The linguistic quandary of environmental hermeneutics

Applications from Heidegger, Li Zehou, Gadamer and Zhuangzi

Andrew Fuyarchuk

In response to barriers created by Heidegger’s perspective on animals-in-an-environment, Andrew Fuyarchuk expands environmental hermeneutics beyond the limits of language by drawing on the anthropological ontology of Li Zehou and the Daoism of Zhuangzi. In contrast to the tradition of metaphysics that overshadows Heidegger’s thinking about non-human beings, these philosophers think about humans and nature within a “one world view” and thereby provide the conceptual resources to redefi ne what it means to be a human being from the side 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.