PAUL RICOEURS HERMENEUTICS AS A MODEL FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY

David Utsler
Those acquainted with the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, whether they are Ricoeur enthusiasts or just polite readers, will readily acknowledge the remarkable scope of his thought. True as this may be, Ricoeur never directed his powers of philosophical reflection toward the natural environment. The reasons for this are easy enough to understand. Environmental philosophy as a distinct branch of philosophy has scarcely appeared on the scene for more than a generation.1 Over that period of time Ricoeur was obviously busy with other questions that ran through his thought nearly all of his life. Who knows, had Ricoeur miraculously overcome the strictures of mortality for another forty or fifty years, he may very w e l l h ave h a d so m e t h i n g t o s a y philosophically about the environment. That is all, of course, speculative. Nonetheless, environmental philosophy is a logical place for an expanding hermeneutics2 to turn. If the claim of the universality of hermeneutics that all experience is mediated through language3 is so, then environmental experience also calls for hermeneutics. Language is related to the ontological condition of beingin-the-world and we bring experience to language;4 thus we can infer that the encounter with environmentsnatural, cultural and so onis likewise expressed (or understood) in language, making them a meaningful locus of interpretation. What I propose in this essay is that Paul Ricoeurs hermeneutics provides a model for various forms of environmental discourse and, in particular, the growing field of environmental philosophy. I am not so ambitious to claim to do so in any comprehensive manner here. The vast scope of Ricoeurs work alone is prohibitive of any such attempt in a single essay. What I will do is provide some examples to illustrate the claim that Ricoeurs work can be employed in the service of environmental philosophy. And while this specific application of his work does not seem to have been in Ricoeurs mind, I will rely on one of Ricoeurs fundamental hermeneutical principles of the distanciation of the writer and the reader by the text. Namely, interpretation is not ultimately about deciphering the intentions of the author; to interpret is to explicate the type of being-in-the-world unfolded in front of the text.5 The importance of Ricoeurs philosophy for environmental philosophy I will take to be one such possibility that may unfold in front of his work. With that in mind, I will first give a brief description of environmental philosophy. Then I will consider in relation to environmental philosophy Ricoeurs hermeneutics of the self, his treatment of distanciation and b e l o n g i n g i n t e r m s o f Ga d a m e r s hermeneutics, and finally the possible role of a critical hermeneutics in environmental discourse. From Environmental Philosophy to Environmental Hermeneutics Environmental philosophy, I think, is still trying to find its feet. It has its origin in the growing awareness of the consequences of environmental devastation. The concern for the effects of human activity on the environment led some philosophers to ask what philosophy might contribute to the discussion.6 Environmental philosophy, then, was really an environmental ethics first. And in the mind of some, environmental philosophy isnt philosophy at all but at best perhaps an applied philosophical ethics. Philosophical reflection on the environment, however, did not remain merely in the realm of ethics but has expanded to include environmental aesthetics, environmental ontology, environmental theology, the philosophy of science, environmental political philosophy, philosophy of technology, ecofeminism, and other areas.7 Phenomenologists who have turned toward environmental questions have begun to speak of eco-phenomenology and going back to the earth itself as a way of giving phenomenological descriptions of environmental experience.8 If all of this, why not,

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then, an eco-hermeneutics? Going further still, I would speak more broadly of an environmental hermeneutics that includes not only ecology or nature, but built environments, social and cultural environments, and any sort of environs of which we may speak. Hermeneutics of the Self and Environmental Identity The first place from which I would begin to construct an environmental hermeneutics is Paul Ricoeurs hermeneutics of the self. Already, some environmental thinkers may object that I am being too anthropocentric, because I am beginning with personal identity rather than nature itself. I should be more ecocentric I might be told. I would argue, however, that Ricoeurs hermeneutics of the self overcomes the anthropocentric/eco-centric binary. The self, in Ricoeurs philosophy, is not a selfconstituting, immediate subject, but is, in part, constituted by the other. Self-understanding comes by way of a reflective, analytical detour and the dialectic of the self and the other-thanself over against the immediate positing of the subject in the cogito. Thus, a hermeneutics of the self as an account of personal identity would not oppose the anthropocentric to the eco-centric, but would actually require a creative tension between both to develop what I call environmental identityi.e., self-understanding in relation to the environment. Neither the eco-centric self nor the anthropocentric self is privileged over the other; rather, each is a constitutive element of ones identity. An additional point is that by doing philosophy with the same general attitude as Ricoeur, the hermeneutics of the self would not seek to synthesize anthropocentric and eco-centric vantage points no more than to leave them in binary opposition. Whereas at first glance, anthropocentrism and eco-centrism would appear to create a conflict of interpretations, a Ricoeurian hermeneutics of the self mediates the two toward a more robust understanding of the self and the relation to nature. In Oneself as Another, Ricoeur outlines three philosophical intentions that underlie the essays in that book.9 The first is the primacy of reflective meditation or a detour of reflective analysis over against the cogito. The second is a dialectic between ipse and idem

identity, which is to say between selfhood and sameness. The third is the dialectic of selfhood with otherness.10 The first and, in particular, the third are most relevant to the notion of environmental identity. I will say just a few things with regard to environmental identity and the first philosophical intention. Simply stated, environmental experience is one such reflective detour through which I understand myself. This is by no means without complexity. What the environment means to an individual is influenced by any of a wide number of factors and those factors will vary with each person. But the self is shown to be posited indirectly in the question who speaks? because the answer to that question is never the immediate subject, but a self that is understood through a reflective analysis within the life-world. When the place of this reflective journey is environmental experience, I designate this as a component of personal identity called environmental identity. My sense of who I am is inextricably bound up with my environment. An example is my own Midwest upbringing. Had I been born of the same parents in a completely different natural, cultural, and social environment, although I would be the selfsame person in terms of idem-identity (not to mention the identical DNA), I would be a different person in terms of the question who in relation to my environment. Studies in ecopsychology, for example, have shown how we tend to personalize environments. 11 As Ricoeur says, There is no world without a self who finds itself in it and acts in it; there is no self without a world that is practicable in some fashion.12 I find in the third philosophical intention in Oneself as Another a most profound way of considering environmental identity. The dialectic of the self and the other-than-self that is constitutive of personal identity is not a mere comparison with the other. This dialectic is such that the selfhood of oneself implies otherness to such an intimate degree that one cannot be thought of without the other, that instead one passes into the other.13 Is dialectic possible between the self and the other-than-self if the latter is other-than-human? Ricoeur himself says that the character of otherness is polysemic, implying that the Other is not reducible to another person.14

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On what basis would we proceed to speak of nature as oneself and other-than-self? One possible starting point would be to consider whether there is an intercorporeal relationship between humans and the Earth. Beginning with the experience of the body, we may become aware of the intercorporeal relationship we have to the Earth. John White, commenting on what he calls the capitalist ethos, refers to the culturally conditioned value experience whereby vital values are reduced to utility values. He says that this reduction not only has led to environmental devastation but to an inner devastation by which one distances oneself from ones own animality and bodiliness, a distancing that cannot but severely inhibit and/ or distort the basic source of our vital value experienceour bodiesand, with it, the perception of ecological values.15 He continues:
Indeed, it could be that the outer devastation of the environment is in the end a projection of the inner alienation we experience from our own animality. How could we come to appreciate the vital values of the environment if, in our innermost experience of vital values as such, we take them to be disvalues? And if vital sympathy requires that we become aware of our own vital values in order to appreciate others, how can the devalorization or our own vital values fail to produce a blindness and even a transvaluation of ecological values? One of the consequences we will need to draw from this is that developing a sound environmental ethic is not simply a question of dealing with the values and norms which apply to the environment, as if the latter is something extrinsic to ourselves; rather, it is also a question of coming to terms with our own animality and vitality, of facing the fact that our vitality is as much a part of us as our rationality and that therefore we are not above the ecosystem but 16 are living members of it.

As living members of the environment, we find that we come up against it and relate to it in ways determined, not by us, but by the environment itself. If the weather outside is cold, for example, we put on a coat. The act of breathing is a pre-reflective act within the lifeworld, yet a moment of distance, a step back, reveals a good deal. Breathing isnt possible apart from a whole series of ecological rela-

tionships, most notably the photosynthetic role of primarily green plants and trees. Eating is another such example which is evident not only when a symbiotic relationship to food is observed, but negatively in certain diets. Michael Pollan has observed the relationship between the Western diet and what have come to be known as the Western diseases such as chronic hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, and so on.17 Consideration of the tapestry of ecological relationships, including the human threads within, reveals a way in which we can come to think of the environment as another self based on intercorporeality. We may begin to understand the self so that it cannot be thought of without the Other of the natural world. And we would be right to do so. To be sure, how nature as event or environmental experience is interpreted is polysemic as well. In seeking to understand the nature of nature or the impact of human activity in particular, we are inevitably led to potentially conflicting interpretations. In a true Ricoeurian spirit, an environmental hermeneutics would seek to mediate these conflicts. Without further developing it at this point, I would suggest that Ricoeurs ethical aim or ethical intention is a starting point for navigating the tension between competing environmental visions and narratives. Namely, what does it mean to aim at the good life with and for others in just institutions18 including in the scope of that aim a symbiotic arrangement between humans and the environment. So whether one speaks of wilderness preservation or sustainable urban growth and development, the ethical aim is a measure from which we can determine moral norms that get translated into public policy. The ethical aim would also be particularly useful in environmental philosophy in the area of environmental justice, which studies the justice of the impact of policy and action upon peoples affected who are given no say or power in the decision. For example, in India the building of dams for the purpose of generating electricity proceeds without reference, not only to the ecological impact, but with no regard for indigenous persons and groups away from urban areas who rely on the river for both sustenance and a sense of cultural and familial identity. Ricoeurs ethical aim accounts for all

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those involved in the formulation of environmental policy. Distanciation and Belonging I began with the hermeneutics of the self because every hermeneutic act ends in self-interpretation. In hermeneutical reflection, the self documents and forms itself, Ricoeur says, and therefore, the constitution of the self is contemporaneous with the constitution of meaning.19 Thus, self-understanding in relationship to the environment is always going to be a result of any hermeneutical appropriation of environmental questions. We will find this to be the case as well with regard to Ricoeurs thought on the role of distanciation. Ricoeur described the opposition between alienating distanciation and [participatory] belonging to be the antinomy at the heart Gadamers hermeneutics.20 Gadamer held that the necessary distanciation of the human sciences destroys the fundamental and primordial relation whereby we belong to and participate in the historical reality that we claim to construct as an object.21 Ricoeur proceeded to argue that there is a productive form of distanciation that is a fundamental characteristic of the historicity of human experience.22 For Ricoeur, distanciation is not opposed to the relation of belonging, but is actually a part of it. This productive form of distanciation speaks to a very fundamental issue in environmental philosophy. As Kenneth Maly has written, We philosophers sometimes get hooked into the words, or maybe the concepts, but we forget the world, the experience.23 Similarly, environmental philosopher David Abram has said:
The life-world is thus peripherally present in any thought or activity we undertake. Yet whenever we attempt to explain this world conceptually, we seem to forget our active participation within it. Striving to represent the world, we in24 evitably forfeit its direct presence.

impact of human interference with the environment as if nature is something other than human. This is essentially the underlying problem in the debate between anthropocentrism and eco-centrism mentioned earlier. Ricoeurs account of distanciation provides a way of mediation for these tensions in environmental philosophy and environmental experience. Distanciation is the dialectical counterpart of participatory belonging that represents an oscillation between remoteness and proximity that makes up a fuller understanding of environmental experience. Distanciation serves the purpose of [interrupting] the relation of belonging in order to signify it.25 So, lived experience or relational belonging is interrupted in order to signify it. Signification is followed by interpretation, or an apprehension of meaning (or meanings); interpretation, Ricoeur says, renders near what is far26 and, thus, the act of distanciation is a movement towards appropriation. Finally, appropriation terminates in self understanding as well. As noted above, the apprehension of meaning and self-understanding are contemporaneous events. Distanciation and the Critical Moment Distanciation, in turn, allows for the critical moment. Ricoeur writes: Since distanciation is a moment of belonging, the critique of ideology can be incorporated, as an objective and explanatory segment, in the project of enlarging and restoring communication and self-understanding.27 In whatever way we narrate our understanding or approach to the environment (e.g. deep ecology, shallow ecology, eco-feminism, eco-phenomenology and so on), it is important to allow for this critical moment of distanciation. The divergence of interpretations and even the conflict of interpretations of the environment provide a space for critique through which we remain open to new and possible worlds. And in whatever way we identify ourselves in terms of our preferred environmental narrative, critical distanciation allows for a deeper understanding of the self as well. The Gadamer-Habermas debate, according to Ricoeur, hinged on the alternative between a hermeneutics of tradition over against a critical hermeneutics of false consciousness. In the

The very thing that we do in environmental philosophyreflect on the natural environmentis to distance ourselves from the prereflective experience of the natural world. We also speak of being a part of nature, but seem to contradict this notion by referring to the

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former, understanding is passed on through tradition and the truth is achieved through dialogue; whereas in the latter tradition and dialogue can be distorted, resulting in false consciousness, violence, domination, and oppression.28 As is typical of Ric he reur, jected hermeneutics and critique as alternatives, arguing that they could be complementary. Perhaps we could say that whatever tradition of environmental thinking one dwells within is legitimate insofar as it transmits understanding and truth; yet critical distance is necessary insofar as it requires a step back to identify distortions in communication and to remain open other narratives. The critical moment is not only useful within the confines of environmental philosophy and its varying viewpoints and debates. It is likewise a useful analytical tool in the social and political realms where environmental policy is made. Here we must expand the critical moment to the notion of a critical hermeneutics. Hermeneutics, according to Ricoeur, takes into account the historical conditions that shape our understanding, bound up with our own finitude. Critical theory, or the critique of ideology, makes judgments that concern distortions in communication revealing domination and oppression, and presses for genuine liberation and freedom.29 A critical environmental hermeneutics,30 therefore, considers the conditions within which we interpret the environment while at the same time seeks to uncover distortions in interpretation as well as distortions of communicative environmental rationalityi.e., the discourse between persons about the environment as well as the form of discourse we can have with non-human others. As such, a critical/hermeneutical environmental philosophy can be an indispensable contribution to the wider debate on national and global environmental policies and the formation of policy. Ricoeurs ethical aim, referred to earlier, I take as a guiding principle for a critical herme-

neutics of nature. Ethics, for Ricoeur, is defined, again, as aiming at the good life with and for others in just institutions.31 Following Aristotle, Ricoeur believes that the ethical life aims at somethingi.e. the good life for oneself and others, embodied in our institutions. The ethical aim has primacy over particular moral norms, but the ethical aim is mediated practically through norms that nonetheless must always refer back to the ethical aim. When morality fails to account for impasses in practice,32 morality must take recourse back to ethics (aiming at the good life) to find solutions in terms of practical wisdom.33 In terms of the formulation of public policy, the good life must account for what is good for the environment as well as human needs and desires. We must aim for a kind of symbiosis that considers human flourishing and the flourishing of non-human others to be interconnected. And, interconnected as both of these may be, particular norms may at times lead to conflicting impasses that call for practical wisdom (phronesis) in order to make policy judgments. Conclusion I hope here that I have provided a snapshot of the relevance of Paul Ricoeurs work for environmental philosophy. Environmental philosophy requires that it be interdisciplinary in its scope and approach. The philosophy of Paul Ricoeur is uniquely suited to cross disciplinary borders and Ricoeur often did himself. The environmental problems that currently face our world require quick action and the development of sound public policy. It is my contention that the work of Paul Ricoeur provides a strong analytical framework and foundation to formulate environmental policy as well as inform the way in which we construe the environment, our relationship to it, and therefore, how we as individuals act with regard to the natural world.

ENDNOTES
1. For a good overview of the brief history of environmental philosophy see Bruce V. Foltz and Robert Frodeman, Introduction: The Nature of Environmental Philosophy, in Rethinking Nature: Essays in Environmental Philosophy, eds. Bruce V. Foltz and Robert Frodeman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 19. To borrow from the title of Don Ihdes book Expanding Hermeneutics: Visualism in Science (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1998). Ihde ad-

2.

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3.

4.

5.

6.

7. 8.

9.

10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15.

dresses expanding hermeneutics toward science and technology. Cf. Hans Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd. rev. ed., trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G.Marshall (New York: Continuum Press, 2004), 470. Paul Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1976), 2021. Paul Ricoeur, From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics II, trans. Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991), 86; his italics. The founding of professional associations such as the International Association for Environmental Philosophy (IAEP) in 1997 and the International Society for Environmental Ethics (ISEE) in 1990 are a direct result of such concern. Quoted from the By-Laws of the IAEP: http:// www.environmentalphilosophy.org/bylaws.htm. Cf. Eco-Phenomenology: Back to the Earth Itself, eds. Charles S. Brown and Ted Toadvine (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003); See especially David Woods essay in that volume, What is Eco-Phenomenology, 21133, also found in David Wood, The Step Back: Ethics and Politics after Deconstruction (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), chp 9. Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans. by Kathleen Blamey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). Ibid., 13, 297. Cf. Susan Clayton and Susan Optow, eds., Identity and the Natural Environment: The Psychological Significance of Nature (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003). Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 311. Ibid., 3. Ibid., 317. John R White, Lived Body and Ecological Value Cognition, in Merleau-Ponty and Environmental Philosophy: Dwelling on the Landscapes of Thought, eds. Suzanne L. Cataldi and William S. Hamrick (Albany: State University of New York

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30.

31. 32. 33.

Press, 2007), 18687. Cf. Kenneth Liberman, An Inquiry into the Intercorporeal Relations Between Humans and the Earth in the same collection. See also John R. White Ecological Value Cognition and the American Capitalist Ethos, Environmental Philosophy 3 (Fall 2006): 4351. White, Lived Body and Ecological Cognition, 187. See Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eaters Manifesto (New York: The Penguin Press, 2008). Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 172; italics in original. Ricoeur, From Text to Action, 119; italics in original. Ibid., 75. Ibid. Ibid. Kenneth Maly, A Sand County Almanac: Through Anthropogenic to Ecogenic Thinking, in Rethinking Nature: Essays in Environmental Philosophy, eds. Bruce V. Foltz and Robert Frodeman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 291. David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 4041; italics in original. Ricoeur, From Text to Action, 40, 41. Ibid., 35. Ibid. See Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Critique of Ideology, in From Text to Action, 270307. Ibid., 294. Cf. David M. Kaplan, Ricoeurs Critical Theory (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 153. See John van Burens excellent essay, Critical Environmental Hermeneutics, Environmental Ethics, vol. 17, nr. 3 (Fall 1995), Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 172; italics in original. Ibid., 170. See studies 79 in Oneself as Another. Cf. Kaplan Practical Wisdom, in Ricoeurs Critical Theory, and Charles E. Reagan, Personal Identity, in Ricoeur as Another: the Ethics of Subjectivity, eds. Richard A. Cohen and James L. Marsh (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 26.

University of North Texas, Denton, TX 76203

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