ABSTRACT In this paper, I argue that Emmanuel Levinas’s Totality and Infinity gives us a picture of the construction of the ethical subject that requires the appropriation of a domicile so that certain conditions could be met that would allow openness to the advent of the ethical Other. The problem is that it simultaneously posits a realm of beings outside of ethics that are open to appropriation (things) without allowing for the possibility that these things that we would draw from the elemental to give to the Other might themselves also be ethical Others. To deal with this, I propose an alternative model for dwelling where its function occurs, not by means of an appropriation, but by a loss of the monolithic and dangerous character of the elemental through a familiarization with it where the site of dwelling would be moved from an appropriated space to embodiment.

ABSTRACT In recent debates in ecology and environmental philosophy, the concept of landscape has been criticized and distrusted. One reason behind this is that aesthetic judgments of landscapes are often not in harmony with ecological concerns; for instance, damaged or polluted landscapes are sometimes judged as beautiful. In response to these critiques, I argue that a philosophical concept of the landscape can help us understand our relationship with nature and potentially facilitate the development of a more sustainable nature. To this end, I first draw from the definition of landscape proposed by the Italian philosopher Rosario Assunto, who understood landscape as a concrete encounter between humans and their biological and cultural environments. I then connect this understanding of the landscape to the recently developed concept of aesthetic sustainability, demonstrating that the aesthetics and ecology of a landscape need not stand in opposition.

ABSTRACT In view of the diagnosis of the Anthropocene, the need for a “different” relationship between humans and nature that “follows nature” (naturam sequi) is often emphasized. This claim can be traced back historically to Schelling, among others. However, as soon as the concept of nature is perceived in its ambivalence and historical contingency, the naturam sequi argument seems to fall prey to the naturalistic fallacy. This article argues that Schelling, on the one hand, registers this ambivalence of nature in a multi-layered description of the developmental history of nature, but that, on the other hand, he explicitly adheres to the nature-ethical naturam sequi argument, especially in his middle period philosophy between 1807 and 1822. Schelling avoids the naturalistic fallacy by adopting a “negativistic” mode of argumentation. It is precisely in this that Schelling’s nature-ethical argumentation is very topical in view of the modern debates on nature-orientation in the Anthropocene.

ABSTRACT Environmental aesthetics, which emerged in the second half of the twentieth century, now encompasses human environments as well as natural ones. This paper explores how and why Japanese aesthetic theories in the early twentieth century, influenced by Western aesthetics, gravitated toward human environments. In premodern Japan, art was seamlessly integrated into daily life, most notably in the tea ceremony. Drawing on Daoist or Buddhist philosophy, Kakuzō Okakura (1863–1913) and Sōetsu Yanagi (1889–1961) justified traditional artistic practices. Okakura saw the tea ceremony as “the art of living” or “the art of being in the world,” adapting to the environment, while Yanagi emphasized affection for everyday objects and defined handiwork as “nature-centric.” Their Daoist or Buddhist-influenced aesthetic theories advocate living in harmony with nature, moving away from an anthropocentric lifestyle.

ABSTRACT Hegel is often seen as an endpoint in two ways: On the one hand, as the first person to proclaim the death of God, and on the other, as the philosopher who abolished the meaning of natural beauty in favor of the system of the absolute spirit. It was this second aspect that formed the starting point of Adorno’s negative dialectic, which sought to save natural beauty. In this essay, I not only discuss the value of natural beauty in critical theory but also attempt to show how this relates to the darkened, negative eschatology in the first generation of the Frankfurt School. The question here is whether there is a potential not only for overcoming Hegel’s marginalization of natural beauty, which has characterized Western philosophy ever since, but whether this would be possible through the reopening of the eschatological idea, which Hegel’s subsumption of everything under the concept banished from the horizon of Western thought. A reopening of that, according to the concept of negative dialectics, can only be achieved in the sense of a certain kind of negativity: The peccatum originale.

ABSTRACT The following essay is an effort to apply the concept of theophany, common to all monotheisms, but drawing especially on the philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa, to the environmental philosophical problem of understanding what nature is such that we should treat it reverentially.

ABSTRACT This essay examines the impact of “aesthetic marginalization” on environmental degradation by leveraging Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics to explore the Anthropocene. It argues that modernity’s detachment of aesthetics from science, ethics, and philosophy contributes to the environmental crises. The analysis underscores the pervasive ugliness of our current ecological moment, emphasizing the moral and aesthetic failures responsible for this condition. Gadamer's critique of technocratic rationality highlights the dangers of an instrumental worldview. The paper advocates for a re-engagement with aesthetic experiences as a pathway to ecological awareness and ethical action, positioning beauty as essential in understanding and addressing the environmental crisis.

ABSTRACT Nishida’s conception of “historical nature” bespeaks an ontology that mediates between materialism, idealism, and vitalism by going beyond the dualism of the spiritual and material. Nishida’s account of the expressive world demonstrates the connections between organic life, the human body, and artistic expression. His concept of historical nature synthesizes these topics to provide a nondual understanding of the human-nature relationship in which cultural productivity is an expression of the historical-material horizon in which it is grounded. This essay provides an interpretation of the productive “seeing” of historical nature by analyzing Nishida’s discussions of the role of the historical body in the creation of art. Through an examination of his statements on the evolution of the eyes and hands, it is demonstrated how nature itself becomes expressive in the generation of artworks. The essay concludes with some reflections on the relevance of Nishida’s philosophy to our contemporary ecological situation.

ABSTRACT The Anthropocene and Schelling’s posthumously published fragment Clara both confront us with the problems of how to keep our psychosomatic sanity in a time of death and destruction and how to live a purposeful life on a planet ruined by human impact. Recent research, however, treats Clara largely as a roman à clef and strives to find out its references to Schelling’s biography and other works. This paper tries to recover Clara’s systematic momentum through a close, immanent reading. By doing so, it comes to this conclusion: The main figure of Clara, a narration embedding dialogue, is the pastor who wants to save the life of the eponymous heroine by standing for what Schelling calls in other texts “the ecstasy of reason”: the openness for a radically different point of view. This openness can help to overcome the—in a broad sense narcissistic—fixation on one’s own point of view, which seems to be at work in the Anthropocene, too. An emerging environ-mental aesthetics along these lines might be a discipline to give us orientation in the Anthropocene as an also environ-mental crisis.