Eco-Phenomenology in the Dark

Abstract

This chapter uses the methods and insights of phenomenology– especially Maurice Merleau- Ponty’s chiasmus and Jean- Luc Marion’s saturated phenomenality– to articulate the symbiosis between the human subject and the natural world. By conceptualizing the human subject as felt as well as feeling (Merleau- Ponty), and as receiving experiences that overwhelm our conceptual apparatus (Marion), these two French phenomenologists prepare the groundwork for an understanding of humans as maintained and shaped by the natural forces we so o en strive to instrumentalize. A er clarifying ways that chiasmus and saturated phenomenality can contribute to a symbiotic, posthumanist understanding of our relationship to the earth, I describe the non- certain nature of what humans can know about the e ects our life has on a given ecosystem. Moving from the metaphorical darkness of uncertainty to the literal darkness of an Arctic winter, the chapter’s conclusion exempli es the uncertain, receptive, touched and perceived nature of human personhood through a phenomenological description of being in the woods in the dark. Deprived of sight, which most humans rely on so heavily, we can experience smells, sounds, and tactile sensations without the concepts for them arriving immediately. Such an experience returns one to the “wonder before the world” that Merleau- Ponty says characterizes the phenomenological reduction, but more than that, it returns an individual human subject to his or her position as one living thing among so many.