The Linguistic Quandary of Environmental Hermeneutics: Applications from Heidegger, Li Zehou, Gadamer, and Zhuangzi [Hardcover]

Within the context of the Age of the Anthropocene, this book outlines the existential preconditions for understanding the language of nature.

Andrew Fuyarchuk uses environmental hermeneutics as an example of a social conundrum, which is traced to the barriers created by Heidegger to understand animals-in-their environment. In response to these barriers, the author draws on the anthropological ontology of Li Zehou and Daoist philosophy. In contrast to the tradition of metaphysics that overshadows Heidegger, these philosophies think about humans and nature within a one-world view and thereby provide the conceptual resources to redefine what it means to be a human being from the domain of being-in-nature. This entails a transformation in the meaning of existence that the author develops in terms of three Gadamerian dispositional preconditions for a hermeneutics of nature: empathetic bodily affinity, receptivity to ambient environments, and imitation as a way of knowing.

This book lays the groundwork for a hermeneutics of nature and the environment by relying on Gadamer's productive metaphysical reading of Plato, which sets him apart from Heidegger's attempt to overcome metaphysics, and by practicing a fruitful form of East-West comparative philosophy that rests on an impressive familiarity with Chinese and especially Daoist thinking. This hermeneutics of the environment practices the dialogue between world cultures that Gadamer called for. Jean Grondin,Universit? de Montr?al, Canada

Andrew Fuyarchuk'sThe Linguistic Quandary of Environmental Hermeneuticsis a rare philosophical achievement-both erudite and quietly visionary. Through a luminous lã•