This essay argues that Merleau-Ponty’s concept of nature as a “privileged expression” of ontology provides the conceptual support for a more responsible attitude toward humans and nature. Furthermore, this concept of nature needs to be viewed in the light of a more profound concept that opens a new vision of the human being’s place in the world, namely Merleau-Ponty’s fields of perception. Shiva’s writings pertaining to the environment gain a more profound, yet critical, understanding when viewed in this way. Similarly, (...) Merleau-Ponty’s attempts “to reconcile the old world and the new” (MP 1964, 4) through implementation of his phenomenology to political and ethical questions is reviewed anew. (shrink)

Touch requires that one move in concert with one's tactile object. This provokes the question how joint movement of this sort yields perception of tactile qualities of the object vs. tactile qualities of an object-augmented body. Phenomenological analysis together with results of dynamic systems theory (in psychology) suggest that the difference stems from 'resonant' vs. 'reverberant' modalities of body-object movement. The further suggestion is that tactile movement is itself a form of discriminative intelligence, and that the peculiar intimacy of touch (...) and movement can shed light on a general role of movement in perception, subject-object relations, and intelligence. (shrink)

Studies that compare human and animal behaviour suspend prejudices about mind, body and their relation, by approaching thinking in terms of behaviour. Yet comparative approaches typically engage another prejudice, motivated by human social and bodily experience: taking the lone animal as the unit of comparison. This prejudice informs Heidegger’s and Merleau-Ponty’s comparative studies, and conceals something important: that animals moving as a group in an environment can develop new sorts of “sense.” The study of animal group-life suggests a new way (...) of thinking about the creation of sense, about the body, the brain, and the relation between thinking and nature. (shrink)

While Karen Warren offers an ecofeminist ethic that is pluralistic, contextualist, and challenges Cartesian dualism, one area that remains underdeveloped in her theory is embodiment. I will examine Merleau-Ponty’s notion of embodied subjectivity and show that it would fit consistently with her theory. I will also explore some other areas in which the two theories supplement each other.

In this paper I attempt to develop several ways Merleau-Ponty's ontology might contribute to an environmental ethic through a redefinition of his concept of flesh in terms of a general theory of affectivity. Currently accepted interpretations of the concept such as those in Abram, Toadvine, Barbaras, and Dastur rely upon conceiving flesh as a perceptual experience. I contest this interpretation and argue that a more productive conception of flesh emerges when understood in terms of Heidegger's philosophy. The paper concludes with (...) a consideration of the normative significance of flesh by examining the role of “wildness“ within a place-based ethic. (shrink)