Metrics
19 File views/ downloads
239 Record Views
Journal article
Merleau-Ponty's enchanted nature
Phenomenological Inquiry, Vol.35
11
2011
Abstract
Excerpt - The West, even with its unprecedented scientific, technological, and industrial accomplishments, and perhaps even because of them, has profoundly disenchanted the human relationship to nature. It treats nature as a machine, as raw material to be transformed into commodities and consumed, as inert matter to be controlled and dominated, and ultimately as a dead thing against which the subject stands in opposition. This treatment has occurred at least since Descartes and the modern industrial period and perhaps since Plato. In the process of treating nature as a mere thing, not only have most inhabitants of the West become alienated from our primordial, sensual, and aesthetic connection to the earth but we have also become increasingly alienated from ourselves and each other. Reversing this trend, rooted as it is in the Western tradition, and entrenched as it is in an industrial and technological economy, will not be easy. Moreover, there is certainly no intention here to make the Luddite suggestion to roll back the accomplishments of Western science and industry or to unreflectively limit their growth and development. The point, though, is to attempt to integrate science, technology and the growth of industry into the whole of human life, rather than have them dominate life to the exclusion of all else, and in order to do so we must also attempt to more thoroughly integrate humanity with nature. In fact, it is a more ontological integration of humanity with nature that will hopefully lead us to a more reflective and democratic guidance of the relationship between them, and it is in the works of Merleau-Ponty 2 that we witness an attempt at just such an integration. It is thus to his works that we should turn, at least for some sort of initial orientation.
Details
- Title
- Merleau-Ponty's enchanted nature
- Publication Details
- Phenomenological Inquiry, Vol.35
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publisher
- World Phenomenology Institute; Hanover, NH
- Series
- 11
- Format
- pdf
- Number of pages
- 34
- Copyright
- © Phenomenological Inquiry
- Identifiers
- 99380090599106600
- Academic Unit
- John C. Pace Library; University of West Florida Libraries
- Language
- English