Thomas Heyd

The aim of this chapter is to sketch some of the contributions of the environmental humanities to an understanding of climate change from the perspective of philosophy. Recently, the environmental humanities have become a recognised area of study, encompassing environmental orientations within the humanities. It is noted that, generally speaking, the humanities engage in a critical and reflective stance regarding ways of understanding the world, while the environmental humanities do so in relation to environmental matters. Four key themes, describing the environmental humanities, namely, values and justice, narratives, temporalities, and the culture of nature, are identified. These themes subsequently are further explored by reflecting on the relation of climate change to various types of injustices, the role of catastrophist narratives, the importance of temporal dimensions, and the interaction of cultural conceptions of nature and human capacities to address this phenomenon. It is concluded that the approaches of the environmental humanities may be useful to reflect on how one may live with climate change.

In this article I explore the relation between vulnerability to rapid landscape change, on the one hand, and conceptions of land and responsibility for landscape, on the other. I begin by briefly discussing the notion of vulnerability to natural phenomena, and possible ways of addressing it. Next, I introduce some of the ways in which natural phenomena and processes have been perceived, and take note of the sense of responsibility toward landscape often expressed among peoples who are deeply rooted in the land. I continue with a discussion of the basis of the respect that underlies this sense of responsibility and with an account of what respect amounts to in this context. After this I point out how respect for natural phenomena may lead to a lowering of vulnerability. I conclude that it is imperative to develop those ways of conceiving of natural phenomena that will lead to a deep sense of respect and responsibility for the natural world that surrounds us.

This chapter considers the potential of this kind of indigenous site-specific installation for thinking afresh the relation of contemporary inhabitants with the land in the Northern Plains region. 'Medicine wheel' is the name given since the late 1800s to a kind of boulder structure found in the Northern Plains of North America. Medicine wheels are often situated on knolls overlooking the prairie, and are mostly found in Alberta and Saskatchewan, and less frequently in Montana and northern Wyoming. The medicine wheel of Steel a great Blood warrior was built in 1940 as a memorial. Moreover, reports from Native consultants indicate that the Big Horn medicine wheel may have been used for vision quests. Medicine wheels seem to be, in Foucault's terms, 'places outside of all places; in their resistance to interpretation according to instrumental notions, they return our gaze unto the prairies, turned denatured, overgrazed cattle pastures, and unto the once verdant river valleys, turned into flooded, mega-project water reservoirs.

This book argues that an attentive encounter with nature is of key importance for the development of an environmentally appropriate culture. The fundamental idea is that the environmental degradation that we are increasingly experiencing is best conceived as the consequence of a cultural mismatch: our cultures seem not to be appropriate to the natural environment in which we move and on which we depend in thoroughgoing ways. In addressing this problem, Thomas Heyd weaves together a rich tapestry of perspectives on human interactions with the natural world, ranging from traditional modes of managing human communities, which include the natural environment, in Latin America, to the consideration of poetic travelogues, ecological restoration and botanic gardens.

Paul Guyer has proposed that, despite Kant’s apparent avowals that judgements of beauty of things are made without consideration of the purposes that we have for them, purposes do enter into aesthetic judgements of “adherent beauty.” He even attributes to Kant the view that functionality is a necessary condition for the beauty of objects that have certain ends or functions. I consider his claims and propose that, according to Kant, the degree to which an object fulfills its ends may pose a psychological – rather than a logical – factor in its aesthetic appreciation. I agree that judgements of beauty, with regard to many things, certainly are made in relation to the functions that we attribute to those things, but argue that these judgements, as such, are logically independent of whatever judgements are made regarding their functionality, even if in practice their functionality may impinge on our aesthetic judgements.

In this paper I argue that the concept of pilgrimage provides a unifying trope for the otherwise seemingly unfocused travel accounts of Bashō’s Narrow Road to the Interior and Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland’s Voyage aux régions equinoxiales du Nouveau Continent. I begin with a brief description of debates regarding the notion of pilgrimage. After that I show how pilgrimage as trope may be applied to the texts of these authors. This is followed by an application of the classical stages of pilgrimage to particular phases of Bashō’s and Humboldt’s recounted experiences. I conclude that pilgrimage offers an illuminating new way to understand the travel accounts of these two writers.

En las diferentes culturas del mundo, el ambiente natural se percibe de diversas maneras, y en muchas sociedades no se considera como opuestos lo natural y lo cultural. En cuanto que la integridad del medio ambiente natural se ha convertido en algo muy preocupante, hay que preguntarse cómo concebir lo cultural en relación a lo natural para llegar a relacionarnos adecuadamente con la naturaleza. En este ensayo propongo que la naturaleza constituye una categoría importante y distintiva, que puede haber una cultura adecuada a la protección de, y al respeto por, la naturaleza, y que la administración y restauración de áreas naturales no son necesariamente contrarias al objetivo de preservar la naturaleza.

A causa del transporte de alta velocidad, de las tecnologías de comunicación instantáneas, de la ubicuidad de los teléfonos móviles, del alcance planetario de los programas de televisión transmitidos por satélite, de la inmersión cada vez más acelerada en el ciberespacio, de la globalización del comercio, de la proliferación dé idénticos centros comerciales, cadenas de supermercados, multinacionales, etc., el espacio parece achicarse, los lugares pierden su especificidad, y la naturaleza va desapareciendo de nuestra conciencia. En este ensayo propongo que el caminar por el paisaje, pero atentamente, y de manera poco asistida por ayudas mecánicas, puede someterse a un análisis estético que nos puede ayudar en la recuperación de la profundidad del espacio, en el re-conocimiento de la diversidad real de los lugares, y en la percepción de nuestras vidas humanas en su contexto natural más amplio. Enfoco este tema tomando como guía al Poeta japonés Basho Matsuo. Empiezo el ensayo describiendo su hábito del caminar poético2 Después arguyo qué el caminar poético en ciertos aspectos se parece al viajar chamaluco. A continuación, esbozo el esquema de un análisis estético del caminar y concluyo proponiendo la práctica del caminar como una manera de ofrecer resistencia a los efectos deslocalizantes y an-estéticos plasmados en las tendencias anteriormente mencionadas de nuestras sociedades.

Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding has generally been read as primarily concerned with epistemology. In particular, it has been claimed that the Essay attempts to defeat epistemological skepticism, but fails in this enterprise because of the veiling character of Locke's ideas. By way of reexamination of the texts in question I show that epistemological skepticism is not the topic of the Essay, and that there is not sufficient reason to claim that Locke's account of knowledge leads to epistemological skepticism. I argue, moreover, that the motivating topic of the Essay is moral skepticism, and I explain the central role of ch. 8, book 2 in Locke's argumentation for the claim that we may achieve a science of morality. I conclude with an account of some of practical consequences of a science of morality, as conceived by Locke

Industrial interventions in the landscape leave their imprint in a permanent way, but there remain options on how to deal with land even at that point in time. In this essay, three alternatives are considered: leaving such sites as they are, restoring them to a condition resembling their original state, or transforming them into artworks. The author focuses in particular on the third option in order to determine to what degree it is possible for artistic reclamation to redeem such blights in the landscape. the work of art is beautiful to the degree that it opposes its own order to that of reality . Herbert Marcuse, 1978, p. 64.