“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone
in a world of wounds.”
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
For a long time, philosophy provided the grounds for systems of inquiry. This doesn’t seem to be the case any more. The questions of what philosophy is and what it should do have become, which philosophy are we speaking of and who is speaking?
I think all of us here agree in some sense with the epigraph above. If it’s true in some way that the natural world needs our assistance to get better, what can philosophy do to help heal these wounds? Is the fractured condition of philosophy analogous to the wounded condition of nature?
One of philosophy’s remaining strengths is rigorous suspicion – suspicion of claims of truth, reality, beauty, morality, originality, naturalness, legitimacy, a fundamental ground.
Can there be a world without wounds? What if the world is “by nature” – in its being – always already wounded and thus unhealable?
Are we humans likewise wounded? This is sometimes asked in the form of the question, Are humans a part of or apart from nature? But aren’t we actually both at the same time, always already divided against ourselves (i.e., individuals – both not and very divided), incapable of fully grasping ourselves from inside yet unable to fully step outside ourselves and adopt a “view from nowhere” from which we could understand ourselves completely? Don’t nature and humanity (including philosophers) suffer the same existential wounds, from which we can never be healed?
How do we deal philosophically with the tension of being both part of and apart from nature? How does this effort supplement that of ecological restoration?
in a world of wounds.”
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
For a long time, philosophy provided the grounds for systems of inquiry. This doesn’t seem to be the case any more. The questions of what philosophy is and what it should do have become, which philosophy are we speaking of and who is speaking?
I think all of us here agree in some sense with the epigraph above. If it’s true in some way that the natural world needs our assistance to get better, what can philosophy do to help heal these wounds? Is the fractured condition of philosophy analogous to the wounded condition of nature?
One of philosophy’s remaining strengths is rigorous suspicion – suspicion of claims of truth, reality, beauty, morality, originality, naturalness, legitimacy, a fundamental ground.
Can there be a world without wounds? What if the world is “by nature” – in its being – always already wounded and thus unhealable?
Are we humans likewise wounded? This is sometimes asked in the form of the question, Are humans a part of or apart from nature? But aren’t we actually both at the same time, always already divided against ourselves (i.e., individuals – both not and very divided), incapable of fully grasping ourselves from inside yet unable to fully step outside ourselves and adopt a “view from nowhere” from which we could understand ourselves completely? Don’t nature and humanity (including philosophers) suffer the same existential wounds, from which we can never be healed?
How do we deal philosophically with the tension of being both part of and apart from nature? How does this effort supplement that of ecological restoration?
Randy Honold
Asst. Dean of LA&S; Philosophy; INC
Asst. Dean of LA&S; Philosophy; INC
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