Petr Vaškovic

Studie si klade za cíl identifikovat hlavní tematické oblasti současného ekofenomenologického výzkumu. Ukážeme, že ekofenomenologie využívá především metodologické přístupy, které buď problematizují objektivní, instrumentálně-vědecký přístup ke světu a/nebo zpochybňují izolovanost poznávajícího subjektu. Zaměříme se na ohnisko ekofenomenologického bádání, jenž je soustředěno okolo děl Husserla, Heideggera, Merleau-Pontyho a Lévinase, a v návaznosti na to identifikujeme čtyři klíčová témata ekofenomenologického bádání, a to téma přirozeného světa, techniky a bydlení na zemi, tělesnosti a etiky a tváře přírody.

This paper examines the concept of corporeality of the more-than-human world through the lens of phenomenology. It argues that we can identify a distinct strand within contemporary ecophenomenology that challenges the conventional understandings of corporeality – particularly the tendency to reduce corporeality to mere brute materiality. The paper identifies three primary ways in which ecophenomenologists challenge such reductive conceptions: (i) by uncovering the deeper layers of nature’s corporeality, (ii) by highlighting the vulnerability of natural bodies and explaining how they communicate this vulnerability to us, and (iii) by emphasizing the entanglement and reciprocity between human and more-than-human corporeality. It is argued that, through these perspectives, ecophenomenology reveals new and previously unrecognized dimensions of the embodied existence of nature. In the concluding section, the paper examines how ecophenomenologists argue for a renewed and enriched human relationship with the corporeality of the more-than-human world.

The book brings together the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard with that of another prominent proto-existentialist thinker, Fyodor Dostoevsky. Asking the question: "What constitutes an authentic Christian life?", the book explores the answer given by both authors, which is that one should rid oneself of selfish inclinations and strive for a life of faith that revolves around the virtues of humility and non-preferential love. However, as we learn from Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard, becoming an authentic individual is no easy task, and the book goes on to examine the obstacles that lie in the path of individual existential self-development. The book then examines the ways in which the various characters and pseudonymous authors who populate Dostoevsky's and Kierkegaard's books struggle in their attempts to become authentic ethical and religious individuals. The examination of this struggle, termed existential entrapment and defined as the inability to progress on the path of one's existential self-development, forms the core of the book and helps to map out the ethical-religious landscape of Dostoevsky's and Kierkegaard's thought.

The study looks at environmental anxiety and hope from the perspective of existential philosophy, as two different forms of existential attunement. In the first part of the text, the current state of research in the field of environmental emotions and moods is sketched out. The concept of environmental anxiety is then briefly delineated, drawing on current taxonomies of environmental emotions as well as on philosophical definitions of anxiety promulgated by Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Tillich and contemporary existential phenomenologists. The existential relevance of environmental anxiety is subsequently defined with the help of an analysis of the experience of the loss of meaningfulness that accompanies environmental anxiety, and then also an analysis of the change in how the natural world reveals itself to the anxious individual. The second part of the study focuses on the mood of hope. The hope for a solution to the ecological crisis is often presented in both public discussion and in the professional literature in the form of new technologies, political will or Providence. This hope is made immediately available and without making any great demands on the hopeful individual. However, by means of Kierkegaard the study shows that this kind of hope is a kind of illusion that leaves a person in a state of inaction, and even becomes an obstacle to a more radical form of hope, one that is capable of inspiring the individual to act, for example, toward “an active solution to the ecological crisis.”

Environmental anxiety is often thought of as a psychopathological condition. Our paper aims to challenge this narrow understanding by offering an existential-phenomenological interpretation of environmental anxiety that posits it as an _existential attunement_ with a transformative potential, capable of opening the anxious individual to a hopeful and meaningful outlook on the future. In the first part of the paper, we provide a conceptual analysis of environmental anxiety, drawing on current interdisciplinary taxonomies of environmental emotions as well as on existential-phenomenological definitions of anxiety. We then proceed to define the two key existential characteristics of environmental anxiety, firstly (i) its ability to reframe the aesthetic perception of nature, and secondly (ii) its impact on the subjective constitution of meaning. In the second part of the paper, drawing on the work of Kierkegaard and contemporary ecopsychological and ecotheological thinkers, a distinction is made between a naïve and a radical form of environmental hope. It is argued that while the former type of hope leads to inactivity, the latter is capable of motivating individuals to pro-environmental action.

The aim of this chapter is to examine the relevant philosophical accounts of climate anxiety and to provide a comprehensive overview of the existing literature on the subject. This will be done by outlining the three main philosophical approaches to climate anxiety. First will be considered the scholars who have put forward their own original theories or definitions of climate anxiety. These are philosophers such as Albrecht, who has developed an entirely new classificatory scheme of Earth-related emotions, or scholars like Smith, or McGrath, who look at climate anxiety through a cultural-historical lens. The second group consists of authors who analyze climate anxiety through the interpretive framework of Christian existential philosophy, mostly working with Tillich’s definition of anxiety. However, some of them also borrow concepts from other existential thinkers, most notably from Kierkegaard. The final, third group is made up of scholars who take a phenomenological approach to analyzing climate anxiety, using the methodological framework provided by philosophers such as Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre. After outlining these three main philosophical approaches to climate anxiety, the chapter offers a brief discussion of the findings, which is followed by a definition of climate anxiety that is derived from these findings and from the two comprehensive taxonomies of climate emotions developed by Landmann and Pihkala.

The present study poses a simple question, namely, what are the specific forces that might at times hinder rather than advance individual moral development? To answer this inquiry, I will investigate the writings of Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky, examining the two aesthetic protagonists found in their works—Johannes the Seducer and Dmitri Karamazov. I will utilise the Kierkegaardian framework of the three existential stages to illustrate that it is an over-reliance on gratification, coupled with an instrumental approach towards beings that not only prevents these two aesthetes from behaving morally, but also from even recognising the ethical perspective as a viable existential position.

While there has been considerable interest in the writings of Søren Kierkegaard and Fyodor Dostoevsky, both of whom are considered seminal existential thinkers, relatively little has been said about similarities in their thought. In this paper, I propose to read their philosophical and literary works together as texts that offer an elaborate model of an existential religious transformation. Both Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky sketch a path leading from the inauthentic, internally fragmented and egotistic self to the authentically Christian, humble and loving individual. By examining the underlying structure of this transformative process, I try to show that its portrayal is in many ways similar in the account of both writers. Furthermore, I maintain that they set out not only to describe the inner workings of the existential religious transformation, but that their effort constitutes a direct appeal to the reader to initiate the transformative process herself or himself.