Experience and the Environment: Phenomenology Returns to Earth

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1 Human Studies (2005) 28: Book Review Experience and the Environment: Phenomenology Returns to Earth Charles S. Brown and Ted Toadvine (eds.), Eco-Phenomenology: Back to the Earth Itself. Albany: State University of New York Press, pp. It is well known that Continental philosophy however one might conceive of the storied and controversial rift between American Analytic and European-Continental traditions has been slow to integrate its arguments into environmental philosophy and environmental ethics. This is not because of lack of trying. Phenomenologists have long recognized the potential in Heideggerian philosophy to develop an environmental ethics, but many environmental ethicists have been reticent to borrow from a thinker whose dubious political history is exacerbated by an ambiguous stance on ethical matters. David Abram s award-winning book on the environment, The Spell of the Sensuous, attracted much attention when it was first released. The book made impressive gestures in a Husserlian/Merleau-Pontian direction, but it too has largely fallen off the radar screen. In recent years, the International Association for Environmental Philosophy (IAEP), once a small spin-off group associated with the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP), has slowly gained committed members. As this group has grown, so have its platform and its membership. Still, environmental phenomenology has had trouble gaining purchase on the larger environmental readership. Perhaps it is the nature of the topic: philosophers of experience are at a distinct disadvantage compared with the environmental ethicists of the world, who are already topically aligned with scientists and politicians. Charles S. Brown s and Ted Toadvine s recently released Eco-Phenomenology: Back to the Earth Itself, however, provides some helpful guideposts in the direction of developing a phenomenologically rooted environmental analysis. Brown and Toadvine convene an impressive roster of authors for their volume. The editorial duo colleagues at Emporia State University and familiar faces at IAEP functions collect voices and papers from a crowd of incredibly respectable and concerned philosophers who have been largely sidelined by the environmental ethics mainstream.

2 102 BOOK REVIEW For the most part, the volume is geared to stimulate other specialists in phenomenology to recognize the ecological relevance of their tradition. Virtually every chapter contains discussions of Edmund Husserl s critique of naturalism, Martin Heidegger s fourfold and lifeworld, or Maurice Merleau-Ponty s assessment of embodiment. References to Emmanuel Levinas appear in the second half of the book, in some of the more practical discussions on alterity. Less prevalent, though nevertheless present, are periodic nods to Friedrich Nietzsche, Søren Kierkegaard, and Arthur Schopenhauer. The book is divided into two primary sections: one historical summary that outlines the relationship between environmental theory and phenomenology Ecological Philosophy and the Phenomenological Tradition and one forward-looking collection that proposes directions in which authors of the Continental disposition might take their theories New Directions in Eco- Phenomenology. The first half of the book therefore includes treatments of three primary phenomenologists: Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. The second half of the book is more current and broad-reaching, though many essays still defer to the big three figures. Likewise, the essays in this half are considerably less esoteric than the essays in the first half, and may be more appropriate to readers unversed in the methodological bracketing of phenomenology. To this effect, the first three essays utilize Husserl s critique of naturalism to argue that eco-phenomenology maintains advantages over the objective observations of the environment predominant in environmental ethics and policy analysis. Charles Brown focuses on Husserl s critique of naturalism to propose that it is more closely aligned with the tenets of radical ecology than many of the radical ecologists recognize. Erazim Kohák investigates the heartlessness of reason, as conceived by 17th century European philosophers, and finds in Husserl s lifeworld the value-laden, meaning-structured (29) rationality that he proposes is necessary for a responsible environmental ethics. Lester Embree s The Possibility of a Constitutive Phenomenology of the Environment draws from Husserl s Ideen I to argue for another dimension of phenomenological investigation. Rather than emphasizing the experiencing of the environment as appears to be the intuitive default for those who might hope to open this line of inquiry Embree argues that we need to refocus the discussion on positionality or valuing and willing (and objects as valuationally and volitionally encountered) (38). He emphasizes the encountering of the environment, and proposes that there is much room for phenomenological exploration in these areas, perhaps opening theorists to a treasure-trove of analytical observations. Widening the spectrum of analysis slightly, John Llewelyn takes up the writings of multiple phenomenologists though still primarily Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty to argue that ecology has something to gain by investigating the imaginative and increasingly complex discourse

3 BOOK REVIEW 103 of phenomenology. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of Llewelyn s piece is his deployment of Ancient Greek, German, and Latin terminology. It is at once illuminating and frustrating. However, to those already familiar with the sometimes enigmatic neologisms of phenomenology, Llewelyn traverses the terrain informatively. In what is arguably the most provocative essay of the volume, Michael Zimmerman examines the late Heidegger to provide a clear and fascinating analysis of the sometimes foregone presumption that Heidegger s fourfold provides a natural springboard into environmental questions. What makes the Zimmerman piece so interesting is that he challenges generally accepted wisdom on the matter and takes Heidegger to task for his reluctance to accept traditional ethical norms. He goes so far as to suggest that Heidegger s own thought is consistent with modernity s project of the technological domination of nature (86), but still finds in Heidegger seeds of ecological redemption. In this vein, he strikes a middle ground between those who read Heidegger as a thoroughbred anti-environmentalist and those who think that Heidegger is a natural bedfellow for ecologists. Monika Langer argues that not only Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, but especially Nietzsche, challenge presiding ontological commitments in ways similar to those that have predominated in contemporary environmentalist writing. Nietzsche, she reasons, challenges dualism in much the same way that later phenomenologists do, and provides perhaps another vantage from which to enrich the burgeoning niche of eco-phenomenology. Don Marietta Jr s essay begins from the governing supposition of many in the volume: that a successful approach to environmental ethics requires a shift in thinking about ontology. Marietta reasons that the existential phenomenology ofmerleau-ponty can help us transform our thinking about traditionally objectivistic ontology to better understand our place in the world and in our obligations to it. He provides a helpful, albeit very broad, overview of approaches in modern environmental philosophy and argues that many contemporary ethical theories depend on traditional big picture metaphysics to support their positions. In lieu of these approaches, he proposes a position of a critical holism, arguing that phenomenological reflection will bring us to a better understanding of our relation to, and our consequent obligations to, the environment. The second half of the volume follows up on the suggestions in the first chapter by focusing on new directions for eco-phenomenology. From this reviewer s perspective, the essays in this section are considerably more casual and diverse than those in the first section; not the hard-edged, defensive phenomenology of the early essays. As a whole, they might be characterized as more engaged in the doing of phenomenology than in the metadiscussion of the first chapter. The uninitiated, however, might pass them over as too stylized.

4 104 BOOK REVIEW Ted Toadvine s essay is the most cross-disciplinary of the essays in the volume. No other authors so much as pen the words intrinsic value, but Toadvine takes such discussions seriously and treats them fairly. He argues that authors in the phenomenological tradition can overcome the troublesome intrinsic value problem by making sense of the role of the il ya(the there is ). Whether he is successful in this enterprise should be left up to the individual reader, but his attempt to integrate the discussion of outsiders the environmental ethics mainstream is admirable and valuable. In a practical turn uncharacteristic of the other selections in the volume, Irene Klaver s creative and entertaining piece explores the present state of phenomenology. Klaver explores the meaning of terms used to describe the environment, as they have been used by philosophers and phenomenologists. Her main aim is to call attention to the way in which globalization has helped to bring nature into the political domain. To aid in her discussion, she explains the paradox of rocks, as always already there, pre-existent, but also always overlooked. Like rocks that become apparent at the mere mention of their existence, the political environment of the present brings nature into the foreground. She utilizes pun to great effect, and provides an essay that may suit the more poetic and literary student or class. Christian Diehm s piece invokes the suffering wrought from natural disasters to shed light on Levinas. He begins with the proposition that naked bodies bodies unprotected and exposed to the unforgiving elements might themselves have faces, a feature fundamental for the recognition of otherness. The question that he hopes to resolve is whether Levinas s writing can weather other-than-humanness, whether faces can be found in the biologically non-human. It should strike us that [the logic of Levinas s work] is one of inclusion rather than exclusion, and that it should not immediately exclude other-than-human others (173). Diehm goes on to argue that the vulnerabilities of other non-humans provide for us an awareness of alterity and our encounter with alterity, and to remind us that we have obligations to all those lives that flicker at once, and then disappear (183). Ed Casey follows closely on the heels of this question. He begins from the supposition that environmental awareness begins with awareness of a problematic situation. Drawing from his own voluminous writings on the subject, he proposes that people know, at a glance, that something is wrong. His main claim is that the human glance...is indispensible for consequential ethical action (188). But he asks where we might encounter faces in the environing world. Surfaces are expressive, he argues; they have faces. If it is the case that the face can obligate when it is encountered between two human subjects, then this is just as true of the encounter between subject and other. David Wood closes the volume with an essay that explores what ecophenomenology is. (It is a curious editorial quirk that the one article

5 BOOK REVIEW 105 with the most straightforward and perhaps relevant title, What is Eco- Phenomenology? makes up the final selection in the volume.). Wood compares the eco-phenomenology of his compatriots with the doctrine of deep ecology. The difference, he contests, lies in the concepts of the plexity of time and the boundaries of thinghood (213). He attempts to find some middle ground between the two doctrines, suggesting that the naïve naturalism of deep ecology could benefit from a heavy dose of phenomenology s exploration of phenomena, and likewise, that phenomenology could benefit from a heavy dose of the reality of imminent ecological devastation. He is critical of earlier phenomenologists for their reluctance to accept some of the principles of deep ecology on the charge that it is fascist, and charges in response that such reluctance results in quietism. Because many authors devote large sections of their essays to defending their deep conviction that phenomenology can work happily with ecology, and then to contextualizing their standpoint within the history of the philosophy, the volume can get a little dry and repetitive. Such an approach should not be surprising for a collection entitled Eco-Phenomenology,but the book suffers somewhat from this self-aggrandizing repetition of its own importance to ecology. To a fault, the book gestures at possibilities for further exploration in eco-phenomenology, though it does not go very far to explore these areas itself. Further, the sometimes inaccessible language of phenomenology is made only slightly more accessible by the essays in this book. For a topic that should be incredibly earthly, or even down-to-earth, the eco-phenomenologists set to the project of describing the experiences of encountering the environment in some of the most abstract meta-language available. Like their theoretical predecessors, the authors in this volume believe that they can overcome some of the troubling ontologies that prevent serious entertainment of environmental concerns. They might very well do this, but they will first have to secure adherents by having them read the original masters. All told, there are many essays of interest to the casual reader of philosophy. Still, those unversed in the language of phenomenology are unlikely to gain much from this collection. The volume should appeal to mid-level philosophy majors, so long as it is supplemented with the original texts, as well as to graduate students and those interested in exploring the framework questions of eco-phenomenology. Environmentalists, nature-lovers, and ecologists are unlikely to find much of interest in the text; nor are philosophers with specialties outside of Continental phenomenology. One might expect this from the title, of course, but few authors in the volume even nod to other factions of environmental philosophy, including environmental ethics, ecopolitical theory, or the growing niche of environmental pragmatism. There is scarcely mention of more prominent analytic environmental philosophers, not

6 106 BOOK REVIEW to mention birds, trees, or rocks. In many ways, this could be seen as a good thing, and phenomenologists need not necessarily integrate the insights of the analytic establishment to make their points, but one detects a hint of defiant justification throughout the volume, seasoned with a general vagueness about the real doing of eco-phenomenology, that detracts, I think, from the stated aims of the authors and editors. This is less true with the essays in the latter half of the book, but meta-discussion and meta-justification is nevertheless predominant. Reference 1. Abram, D. (1996). The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-thanhuman World. New York: Vintage. BENJAMIN HALE Philosophy Department Stony Brook University Stony Brook, New York 11794, USA ( bhale@ic.sunysb.edu)

Heideggerian Ontology: A Philosophic Base for Arts and Humanties Education

Marilyn Zurmuehlen Working Papers in Art Education ISSN: 2326-7070 (Print) ISSN: 2326-7062 (Online) Volume 2 Issue 1 (1983) pps. 56-60 Heideggerian Ontology: A Philosophic Base for Arts and Humanties Education