Environmental Hermeneutics Research Articles

Environmental hermeneutics and ecological awareness

Environmental hermeneutics and ecological awareness

From Ricœurian Hermeneutics to Environmental Hermeneutics. Space, Landscape, and Interpretation

The analysis of fundamental texts such as “Architecture and Narrativity” and Memory, History, Forgetting aims to fill a gap in studies of Environmental Hermeneutics. Indeed, the analogy between space and narrative, through parallelism with the process of triple mimesis, is usually deduced by environmental hermeneuticists from the works Time and Narrative and Oneself as Another. However, Ricœur himself took it upon himself to make this transposition in a direct and elaborated way from a phenomenological and hermeneutic analysis of the built space (through architecture) and the inhabited space, opening the way for a broader and more grounded epistemology of environmental hermeneutics. The introduction of the critical concept of landscape, as seen today by constructivist and cultural geography, legitimizes the claims of an environmental hermeneutics as an interpretive process of formally non-textual objects. Indeed, landscape in its connection to territory has its own semiotic and semantic character, which is appealed to for reading and interpretation.

Hermeneutics in an Age of Alternative Facts, Fake News, and Climate Change Denial

A Review of Clingerman, F., Treanor, B., Drenthen, M., and Utsler, D. (Eds.) Interpreting Nature: The emerging field of environmental hermeneutics.

THE REDUCED NORMATIVE PROGRAMMING OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION LAWS IN BRAZIL AND THEIR POORLY ORGANIZED METHODICALLY INTERPRETATION

The article addresses an issue poorly discussed by the Brazilian Environmental Law, namely: its low legislation normative programming level. An analysis of legal texts about fields such as licensing shows that formal laws have only few rules that drive clear decisions about conflicts due to conflicting interests. Rules that open wide discretionary room for the interpretation/application of managerial and judicial bureaus often prevail. A documental, bibliographic and jurisprudential research will show that lack of minimum hermeneutical reasoning standard in doctrine and jurisprudence, whose content mostly depends on the individual convictions of public agents judging the claim, causes low decision predictability. The act of weighing the principles follows a rational argumentation line and impairs juridical safety. It would be useful and viable to revalorize classical elements of Law interpretation in combination with modern constitutional hermeneutical techniques in order to replace a complex “environmental hermeneutics”.

Toward a Posthuman Hermeneutics

ABSTRACTThe aim of this article is threefold. The first section deals with traditional hermeneutic anthropocentrism, focusing in particular on Dilthey and Heidegger and their reflections on nature and animals. For both of them, although from different perspectives, interpretatio naturae (interpretation of nature) is no more than a figurative expression. In the second section, recent developments in the emerging fields of environmental hermeneutics and biohermeneutics are accounted for. In particular, the author distinguishes between two main attitudes. Some researchers have argued that nature might be considered as an object of interpretation. Others have said that nature can also be seen as a proper subject of interpretation. In the third section, the ideas developed in the context of environmental hermeneutics and biohermeneutics are “translated” into the field of digital technologies. The author presents “digital hermeneutics” as an emerging field in which three levels can be isolated: (1) a level “zero,” at which hermeneutics (especially the Heideggerian version) has been used to mark a clear distinction between humans and nonhumans (machines); (2) a level “one,” at which the interpretation is considered the result of the articulation between human and nonhuman intentionalities; and (3) a level “two” that is still emerging and that would consist of wondering if it is legitimate to attribute autonomous interpretational agency to digital technologies, or at least to part of them.

Is Nature Natural? And Other Linguistic Conundrums

One of Scott Cameron’s most recent contributions to environmental hermeneutics (a field in which he was a founding scholar) was to defend the concept of nature against those who would argue that it should be abandoned in order to stave off the ecological destruction. Rather than jettison nature as an outdated and unhelpful construct, Cameron argued for its redemption based on Gadamer’s hermeneutical insights into language. In this article, I will look at Cameron’s arguments against Steven Vogel as well as particular points made against nature as a concept recently articulated by Slavoj Žižek and Timothy Morton. I will follow these arguments through, demonstrating that while the arguments can be accepted and are, indeed, accurate, the conclusion that the concept of nature be abandoned need not and should not be conceded. Finally, I will return to Cameron’s hermeneutic defense of a concept of nature and expand further on his insights and arguments. With Cameron, I conclude that the concept of nature can be redeemed. Extending Cameron’s line of reasoning, I argue that this aim is accomplished by refiguring the concept of nature with the insights offered by philosophical hermeneutics.

Environmental protection in Brazil’s High Court: Safeguarding the environment through a rule of law for nature

No contexto da sociedade de risco e de seus deslocalizados incalculáveis e não compensáveis riscos globais, as controvérsias ambientais tornam-se crescentemente complexas. Nesse cenário, o Superior Tribunal de Justiça (STJ) tem se destacado por recorrentemente aplicar estratégias e princípios da hermenêutica jurídica ambiental em seu processo de tomada de decisões, clarificando controvérsias relacionadas à interpretação da legislação ambiental. Nesse sentido, por intermédio da pesquisa bibliográfica e jurisprudencial, este artigo busca enaltecer os destaques recentes da Jurisprudência do STJ, analisando alguns de seus casos emblemáticos e suas contribuições para a evolução do direito ambiental no país.

Método e interpretação nas Ciências do Espírito: a busca pela efetividade e a hermenêutica no Direito Ambiental

The present article intends an analysis on the question of the methodology in the Science of Law, emphasizing the hermeneutical technique in order to understand the sociological phenomenon. It aims to demonstrate the concepts and exegetical dimensions in the environment, trying to demonstrate the applicability of hermeneutics in what Environmental issues. Rationalism proved to be a widely surpassed current and although it has contributed to the Law as Science, it has been surpassed, not being provided as a means of informing the Sciences of the Spirit. The methodology employed in the present work is hermeneutics-phenomenological, once that we seek to present the main paths that lead the hermeneutist to a full understanding of cultural and anthropological factors in a legal-environmental context. Keywords: method, sciences of the spirit, environmental hermeneutics.

Clingerman et al., "Interpreting Nature: The Emerging Field of Environmental Hermeneutics"

Clingerman et al., "Interpreting Nature: The Emerging Field of Environmental Hermeneutics"

Eros After Nature

Abstract On ground shared by environmental hermeneutics, critical social theory, and environmentally minded feminism, this article attempts to conciliate between the nearly antithetical ethical viewpoints of environmental philosophers David Abram and Steven Vogel. It will demonstrate first that Abram's linguistic arguments for extending ethical considerability to nonhuman nature succumb to two of Vogel's debilitating critiques, which it labels the social constructivist critique and the discourse ethics critique, and secondly that Abram fails to guard against the problem of human-human oppression. The article also points out, on the other hand, that while Vogel evades the problem of human-human oppression, his view fails to protect against the problem of dangerous anthropocentrism. Operating within the boundaries that Vogel establishes, it will seek to avoid the pitfalls of Abram's view, to address the underlying ideology that leads to both types of oppression, and to eliminate the problem of dangerous anthropocentrism. To do so it draws upon the arguments of Trish Glazebrook, contending that Abram's appeals to the “speech” of nature can be more effectively conceptualized as erotic appeals, and that engaging in this call-and-response eros promotes the development of virtues that undermine our current ideology and extend to both the human and the nonhuman.

Non-mourning and ecocritical ethics in Véronique Tadjo’s The Shadow of Imana: Travels in the Heart of Rwanda

In this article I read Véronique Tadjo’s The Shadow of Imana through its embedded account of ecotourism and the environmental space of Rwanda’s Parc National des Volcans. In the context of Rwandan genocide, I make a case for re-grounding mourning through environmental co-ordinates. Considering what I term an “agriculturalisation” of genocide, present both in the implementation of genocide in rural areas and in environmental hermeneutics for genocide, I connect the work of mourning to a de-naturalisation of received landscapes and land orthodoxies. I suggest that The Shadow of Imana presents us with a vernacular mourning ecology for post-genocide Rwanda, in which non-mourning enclaves — spaces where a human conception of mourning does not obtain — animate a mourning for everything else that remains.

Environmental Hermeneutics: Ethnic and Ecological Traditions in Aesthetic Dialogue with Nature

Abstract The article presents dialogic attitude towards nature and focuses on the aesthetic form of interaction with environment via folklore and imaginative writing. The article analyzes the development of scientific thought from human ecology to environmental hermeneutics. Hermeneutic methodology is used in the field of “aesthetics of nature”, therefore, the author applies hermeneutic categories such as tradition, historically effective consciousness, hermeneutic circle, application to cultural heritage of one of Siberia’s natives and proves the advantages, heuristic value of these categories in analyzing dialogue with nature. Aesthetic dialogue with nature is studied on the example of ethnic and ecological traditions of the Buryat nomads, who historically migrated across Central Asia, nowadays live around Lake Baikal. The author argues that revitalizing ethnic and ecological traditions in folklore and contemporary national literature presents a hermeneutic dialogue with nature and considers it a valuable resource for ethical assumptions and ecological education for sustainable development.

Reviews

Reviews

Telling Stories of Ourselves in Places

Forrest Clingerman, Brian Treanor, Martin Drenthen, and David Utsler, eds. 2014. Interpreting Nature: The Emerging Field of Environmental Hermeneutics. New York: Fordham University Press.A. James Wohlpart. 2013. Walking in the Land of Many Gods: Remembering Sacred Reason in Contemporary Environmental Literature. Athens: University of Georgia Press.

Forrest Clingerman. Interpreting Nature: The Emerging Field of Environmental Hermeneutics

Forrest Clingerman. Interpreting Nature: The Emerging Field of Environmental Hermeneutics

Interpreting nature: the emerging field of environmental hermeneutics

Acknowledgments Introduction: Environmental Hermeneutics David Utsler, Forrest Clingerman, Martin Drenthen, and Brian Treanor Part I: Interpretation and the Task of Thinking Environmentally 1. Hermeneutics Deep in the Woods John van Buren 2. Morrow's Ants: E. O. Wilson and Gadamer's Critique of (Natural) Historicism Mick Smith 3. Layering: Body, Building, Biography Robert Mugerauer 4. Might Nature Be Interpreted as a Saturated Phenomenon? Christina M. Gschwandtner 5. Must Environmental Philosophy Relinquish the Concept of Nature? A Hermeneutic Reply to Steven Vogel W. S. K. Cameron Part II: Situating the Self 6. Environmental Hermeneutics and Environmental/Eco-Psychology: Explorations in Environmental Identity David Utsler 7. Environmental Hermeneutics With and For Others: Ricoeur's Ethics and the Ecological Self Nathan Bell 8. Bodily Moods and Unhomely Environments: The Hermeneutics of Agoraphobia and the Spirit of Place Dylan Trigg Part III: Narrativity and Image 9. Narrative and Nature: Appreciating and Understanding the Nonhuman World Brian Treanor 10. The Question Concerning Nature Sean McGrath 11. New Nature Narratives: Landscape Hermeneutics and Environmental Ethics Martin Drenthen Part IV: Environments, Place, and the Experience of Time 12. Memory, Imagination, and the Hermeneutics of Place Forrest Clingerman 13. The Betweenness of Monuments Janet Donohoe 14. My Place in the Sun David Wood 15. How Hermeneutics Might Save the Life of (Environmental) Ethics Paul Van Tongeren and Paulien Snellen Notes A Bibliographic Overview of Research in Environmental Hermeneutics List of Contributors Index

Integral Archaeology: Process Methodologies for Exploring Prehistoric Rock Art on Ometepe Island, Nicaragua

A process-based approach to archaeology combines traditional third-person data collection methods with first- and second-person inquiries. Drawing from the traditions of cognitive archaeology, transpersonal psychology, and ecopsychology, this mixed-methods approach can be thought of as a movement toward a more holistic or “integral” archaeology. By way of example, a prehistoric rock art site on Ometepe Island, Nicaragua is explored from the inside (through the researcher's lucid dreaming incubations) as well as in relationship with the researcher's embodied presence (an exploration of environmental hermeneutics). These multiple perspectives can be seen to situate the researcher's worldview and biases within the context of the study as well as perhaps lead to new questions about the significance of these cognitive artifacts.

O Estado de Direito Ambiental e a particularidade de uma hermenêutica jurídica DOI:10.5007/2177-7055.2010v31n60p291

The general purpose of this paper is to examine the theoretical structure of the Environmental State of Law and the particularcharacter of an environmental juridical hermeneutics, both aiming at minimizing the effects of the environmental crisis. The conclusion is that interpretation principles used at environmental hermeneutics are not able to offer singular and ultimate answers, because meaning is inexhaustible, as philosophical hermeneuticsdemonstrates. Even if legal professionals use all the relevant principles indicated, there will always be room for subjectivity and discretion.

Paul Ricoeur’s Hermeneutics as a Model for Environmental Philosophy

Those acquainted with the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, whether they are Ricoeur enthusiasts or just polite readers, will readily acknowledge the remarkable scope of his thought. True as this may be, Ricoeur never directed his powers of philosophical reflection toward the natural environment. The reasons for this are easy enough understand. Environmental philosophy as a distinct branch of philosophy has scarcely appeared on the scene for more than a generation. ' Over that period of time Ricoeur was obviously busy with otiier questions that ran through his thought nearly all of his Ufe. Who knows, had Ricoeur miraculously overcome the strictures of mortaUty for another forty or fifty years, he may very well have had something say philosophically about the environment. That is all, of course, speculative. Nonetheless, philosophy is a logical place for an expanding hermeneutics2 turn. If the claim of the universality of that aU experience is methated through language3 is so, then experience also calls for hermeneutics. Language is related the ontological condition of beingin-the-world and we bring experience language;4 thus we can infer that the encounter with environments - natural, cultural and so on - is Ukewise expressed (or understood) in language, making them a meaningful locus of interpretation. What I propose in this essay is that Paul Ricoeur's provides a model for various forms of discourse and, in particular, the growing field of philosophy. I am not so ambitious claim do so in any comprehensive manner here. The vast scope of Ricoeur's work alone is prohibitive of any such attempt in a single essay. What I will do is provide some examples illustrate me claim that Ricoeur's work can be employed in me service of philosophy. And while this specific application of his work does not seem have been in Ricoeur's mind, I will rely on one of Ricoeur's fundamental hermeneutical principles of the distanciation of the writer and the reader by the text. Namely, interpretation is not ultimately about deciphering the intentions of the author; to interpret is explicate the type of being-in-die-world unfolded in front of the text.5 The importance of Ricoeur's philosophy for philosophy I will take be one such possibility that may unfold in front of his work. With that in mind, I will first give a brief description of philosophy. Then I will consider in relation philosophy Ricoeur's hermeneutics of the self, his treatment of distanciation and belonging in terms of Gadamer's hermeneutics, and finally the possible role of a critical in discourse. From Environmental Philosophy Environmental Hermeneutics Environmental philosophy, I think, is still trying find its feet. It has its origin in the growing awareness of me consequences of devastation. The concern for the effects of human activity on the environment led some philosophers ask what philosophy might contribute the discussion.6 Environmental philosophy, then, was really an ethics first. And in the mind of some, philosophy isn't philosophy at all but at best perhaps an appUed philosophical ethics. Philosophical reflection on the environment, however, did not remain merely in the realm of ethics but has expanded include environmental aesthetics, ontology, theology, the philosophy of science, political philosophy, philosophy of technology, ecofeminism, and other areas.7 Phenomenologists who have turned toward questions have begun speak of eco-phenomenology and going back the earth itself as a way of giving phenomenological descriptions of experience.8 If all of this, why not, then, an eco-hermeneutics? Going further still, I would speak more broadly of an that includes not only ecology or nature, but built environments, social and cultural environments, and any sort of environs of which we may speak. …

Critical Environmental Hermeneutics

Critical Environmental Hermeneutics