Abstract

Indebted to Heidegger's late essays, this dissertation shows how particular wild things can help challenge the rule of technology in our time. It begins by surveying current work in environmental ethics and arguing that this work needs to be informed by a sophisticated critique of technology in order to be intelligible, effective and illuminating with regard to the importance of natural things. Albert Borgmann's theory of technology is utilized to argue that in our world focal things, which engage our full humanity, have been replaced with technological devices. These devices, while seeming to disburden us and enrich our lives, actually disrupt our bonds of engagement with the world, ironically creating unhappiness. Adherence to the goal of consumption will destroy the integrity of wilderness in its wake. The Crazy Mountains in Montana are used as a particular example. With the loss of such things we lose the opportunities to be free in a significant sense. ;Discerning the way things can engage us calls for careful presentations which can be evaluated but are not irrefutable. Thoreau's disclosure of Walden pond is a model here. Presenting the thing, the Crazy Mountains, in this revelatory discourse is a major task of the work. Approached historically, it is argued that the image of wilderness as an adversary is no longer appropriate. However, the tradition also shows that wilderness embodies kind powers which may awaken us to the pointlessness of tyrannical domination. Wilderness can help bring us home from the plight of homelessness technology has caused. No general formulation, however, can match the self-manifestation of the particular things. Thus I rest my case for protecting the Crazy Mountains upon the strength of their appeal in revelatory presentations. We ought to protect them because of their now recognized importance and because, in doing so, we are taking steps to reform technology and finding a way to be at home on Earth. ;The dissertation exemplifies what kind of arguments we must use, what kind of discourse we must speak, and which risks we must take in order to resolve the problem of technology