The Routledge Handbook of Eco-Phenomenology

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-88180-5
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 480 Seiten, Format (B × H): 174 mm x 246 mm, Gewicht: 453 g

Reihe: Routledge Environment and Sustainability Handbooks

The Routledge Handbook of Eco-Phenomenology is a comprehensive exploration of how we, as humans, interact with and perceive the natural world. Spanning seven thematic sections, this wide-ranging collection gathers contributions from leading scholars in philosophy, theology, anthropology, literature, music studies, and environmental thought. Together, over thirty chapters offer fresh perspectives on how we inhabit a more-than-human world.

At the heart of this volume is the dynamic intersection of phenomenology—a philosophical tradition attentive to embodied experience—and environmental ethics, inviting readers to rethink assumptions about activism, passivity, and ecological responsibility. Rather than advancing a unified doctrine, the chapters explore eco-phenomenology as a field of ongoing tension and dialogue, attentive to receptivity, perception, and the ethical demands of a world that exceeds us.

Key themes include re-evaluations of human embodiment in relation to nature, the role of perception in understanding our ecological entanglements, and cultural attitudes that challenge human exceptionalism. Literary explorations and reflections on music deepen the inquiry, showing how the arts open distinct pathways of attunement to the environment. The volume culminates in critical dialogues between eco-phenomenology and other intellectual traditions, including posthumanism, Indigenous cosmologies, and enactivism.

More than an academic survey, this handbook is an invitation to rethink environmental engagement as a mode of being rooted in care, vulnerability, and attentiveness to the Earth as our shared home. It is essential reading for scholars, researchers, and students in philosophy, environmental studies, anthropology, literature, and the arts.

Zielgruppe

Academic, Postgraduate, and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

Sundman, Alice

Heneise, Michael T.

Falke, Cassandra

Lia, Edvard

Dahl, Espen

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Ethik, Moralphilosophie
• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften, Biologie: Sachbuch, Naturführer
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Phänomenologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction to the Routledge Handbook of Eco-phenomenology, Section 1. Given Nature, 2. Transcending the Object Horizon: Nature as Given and Saturated Phenomenon,
3. Eco-Phenomenology and the Theological Turn? Passivity, Activity, and Traumatic Being, 4. Birth, Nature, Repetition: Arendt and Beyond, 5. The Mirror-Play of Being Used and Needed: Rereading (Ge-)brauchen in Heidegger for Eco-Phenomenology, Section 2. Passivity and Perception, 6. Earth Un-Earthed: Total Solar Eclipses as Sur-Réflexion on the Earthborne Topology of Flesh, with Remarks on Transcendental Geology, 7. Aesthetic Practices and Cultural Change: Challenging Environmental Neuroticism, 8. The Activity of Human Passivity and the Process of Nature: Renaud Barbaras’ “Eco-Phenomenology” vis-à-vis the Anthropocene Paradox, Section 3. Place and Cosmos, 9. A 'Taste for the Infinite': Passivity as a Lens to Interpret Place, Transcendence, and the Anthropocene, 10. The Passivity of Awe as a Way to a Yet-To-Be-Disclosed-Place, 11. The Eco-phenomenology of Dreaming: Flesh, Relation, and Perception Beyond the Human, 12. The Earth is the Essence of All Beings – Ecophenomenology in the Upanisads, Section 4. Responsible Relating, 13. The Passivity of Time Opens the Space for Eco-Political Activity, 14. How Music Listening May Nurture Our Receptivity and Resonance with Nature, 15. The Sense of Wonder as Key to Eco-Bildung, 16. Phenomenology of Friendship in a Common World, Section 5. Vegetal and Animal Life, 17. Empathy with Plants, 18. Practicing Passivity: Through Mystical and Vegetal Being, 19. A Phenomenology of Sexual Difference and Plant Life, 20. Approximate Relations: Chimpanzee Paintings and the Performance of the Human, 21. Eco-Phenomenology and Passivity in Anna Barbauld's "The Caterpillar" and John Clare's "The Mouse's Nest", Section 6. Literary Intersections, 22. Wise Passiveness: Responding to Nature with Wordsworth and Merleau-Ponty, 23. In the Mood for Nature with Heidegger and Thoreau, 24. The Flesh of a Drowned World: Climate Trauma and Porous Living in J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World, 25. Moving Water: Aquatic Experience in Emmi Itäranta's Novel Memory of Water, 26. Poetry and the Forgotten Future: Towards a New Onto-Phenomenology of Poetic Work, Section 7. Eco-Phenomenology in Dialogue, 27. Enacting an Ontological Shift: Individuation and Passivity in Enactivism and Eco-Phenomenology, 28. Making Sense of "Description from Within": An Ontological Perspective, 29. Mindfulness and Eco-Phenomenology: Similarities, Divergences and Critical Potentials., 30. Tired Nature, Tired of Nature: Eco-Phenomenology of Fatigue and Melancholy

Über Autor(innen)

Michael T. Heneise is Associate Professor at UiT – The Arctic University of Norway. His research explores dreams, cosmology, and human–nonhuman relations in Highland Asia and the Andes. He co-founded the Highland Institute and edits HIMALAYA, focusing on ecophenomenology, Indigenous epistemologies, and decolonial approaches to religion and healing.

Cassandra Falke is Professor of English Literature and leader of the Interdisciplinary Phenomenology group at UiT - The Arctic University of Norway. She has written two monographs, fifty articles and chapters and has co/edited five collections. Her work has received support from Fulbright, the NEH, the NOS-HS, and Cornell University.

Espen Dahl is Professor of Systematic Theology at UiT – The Arctic University of Norway. He writes on phenomenological approaches to religious experience, holiness, aesthetics, evil, nature, and the body. His most recent book is Incarnation, Pain, Theology: A Phenomenology of the Body (2024).

Alice Sundman holds a PhD in English literature from Stockholm University. Her current research focuses on literary imaginings of water in climate-changed future worlds. Her monograph Toni Morrison and the Writing of Place (Routledge 2022) explores the creation and presentation of Toni Morrison’s literary places.

Edvard Lia is a PhD Fellow at UiT – The Arctic University of Norway, working on a dissertation titled The Phenomenon of Breath: An Existential Interpretation of Respiratory Facts with Hans Jonas as the primary philosophical interlocutor. His other general research interests include the phenomenological tradition, Hegel’s philosophy, and eco-Marxism.