PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE AND CULTURE AND ITS ROLE IN SHAPING HUMANKIND’S ATTITUDE TO NATURE
Abstract
PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE AND CULTURE
AND ITS ROLE IN SHAPING HUMANKIND’S ATTITUDE TO NATURE
We live in an era of crises. One of them, the ecological crisis, arose from
the fact that the human race plunders nature, destroying, among other
things, the Earth’s biodiversity. In my paper I will show that the
situation is rooted in a specific worldview. Moreover, I will interrogate
the question of how we can deal with the problem.
Humankind’s attitude to themselves and to the world (including
nature) is based on beliefs and values which make up an unquestioned
prejudgment. Individuals absorb it in the process of socialization, as
they assimilate the widely understood traditions of the social groups to
which they belong. In the Western tradition in particular, our
understanding of humanity’s situation in the world and its relation to
nature, which we have had since modernity, found its clearest
articulation in the views of René Descartes (1596–1650). I will begin by
discussing the main characteristics of this position most pertinent to
the main problem identified in the title.
Then I will discuss the consequences of Cartesianism for the worldview
of modern man such as the radical rationalism and anthropocentrism
inherent in the European attitude. In this tradition humanity is
identified with subjectivity and intellectual cognition. Reality outside of
human subjectivity, that is, the whole animate and inanimate nature, is
treated as the object of knowledge. Nature should be explored in the
spirit of modernity’s maxim “We can do as much as we know” (F. Bacon
1561-1626); it can be used to our purposes, to satisfy our growing
needs. This is being done without scruple, precisely because nature is
denied being the subject. It has no right to claim moral protection. Today, in the era of globalization, this way of thinking, which originated
in the West, has spread over the entire globe and led to the ongoing
devastation of nature. We are dealing with an ecological disaster.
In the next step I will interrogate how this situation can be changed and
what may be the role of philosophy in this cultural shift. Every vision of
the world is a construct (the Cartesian vision being a very good
example). What philosophy can do is offer a certain vision of reality, in
which humanity has a friendly (symbiotic) attitude to nature and does
not treat it merely as a means to their ends. Such ecophilosophy could be based on the thesis that subjectivity is the property not just of all
human beings, but of all other beings as well. Such an idea can be found
in the work of the German scientist and philosopher Jacob von Uexküll
(1864-1944), who granted the status of the subject to every living
being. He laid foundations to the concept of nature as “a community of
subjects” comprising man and the entire animate world, thus breaking
away from the Cartesian framework. I am going to outline briefly his
position.
Finally, I will point out what needs to be done, if people are to change
their attitude to nature. A good theory in and of itself will not suffice. It
is necessary to instill ecological convictions and values in entire
societies, so that these values would eventually come to seem obvious.
We need to launch an extensive education campaign of both adults
and—perhaps even more importantly—children. In other words, the
comprehensive protection of nature can only be promoted through the
nexus of ecophilosophy and education.