Merleau Ponty Environmentalist?

Can Merleau-Ponty's Notion of 'Flesh' Inform or even Transform Environmental Thinking?

Isis Brook

Environmental Values 14(2005): 353-362. doi: 10.3197/096327105774434468

Reference to Merleau-Ponty's ideas surfaces in environmental thinking from time to time. This paper examines whether, and in what way, his ideas could be helpful to that thinking. In order to arrive at a conclusion I examine in detail and attempt to clarify the notions of 'Flesh' and 'Earth' in order to see if they can carry the meanings that commentators sometimes attribute to them. With a clearer outline of what he was saying in place, I suggest that the new ontology that Merleau-Ponty introduces could help to transform environmental thinking, but that careful argumentation is required to show this.

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KEYWORDS: Merleau-Ponty, Flesh, subject-object, eco-phenomenology

REFERENCES to other articles in Environmental Values:

Ontology, Ethics, and Sentir: Properly Situating Merleau-Ponty Melissa Clarke

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