How can phenomenology describe an object as "the political"? The article endeavours to show how it is possible to apprehend such a theme from a _transcendental<D> perspective. After going through the methodic difficulties of the Cartesian way, which involves an egology intersubjectively extended to the monadology, the essay analyzes the non-Cartesian ways. Indeed, both of them pave the way for a political based on a plural structure. The way through the life-world as well as the way through psychology succeed in (...) depicting the political, either as living sociality or as the play between ethical co-attitudes. In each case, the reduction operates in a specific manner, either as a pure Cartesian bracketing, as a retrocession to social originality or as a nonparticipating in the world-interests. Nevertheless, only the way through psychology reaches the political at a strict transcendental level, whereas the way through the life-world always runs the risk of falling back. (shrink)

Recently several philosophers have argued that environmental reform movements cannot halt humankind’s destruction of the biosphere because they still operate within the anthropocentric humanism that forms the root of the ecological crisis. According to “radical” environmentalists, disaster can be averted only if we adopt a nonanthropocentric understanding of reality that teaches us to live harmoniouslyon the Earth. Martin Heidegger agrees that humanism leads human beings beyond their proper limits while forcing other beings beyond their limits as weIl. The doctrine of (...) the “rights of man” justifies human exploitation of nonhuman beings. Paradoxically, however, the doctrine of rights for nonhuman beings does not escape the orbit of humanism. According to Heidegger, a nonanthropocentric conception of humanity and its relation to nature must go beyond the doctrine of rights. We can dweIl harmoniously on Earth only by submitting to our primary obligation: to be open for the Being of beings. We need a new way of understanding Being, a new ethos, that lets beings manifest themselves not merely as objects for human ends, but as intrinsically important. Heidegger calls this ethos the “fourfold” of earth and sky, gods and mortals. Humanists argue that Heidegger is wrong to abandon the principle of human rights in favor of the notion that we are obligated to “let beings be,” while some radical environmentalists accuse hirn of being a humanist because he supposedly overestimates the importance of humankind’s ability to speak. Heidegger insists, however, that language makes possible culture, without which thereis no human experience of nature. An environmentally sound ethos. can arise, according to Heidegger, only from a shift within the cultural heritage of the West. Richard Rorty agrees that we must become open for a new “conversation” with the West, even if this requires abandoning traditionally important fields such as epistemology. The need to develop a new understanding of Being is so great that thinkers from the analytic and continental traditions of philosophy are finally initiating a long-overdue dialogue. (shrink)

In recent years, more and more people have started talking about the necessity of reconciling phenomenology with the project of naturalization. Is it possible to bridge the gap between phenomenological analyses and naturalistic models of consciousness? Is it possible to naturalize phenomenology? Given the transcendental philosophically motivated anti-naturalism found in many phenomenologists such a naturalization proposal might seem doomed from the very start, but in this paper I will examine and evaluate some possible alternatives.

What is eco-phenomenology? This paper argues that eco-phenomenology, in which are folded both an ecological phenomenology and a phenomenological ecology, offers us a way of developing a middle ground between phenomenology and naturalism, between intentionality and causality. Our grasp of Nature is significantly altered by thinking through four strands of time's plexity - the invisibility of time, the celebration of finitude, the coordination of rhythms, and the interruption and breakdown of temporal horizons. It is also transformed by a meditation on (...) the role of boundaries in constituting the varieties of thinghood. Eco-phenomenology takes up in a tentative and exploratory way the traditional phenomenological claim to be able to legislate for the sciences, or at least to think across the boundaries that seem to divide them. In this way, it opens up and develops an access to Nature and the natural, one which is independent both of the conceptuality of the natural sciences and of traditional metaphysics. (shrink)

This essay supposes that the question of what treatment of animals is morally acceptable cannot be decided in any straightforward way by appeals to 'equal consideration of interests' or to animal rights. Instead it seeks to survey a variety of proposals as to how we ought to adjudicate interspecific conflicts of interests - proposals that are both 'speciesist' and 'non-speciesist' in nature. In the end one proposal is defended as the most reasonable one, and is claimed to provide a partial (...) basis for developing an adequate theory of interspecific justice. In the course of this argument the challenge posed by radical critics of current treatment of animals (e.g. Tom Regan and Peter Singer) is considered. The schema of a theory developed here partly supports and partly conflicts with positions they have defended. Regarding the latter point it proposes a non-anthropocentric basis for discounting the interests of sentient animals. (shrink)

Ecologically responsible policies are concerned only in part with pollution and resource depletion. There are deeper concerns which touch upon principles of diversity, complexity, autonomy, decentralization, symbiosis, egalitarianism, and classlessness.

I draw on the resources of Husserlian phenomenology to argue that the way humans constitute nature as a meaningful whole by their purposive presence as hunter/gatherers (nature as mysterium tremendum), as herdsmen/farmers (nature as partner), and as producer/consumers (nature as resource) affects the way they respond to its distress—as to a resource failure, as a to flawed relationship, or asto a fate from which “only a god could save us.” I find all three responses wanting and look to a different (...) experience, that of nature as an endangered species, as the ground for a more adequate response of accepting responsibility for our freedom, with the consequence of imposing ethical limits on the way that humans relate to all being, not to humans alone. (shrink)

In recent years more and more people have started talking about the necessity ofreconciliating phenomenology with the project of naturalization. Is it possible to bridge the gap between phenomenological analyses and naturalipossible to naturalize phenomenology? In their long introduction to the book NaturalizingPhenomenology published by Stanford University Press in 1999, the four coPetitot, Francisco Varela, Bernard Pachoud might be seen as a kind of manifesto for this new approach. An examination of this introduction is consequently a good starting point for (...) a discussion of the issue. (shrink)