Merleau Ponty And Environmental Philosophy

Connects the work of Merleau-Ponty to environmental studies. This richly diverse collection looks at the contemporary relevance of the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty to environmental issues and builds a coherent philosophical ecology based on his thought. The contributors describe and analyze relations within the natural world by focusing on the centrality of relations in Merleau-Ponty’s work; his concept of the bond between humanity and nature; and his novel philosophies of perception, embodiment, and “wild” Being. Eco-phenomenologies of living places such as Central Park in New York City, Midwestern farmlands, and communal household dwellings of Pacific Northwest Coast people are closely examined. The contributors also explore Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy for environmental ethics and develop notions such as vital values, somatic empathy, and interspecies sociality. Suzanne L. Cataldi is Professor of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville and the author of Emotion, Depth, and Flesh: A Study of Sensitive Space: Reflections on Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Embodiment, also published by SUNY Press. William S. Hamrick is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville and the author of the SUNY Press book Kindness and the Good Society: Connections of the Heart, winner of the 2004 Edward Goodwin Ballard Book Prize in Phenomenology.

This richly diverse collection looks at the contemporary relevance of the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty to environmental issues and builds a coherent philosophical ecology based on his thought. The contributors describe and analyze relations within the natural world by focusing on the centrality of relations in Merleau-Ponty s work; his concept of the bond between humanity and nature; and his novel philosophies of perception, embodiment, and wild Being. Eco-phenomenologies of living places such as Central Park in New York City, Midwestern farmlands, and communal household dwellings of Pacific Northwest Coast people are closely examined. The contributors also explore Merleau-Ponty s philosophy for environmental ethics and develop notions such as vital values, somatic empathy, and interspecies sociality.

In our time, Ted Toadvine observes, the philosophical question of nature is almost entirely forgotten—obscured in part by a myopic focus on solving "environmental problems" without asking how these problems are framed. But an "environmental crisis," existing as it does in the human world of value and significance, is at heart a philosophical crisis. In this book, Toadvine demonstrates how Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology has a special power to address such a crisis—a philosophical power far better suited to the questions than other modern approaches, with their over-reliance on assumptions drawn from the natural sciences. The book examines key moments in the development of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of nature while roughly following the historical sequence of his major works. Toadvine begins by setting out an ontology of nature proposed in Merleau-Ponty’s first book, The Structure of Behavior. He takes up the theme of the expressive role of reflection in Phenomenology of Perception, as it negotiates the area between nature’s own "self-unfolding" and human subjectivity. Merleau-Ponty’s notion of "intertwining" and his account of space provide a transition to Toadvine’s study of the philosopher’s later work—in which the concept of "chiasm," the crossing or intertwining of sense and the sensible, forms the key to Merleau-Ponty’s mature ontology—and ultimately to the relationship between humans and nature.

Explores how continental philosophy can inform environmental ethics.

This is the first booklength account of how Maurice Merleau-Ponty used certain texts by Alfred North Whitehead to develop an ontology based on nature, and how he could have used other Whitehead texts that he did not know in order to complete his last ontology. This account is enriched by several of Merleau-Ponty's unpublished writings not previously available in English, by the first detailed treatment of certain works by F.W.J. Schelling in the course of showing how they exerted a substantial influence on both Merleau-Ponty and Whitehead, and by the first extensive discussion of Merleau-Ponty's interest in the Stoics's notion of the twofold logos—the logos endiathetos and the logos proforikos. This book provides a thorough exploration of the consonance between these two philosophers in their mutual desire to overcome various bifurcations of nature, and of nature from spirit, that continued to haunt philosophy and science since the 17th-century.

Environment and Philosophy provides an accessible introduction to the radical challenges that environmentalism poses to concepts that have become almost second nature in the modern world. These include: * the ideas of science and objectivity * the conventional placement of the human being within the environment * the individualism of convential Modern thought Written in an accessible way for those without a background in philosophy, this text examines ways of thinking about ourselves, nature and our relationship with nature. It offers an introduction to the phenomenological perspective on environmental issues, and also to the questions of what natural beauty is.

A clear and comprehensive introduction to the thought of French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty

This volume presents essays assessing the contributions phenomenology has to make to environmental studies.