Modern environmentalism has come to realize that many of its key concerns— “wilderness” and “nature” among them— are contested territory, viewed differently by different people. Understanding nature requires science and ecology, to be sure, but it also requires sensitivity to history, culture, and narrative. In response, this volume brings together essays by philosophers on the questions that hermeneutics— the “art and science of interpretation”— raises for environmental philosophy. Providing a snapshot of how a hermeneutical turn in environmental philosophy represents a new form of environmen ... More

Modern environmentalism has come to realize that many of its key concerns— “wilderness” and “nature” among them— are contested territory, viewed differently by different people. Understanding nature requires science and ecology, to be sure, but it also requires sensitivity to history, culture, and narrative. In response, this volume brings together essays by philosophers on the questions that hermeneutics— the “art and science of interpretation”— raises for environmental philosophy. Providing a snapshot of how a hermeneutical turn in environmental philosophy represents a new form of environmental philosophy, the essays in this collection offer fresh ways of looking at traditional problems of environmental philosophy and environmental ethics. Significantly, the authors suggest the human understanding of nature centres on mediation— the mediation that grounds the interpretive task of connecting fact and meaning, through a number of different structures and forms. At the same time, this collection expands the concerns of environmental philosophy. The first section of this edited collection investigates the task of interpretation as a way of thinking environmentally. The following sections explore particular issues of interpretation. The second section explores the hermeneutics of the environmental self. Section three investigates the ways that narrativity contributes to our understanding of nature. The final section raises questions of time and place in light of environmental ethics.