Interpreting Nature The Emerging Field of Environmental Hermeneutics [Hardcover]

Modern environmentalism has come to realize that many of its key concernswilderness and nature among themare contested territory, viewed differently by different people. Understanding nature requires science and ecology, to be sure, but it also requires a sensitivity to history, culture, and narrative. Thus, understanding nature is a fundamentally hermeneutic task.... Interpreting Nature is engaging throughout and contributes to an important growth in environmental philosophy.This collection of essays examines the various intersections between philosophical hermeneutics and environmental philosophy. Adopting a broad and inclusive understanding of our relation with the environment, it investigates a number of important topics for contemporary environmental thought, including the self, history, ethics, culture, and narrative.This is a superb book, written with clarity, precision, and deep feeling for a better understanding of differing approaches to interpreting the wider natural world.Interpreting Nature is an excellent collection of essays. This collection is a very welcome addition to the literature and helps to move forward philosophical reflection on the idea of nature and charts new and important ways to think about the task of an environmental ethics.