Metodo

The ongoing environmental crisis and the new ecological challenges have brought the question of non-human nature to the center of contemporary academic and public debate. This pluralistic and complex discourse unfolds across the natural, cultural, social, and human sciences, encouraging the development of new theoretical approaches to nature and inspiring more responsible, forward-looking, and sustainable forms of action.
In this context, the way human beings—both individually and collectively—experience nature and the environment plays a crucial role. Experience provides our frst and most immediate access to nature; it thus forms the starting point for theoretical refection and ethical orientation. An analysis of how we experience nature can therefore serve as an essential step toward addressing today’s ecological crisis.
Phenomenology ofers a particularly fruitful approach to exploring the experience of non-human nature—both descriptively and normatively. On the one hand, the phenomenological tradition and method allow us to uncover the conditions that make experiences of nature possible, thereby opening new spaces for encountering and understanding the natural world. On the other hand, phenomenology provides conceptual and methodological tools to question dominant frameworks such as scientism,
dualism, and anthropocentrism, and to propose lternative perspectives.
The contribution phenomenology can make to refection on the human–environment relationship thus extends well beyond philosophy (for instance, environmental philosophy). It also opens the way for productive dialogue with other disciplines such as cultural anthropology, sociology, human geography, and the environmental humanities, all of which can beneft from phenomenological insights and approaches.
Building on these premises, this issue of the journal aims to explore the potential of phenomenology within interdisciplinary research and in the face of the current environmental crisis. We invite original contributions that investigate the methodological, theoretical, and normative resources of phenomenology for rethinking the human–environment relationship, as well as its dialogue with other disciplines concerned with nature, environmental experience, and ecological transformation.
Contributors are invited to consider some of the following sample, but not exhaustive, topics below:
• Phenomenological refections on the foundations of the experience of the natural world, on the human–nature relationship, and on the distinction between nature and culture from an interdisciplinary perspective.
• Phenomenological analyses of nature and environmental experience.
• (Re-)interpretations of traditional phenomenological concepts in light of the environmental crisis and within an interdisciplinary framework, including Lebenswelt, embodiment, horizon, intersubjectivity, axiological experience, empathy, and related notions.
• Critical engagement with theoretical paradigms of the Western tradition—such as scientism, dualism, and anthropocentrism—from the perspective of phenomenology and in dialogue with Metodo. International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy
the social sciences.
• Phenomenology and environmental philosophy.
• The potential of the aesthetics of nature for rethinking environmental experience.
• New Phenomenology and the concept of atmospheres.
• Contributions of the social sciences to ecological inquiry in dialogue with phenomenological approaches.
• Anthropological and phenomenological investigations of human–nature relationships in non-Western societies.
• Phenomenology in dialogue with human geography, cultural anthropology, sociology, and the environmental humanities.
• The meaning, implications, and potential of ecophenomenology.
Abstracts and papers must be submitted to the following e-mail addresses:
metodo@sdvigpress.org
Submitted papers (in English, German, French, Spanish or Italian) must follow the basic principles of
Metodo and follow all Author Guidelines. The editorial board highly suggests all authors writing in a
non-native language to have their texts proofread before submission. All contributions will undergo
anonymous peer-review by two referees.
The fnal deadline for submissions will be October 1st, 2026