Phenomenology as ecology

movement from ego- to geo- and eco-thinking

Ella Buceniece

pp. 225-234

in: William S. Smith, Jadwiga Smith, Daniela Verducci (eds), Eco-Phenomenology, Berlin, Springer, 2018

Abstract

A paradigmatic change of thinking is taking place at present – away from the transcendental themes of mind, ego, and language, towards the world, reality, immanence, and the realms of the Earth and the cosmos. This change marks the ecological turn of philosophy. Awareness of the new ecological situation has produced a whole range of new directions of research – e.g., eco-philosophy, environmental philosophy, philosophy of nature, deep ecology, ecocriticism, ecofeminism, and ecoscepticism. This article is therefore concerned with the relations among eco-philosophy, environmental philosophy, and phenomenology. Phenomenology occupies an important place in the apprehension of the present-day ecological situation. This holds both for the classical version of phenomenology with its well-known concepts of the world – Umwelt and Lebenswelt from Husserl – and for the present-day phenomenology of life and its ontopoiesis – the approach of Tymieniecka. It also holds for the more modern modes of ecological conceptualization: geophilosophy and the new realism of Deleuze, Guattari, Embree, and Eco, among others.

Cited authors

Husserl Edmund