The Linguistic Quandary of Environmental Hermeneutics

Within the context of the Age of the Anthropocene, the author aims to outline the existential preconditions for understanding the language of nature. This is undertaken by using environmental hermeneutics as an example of a social conundrum, which is traced to the barriers Heidegger creates to understanding animals-in-their environment. In response to this barrier to understanding non-human others, the author draws on the anthropological ontology of Li Zehou and Daoist philosophy. In contrast to the tradition of metaphysics that overshadows Heidegger, they think about human and nature within a "one-world view" and thereby provide the conceptual resources to redefine what it means to be a human being from the domain of "being-in-nature." This entails a transformation in the meaning of existence that the author develops in terms of three Gadamerian dispositional preconditions for a hermeneutics of nature: empathetic bodily affinity, receptivity to ambient environments, and imitation as a way of knowing.