for the politicians they have bought. Outspent and outmaneuvered, mainstream environmental groups preach at the altar of broken promises about the potential of lobbying and insider access while awaiting the blandishments of the next candidate. As [End Page 67] a political practice, mainstream environmentalism has degenerated into a marginal special-interest group.On the intellectual front, a confusing array of reform environmentalists, deep ecologists, social ecologists, ecofeminists, wilderness advocates, social justice activists, social constructionists, and Christian ecologists offer a cacophony of competing paradigms and programs while exchanging charges and countercharges of wrong-headedness and infidelity. If on the level of practice an exhausted environmentalism has achieved both institutionalism and irrelevance, intellectually environmentalism has reached several stasis points. This is crucial, for at a level that is unusual for social movements, environmentalism has always highlighted the importance of how we think about the environment, that ideas of nature are powerful because practices follow from ideas. In other words, how we think about nature guides how we act toward nature. In the midst of this melee I want to suggest we reconsider the work of Martin Heidegger.I want to think Heidegger in distress: in the distress of machination; in the distress of the technological enframing of the earth; in the distress of the environmental crisis. In rejecting a Heideggerian hermeneutics, a piety to textual exegesis, I hope to stress Heidegger in order to stress environmental theory. With few exceptions,1 two insufficient responses typify the reception of Heidegger in environmental thinking. One is to champion Heidegger as some proto-environmentalist. Certainly, quotes from such works as Being and Time, Contributions to Philosophy: From Enowning, "The Question Concerning Technology," "Building Dwelling Thinking," and "The Age of the World Picture" inspire such a reading. Such readings, however, present a simplified Heidegger. For example, a poor reading of an essay such as "The Question Concerning Technology" produces the conclusion that Heidegger was anti-technology.2 These misreadings are not merely accidental but a result of the goal of the citation. The challenge of Heidegger is not engaged to develop environmental theory; rather, Heidegger is cited to lend some borrowed legitimacy to the fledgling enterprise. The most prominent example of this move occurs in Devall and Sessions' Deep Ecology, wherein Heidegger joins a potpourri of thinkers, including Dogen, Job, St. Francis of Assisi, Giordano Bruno, Spinoza, Thoreau, Chief Seattle, Herman Melville, John Muir, Aldous Huxley, Gandhi, Rainer Maria Rilke, Aldo Leopold, Robinson Jeffers, Mary Austin, Rachel Carson, Barry Commoner, Stanley Diamond, and [End Page 68] David Brower from a host of traditions, including Taoism, Hinduism, Zen Buddhism, Christianity, Native American thought, Romanticism, and ecological science (1985, 79–108). The result is confusion, at best.On the other hand, in a second response Heidegger serves as a kind of bogeyman, a Nazi used to tar the more radical environmental groups. The syllogism is simple and simplistic: Deep Ecologists are bio/ecocentric; Deep Ecologists quote Heidegger; Heidegger was a Nazi; Therefore, Deep Ecologists are Nazis/fascists. (To push this thinking to its logical extreme, then, all nonanthropocentric thinking is fascist.) Both responses may be useful for polemics but serve to prevent a possibly productive exploration of Heidegger for the engagement of the difficult problems that have stumped environmentalism on multiple levels.Violating HeideggerAs a prefatory word, even a cursory glance at Heidegger's work reveals him to be a thinker who... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Dominion over Wildlife? An Environmental Theology of Human–Wildlife Relations by Stephen M. VantasselColeman FanninDominion over Wildlife? An Environmental Theology of Human–Wildlife Relations Stephen M. Vantassel Eugene, OR: Resource, 2009. 232pp. $26.00In Dominion over Wildlife?, Stephen Vantassel, a scholar with professional experience in animal damage control, provides a substantive examination of the neglected subject of human–wildlife relations. For this, he is to be commended. Although ultimately disappointing, (...) his argument indicates that much work remains to be done in this area.Vantassel’s subtitle is somewhat misleading since he devotes the bulk of the book to a polemic against a small group he terms “Christian Animal Rights (CAR) activists”—especially Anglican theologian Andrew Linzey and his followers—who question the idea that God grants humans dominion over creation (“Dominionism”), including the moral right to manage, kill, and eat animals. “The critical question... is whether CAR activists are correct in their belief that Scripture exhorts us to adopt a vegetarian and non-violent stance toward animals” (14). Vantassel’s response is more exegetical than theological, and in the mode of conservative evangelical apologetics, he devotes chapters to refuting CAR activists’ appeals to the Old Testament (specifically the covenant of Creation, the narratives of the Fall and Noah, the sacrificial system, and passages that support humane treatment of animals); the New Testament (Christ’s concern for animals, a Christus Victor view of the atonement, and an Edenic eschatology); ethics (compassion, restraint, and stewardship); and science (a case study of whether trapping is unnecessarily cruel and environmentally irresponsible). Only in the final chapter does he propose his model of “Shepherdism,” which “avoids the negative stereotypes held against Dominionism, while upholding God’s decree that humans maintain their superintendence over animals” (160). Shepherdism centers on the principles that creation is “God’s property,” that humans are charged with being its caretakers, and that Christ is a model for behavior toward it. Vantassel insists that humans should treat wildlife humanely and not exterminate species.For Vantassel, theology is a matter of individuals—largely apart from church or tradition—reading an inerrant Bible to discern God’s commands. Likewise, ethics is a matter of individuals using reason to construct arguments that “stand on their own merits” and “may still be sufficient to persuade, if not compel, Christian behavior even if Scripture does not mandate the behavior” (99). This [End Page 193] is not the forum for criticizing these approaches, but they not only distance Vantassel’s argument from scholarship in the field—which he does not engage—but also make it unlikely that it will persuade those who do not read the Bible or view God in the same way. To note two examples, on the basis of Amos 4, he contends that “some environmental problems are caused not through our direct abuse of the land but through our disobedience, which God then punishes through sending environmental catastrophes” (165n13), and on the basis of Christ’s acceptance of fishing with nets (Luke 5:4), he contends that “Christians are permitted to not only eat animals, they may employ means to capture them that will cause pain and injury” (171). Indeed, as a lifelong hunter who shares Vantassel’s basic position, I found myself more sympathetic to the CAR activists’ arguments toward which he is frequently uncharitable; he associates them with Darwinism and feminist and liberation theologies, labels their hermeneutics “modernistic” for stressing narrative, and variously calls their ideas “absurd,” “incredulous,” and “strange.”Vantassel discusses a number of helpful statistics and studies, and he rightly points out the problems posed by factory farming, the disproportionate effects of environmental degradation on the poor, and the practical difficulties of vegetarianism. However, his preoccupation with exegesis means that he underemphasizes these issues and overlooks others, including hunting becoming a trophy-obsessed, technology-dominated “sport.” Hopefully he and other scholars will produce more on this subject in the near future.Coleman FanninBaylor UniversityCopyright © 2013 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Max Hallman has put forward an interpretation of Nietzsche’s philosophy according to which Nietzsche is a prototypical deep ecologist. In reply, I dispute Hallman’s main interpretive claim as well as its ethical and exegetical corollaries. I hold that Nietzsche is not a “biospheric egalitarian,” but rather an aristocratically individualistic “high humanist.” A consistently naturalistic transcendentalist, Nietzsche does submit a critique of modernity’s Christian-inflected anthropocentrism (pace Hallman), and yet—in his later work—he endorses exploitation in the quest for nobility (contra Hallman). I (...) conclude thatecophilosophers need to exercise hermeneutical caution in any attempt to appropriate Nietzsche for environmentally ethical designs, lest they illegitimately ventriloquize their own moral voices into an authoritative but alien mouthpiece. (shrink)

Environmental ethics should be understood as a radical project that challenges the limits of contemporary ethical and political expression, a limit historically defined by the concept of the citizen. This dominant model of public being, frequently justified in terms of a formal or procedural rationally, facilitates an exclusionary ethos that fails to properly represent our concerns for the non-human world. It tends to regard emotionally mediated concerns for others as a source of irrational and subjective distortions in an otherwise (...) rationally ordered ethicopolitical community. In doing so it underestimates the important role played by 'structures of feeling', those culturally variable patterns of emotionally mediated responses, that provide the (shifting) grounds for all ethical experience, motivation, communication and interpretation. An alternative model of political expression more suitable to an environmental ethic, the denizen, is suggested. (shrink)

The attempt to appropriate Heidegger’s thinking in order to found environmental ethics continues to pose challenges both for understanding the premise of an ethic, and, conversely, for unfolding the importance of his thought in the effort to displace the anthropocentric focus of modern philosophy. These challenges must be taken up on a methodological as well as a thematic level, in order to show how a claim of being can implicate a reciprocal guidance pertaining to our treatment of the earth, (...) nature, and animals. An appeal to the ethos of situated dwelling is not sufficient to ground a transhuman ethic; rather, a precursory step must be taken to uncover a common space of embodiment, thereby marking a jointure whereby habitats fostering the potential for animals to “flourish” can be cultivated in concert with our own capacity to dwell. When viewed through this prism of our “incarnality,” the stewardship that we practice in dwelling on the earth can also “formally indicate” a sense of proportionality, e.g., a “measure,” counter balancing the interests of animals with humans. Conversely, the search for a trans-human ethic calls for a further transformation of phenomenology through its interface with hermeneutics. (shrink)

Abstract:On one hand, Heidegger is one of the most referenced philosophers in environmental ethics, on the other, there is an ongoing debate regarding the formulation of any kind of ethic based on Heidegger's philosophy as he himself was skeptical about the same. In such context, this review teases out why environmental ethics borrows extensively from Heidegger philosophy and how that in turn provides the necessary underpinnings of different schools of environmental ethics. This essay delineates the import of (...) Heidegger's phenomenology, critique of technology, and post-metaphysical conception of nature, in schools of environmental ethics, particularly, the radical schools like deep ecology. This also highlights that overemphasis on the Heidegger's later work considerably limits the contribution of his philosophy to this discipline and on that note, it concludes that there is a need to bring in the hermeneutic phenomenology of early Heidegger in order to reinterpret his later celebrated concepts in environmental ethics. (shrink)

In this work I search for elements that contribute to the development of the ethical dimension of environmental education. I start with the existence of what C.A. Bowers calls “areas of silence” in the curriculum in both schools and universities. The reason for this silence, I argue, is to be found in the Cartesian conceptual structures of curricula. I suggest that the works of Bacon, Galileo and Descartes provoke a twofold process that I have termed the forgetting of tradition (...) and objectification of nature. As a corrective to this process, I explore the possibilities that the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer opens for rehabilitation of tradition and de-objectification of nature. I work with the concept of the “dignity of things” present in Greek dialectics: that nature is not simply a projection of mind (as the neo-Kantians claim), but something that thought suffers. In my conclusions I argue that for nature to be reinserted into almost all areas of knowledge it is necessary that we respect “the otherness of nature.”. (shrink)

This article draws insights from a case study examining unanswered health questions of residents in two polluted towns in an industrial region in southern France. A participatory health study, as conducted by the author, is presented as a way to address undone science by providing the residents with relevant data supporting their illness claims. Local residents were included in the health survey process, from the formulation of the questions to the final data analysis. Through this strongly participatory science process, the (...) townspeople offered many creative ideas in the final report for how the data could be used to assist in improving their health and environment and policy work is already in evidence, resulting from the study. Drawing from the literature on participatory science and expertise as well as from the initial outcomes of the local health study, I propose that SPS produces a form of knowledge justice. Understanding knowledge and its making as part of a social justice agenda aligns well with environmental justice frames. Through SPS, local residents have a hermeneutical resource to make sense of their embodied lives and augment their claims with strong data supporting actions for improving their health and environment. (shrink)

Pedagogically speaking, how can we best transform a student’s understanding of the environment? To move students to action, and to inspire sustainable lifestyles, environmental educators would do well to consider personal pedagogical approaches, as opposed to merely presenting scientific facts about climate change and species extinction. In this paper, we present the power of myth as a compelling option. We expand on prevailing pedagogies of myth, such as Matthew Farrelly’s approach, and argue that mythical stories taken from Nordic folk (...) traditions, the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Quran can enhance environmental education by introducing multiple alternative ways of relating to nature, facilitating mutual teacher-student reflections, and by building more responsive relationships with fauna and flora. Building upon Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutical theory, we contend that the process of imagining sustainable worlds is facilitated by engagement with mythical stories and that the counter-productive imposition of worldviews on students is minimized through critical discussions of relevant learning materials. (shrink)

The idea of ‘modal fields’ is inspired by regional and pluralistic ontologies, which were sketched and developed by Hegel, Husserl and especially Nicolai Hartmann. It suggests that the world is structured by spheres which are not reducible to each other, and that modal fields denote the scope of real possibilities inside the spheres. It is, for example, possible to distinguish between physical, biological, ecological, economic and technological possibilities/modal fields. It is also possible to define, for the purpose of scientific research, (...) very specific modal fields. For example, we can ask “What are the physiological or social possibilities of ants?”, or “What are the social and psychological possibilities of fundamental religious sects?” It is possible to apply this ontological theory to philosophy of science in order to clarify the scope and limits of causal explanations and hermeneutic understanding especially in human and environmental sciences. In general, this ontological theory serves as a fruitful basis for the kind of scientific thinking which is open to counterfactuals and possibilities and which considers deterministic causal thinking too restricted for human and environmental sciences. On the other hand, this theory avoids the individualistic and anthropocentric presuppositions of hermeneutical understanding, connecting it to the real subjective and objective possibilities in a certain historical situation. (shrink)

The twentieth century saw the rise of hermeneutics, the philosophical interpretation of texts, and eventually the application of its insights to metaphorical “texts” such as individual and group identities. It also saw the rise of modern environmentalism, which evolved through various stages in which it came to realize that many of its key concerns—“wilderness” and “nature” among them—are contested territory that are viewed differently by different people. Understanding nature requires science and ecology to be sure, but it also requires (...) a sensitivity to history, culture, and narrative. Thus, understanding nature is a fundamentally hermeneutic task. Interpreting Nature brings together leading voices at the intersection of these two increasingly important philosophical discussions: philosophical hermeneutics and environmental philosophy. The resulting field, environmental hermeneutics, provides the center of gravity for a collection of essays that grapple with one of the most compelling issues of our time: how do humans relate to nature? Adopting a broad and inclusive view of “the environment, Interpreting Nature takes up restoration and preservation, natural and built environments, the social construction of nature and nature as it imposes itself beyond our categories, and much more. The rich diversity of contributions illustrates the remarkable fecundity of hermeneutic resources applied to environmental issues. Taken together, the various contributions to this collection mark the arrival of environmental hermeneutics as a distinct field of study. (shrink)

A social scientific survey on visions of human/nature relationships in western Europe shows that the public clearly distinguishes not only between anthropocentrism and ecocentrism, but also between two nonanthropocentric types of thought, which may be called “partnership with nature” and “participation in nature.” In addition, the respondents distinguish a form of human/nature relationship that is allied to traditional stewardship but has a more ecocentric content, labeled here as “guardianship of nature.” Further analysis shows that the general public does not subscribe (...) to an ethic of “mastery over nature.” Instead, practically all respondents embrace the image of guardianship, while the more radical relationships of partnership and participation also received significant levels of adherence. The results imply that ethicists should no longer assume that the ethics of the public are merely anthropocentric. Finally, they call into question the idea of a single form of ecocentrism and favor a hermeneutic virtue ethics approach to the study of the interface between ethics and action. (shrink)

This volume contains essays that offer both historical and contemporary views of nature, as seen through a hermeneutic, deconstructive, and phenomenological lens. It reaches back to Ancient Greek conceptions of physis in Homer and Empedocles, encompasses 13th century Zen master Dōgen, and extends to include 21st Century Continental Thought. By providing ontologies of nature from the perspective of the history of philosophy and of contemporary philosophy alike, the book shows that such perspectives need to be seen in dialogue with each (...) other in order to offer a deeper and more comprehensive philosophy of nature. The value of the historical accounts discussed lies in discerning the conceptual problems that contribute to the dominant thinking underpinning our ecological predicament, as well as in providing helpful resources for thinking innovatively through current problems, thus recasting the past to allow for a future yet to be imagined. The book also discusses contemporary continental thinkers who are more critically aware of the dominant anthropocentric and instrumental view of nature, and who provide substantial guidance for a sensible, innovative “ontology of nature” suited for an ecology of the future. Overall, the ontologies of nature discerned in this volume are not merely of theoretical interest, but strategically serve to suspend anthropocentrism and spark ethical and political reorientation in the context of our current ecological predicament. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Rewilding is an increasingly popular strategy in landscape management, yet it is also controversial, especially when applied in culturally 'layered' landscapes. In this paper I examine what is morally at stake in debates between proponents of rewilding and those that see traditional cultural landscapes as worthy of protection. I will argue that rewilding should not only be understood as a conservation practice, but that we also need to understand its hermeneutic aspect. Rewilding implies a radical non-anthropocentric normative reinterpretation of landscape (...) and human history that calls for a critical re-examination of the cultural identities that are based on that history. (shrink)

A process-based approach to archaeology combines traditional third-person data collection methods with first- and second-person inquiries. Drawing from the traditions of cognitive archaeology, transpersonal psychology, and ecopsychology, this mixed-methods approach can be thought of as a movement toward a more holistic or “integral” archaeology. By way of example, a prehistoric rock art site on Ometepe Island, Nicaragua is explored from the inside (through the researcher's lucid dreaming incubations) as well as in relationship with the researcher's embodied presence (an exploration of (...) environmental hermeneutics). These multiple perspectives can be seen to situate the researcher's worldview and biases within the context of the study as well as perhaps lead to new questions about the significance of these cognitive artifacts. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

One of Scott Cameron’s most recent contributions to environmental hermeneutics (a field in which he was a founding scholar) was to defend the concept of nature against those who would argue that it should be abandoned in order to stave off the ecological destruction. Rather than jettison nature as an outdated and unhelpful construct, Cameron argued for its redemption based on Gadamer’s hermeneutical insights into language. In this article, I will look at Cameron’s arguments against Steven Vogel as (...) well as particular points made against nature as a concept recently articulated by Slavoj Žižek and Timothy Morton. I will follow these arguments through, demonstrating that while the arguments can be accepted and are, indeed, accurate, the conclusion that the concept of nature be abandoned need not and should not be conceded. Finally, I will return to Cameron’s hermeneutic defense of a concept of nature and expand further on his insights and arguments. With Cameron, I conclude that the concept of nature can be redeemed. Extending Cameron’s line of reasoning, I argue that this aim is accomplished by refiguring the concept of nature with the insights offered by philosophical hermeneutics. (shrink)

One of Scott Cameron’s most recent contributions to environmental hermeneutics was to defend the concept of nature against those who would argue that it should be abandoned in order to stave off the ecological destruction. Rather than jettison nature as an outdated and unhelpful construct, Cameron argued for its redemption based on Gadamer’s hermeneutical insights into language. In this article, I will look at Cameron’s arguments against Steven Vogel as well as particular points made against nature as a (...) concept recently articulated by Slavoj Žižek and Timothy Morton. I will follow these arguments through, demonstrating that while the arguments can be accepted and are, indeed, accurate, the conclusion that the concept of nature be abandoned need not and should not be conceded. Finally, I will return to Cameron’s hermeneutic defense of a concept of nature and expand further on his insights and arguments. With Cameron, I conclude that the concept of nature can be redeemed. Extending Cameron’s line of reasoning, I argue that this aim is accomplished by refiguring the concept of nature with the insights offered by philosophical hermeneutics. (shrink)

Milieufilosofisch Nederland wordt momenteel verdeeld door een controverse naar aanleiding vanrecente publicaties van de Wageningse filosofen Keulartz en Korthals. In dit artikel wil ik - aande hand van een analyse van het gebruik van het natuurbegrip bij Wim Zweers - laten zien dat Keulartz op een tot nu toe onderbelicht probleem wijst: het probleem van de veelheid vannatuurbeelden. Tegelijkertijd wil ik echter aantonen dat Keulartz' eigen, 'post-naturalistische' positie op een tegenspraak berust. Tenslotte geef ik aan hoe deze controverses zijn terug (...) tevoeren op een onvermijdelijke spanning in onze morele omgang met de natuur, en zoek ik naar een manier waarop deze spanning binnen de milieu-ethiek vruchtbaar kan worden gemaakt. (shrink)

Environmental theorists, seeking the origin of Western exploitative attitudes toward nature, have directed their attacks against 'humanism'. This essay argues that such criticisms are misplaced. Humanism has much closer affinities to environmentalism than the latter' s advocates believe. As early as the Renaissance, and certainly by the late eighteenth century, humanists were developing historically-conscious, hermeneutically-grounded modes of understanding, rather than the abstract, mathematical models of nature often associated with them. In its twentieth-century versions humanism also shares much of the (...) mistrust of consumerism, instrumental reason, and 'worldlessness' that marks environmentalist literature. Nevertheless, humanism is indeed committed to the principle that human beings are and ought to be free, and opposes theoretical approaches that suppress freedom. Reconciling humanism and environmentalism thus involves two steps: resisting the former's tendency to treat nature and freedom as metaphysical polarities, and drawing environmental theory away from flirtation with deterministic, biologistic worldviews. The essay concludes by suggesting Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac as the paradigm case of environmental thought with roots in humanist approaches. (shrink)

The concept of wildness not only plays a role in philosophical debates, but also in popular culture. Wild nature is often seen as a place outside the cultural sphere where one can still encounter instances of transcendence. Some writers and moviemakers contest the dominant romanticized view of wild nature by telling stories that somehow show a different harsher face of nature. In encounters with the wild and unruly, humans can sometimes experience the misfit between their well-ordered, human-centered, self-created world view (...) and the otherness of nature, and in doing so face, what Plumwood calls, “the view from the outside.” Three films—Gerry, Into the Wild, and Grizzly Man—deal with contemporary encounters with wildness. What these works have in common is the central theme of modern humans who are fascinated by wild nature and seek experiences unknown to those limited to the overly cultivated life (psyche) of modern society. Another connecting theme, however, is that any idealization of wildness is in itself deeply problematic. All three films have fatal endings, which in turn fascinates the contemporary viewers. These films show, first, that wildness is conceived as a moral counterforce against the overly civilized world; and, second, that fascination with this wildness has itself become thoroughly reflexive, and. (shrink)

Environmental philosophies concerning our obligations to each other and the natural world too rarely address the aftermath of environmental injustice. Ideally we would never do each other wrong; given that we do, as fallible and imperfect agents, we require non-ideal ethical guidance. Margaret Walker’s work on moral repair and Annette Baier’s work on cross-generational communality together provide useful hermeneutical tools for understanding and enacting meaningful responses to intergenerational injustice, and in particular, for anthropogenic climate change. By blending Baier’s (...) cross-generational approach with Walker’s emphasis on victim subjectivity and moral repair, I propose that a reparative model of intergenerational justice can provide some much needed direction on non-ideal moral issues comparatively neglected in climate-ethics debates today. (shrink)