The Presence of Nature: A Study in Phenomenology and Environmental Philosophy

摘要

As an academic discipline, environmental ethics has been, for its most part, inspired by an Anglo-American philosophical approach not known for its great patience for continental brands of thought. Even if this very journal has published articles on Heidegger and environmentalism from very early on (see, for example, Don E. Marietta's "Knowledge and Obligation in Environmental Ethics: APhenomenologi-cal Approach," Environmental Ethics 4 [1982]: 153-62; Michael Zimmerman's "Toward a Heideggerian Ethos for Radical Environmentalism," Environmental Ethics 5 [1983]: 99-31; or Laura Westra's "Let it Be: Heidegger and Future Generations," Environmental Ethics 7 [1985]: 341-50), late-coming phenomenologi-cal approaches to environmental questions eventually had to regroup separately under the title eco-phenomenology, maintaining the nearly hostile divide between the Anglo-American and continental camps. In this context Simon P. James' fine book, The Presence of Nature, builds a helpful bridge between the two, by revisiting some of the core questions of the field through a clearly developed and highly accessible phenomenological approach.