Restoring the Value of Nature

Environmental philosophy in the Western world has shifted between two poles: one in which human beings are regarded as separate from nature, and another in which they are seen as part of it. This paper argues that Michel Henry’s phenomenology of life presents us with a third option that stands outside of these views, one in which nature is experienced as the absolute resis­tance to the effort of our originary bodily life. As I will try to make plain, this position provides us with another basis for assigning value to nature than those that have guided environmental philosophy to date. In the opening section of this paper, I lay out how environmental philosophy has thus far alternated between the two positions in question, and why neither of them provides a feasible foundation for an ethical relationship with nature. Following this, I will show that Henry presents us with a third option by detailing how nature is before all else experienced as an absolute resistance that defies intuition and presence, and thus as part of an originary community of life, which is causally and ontologically irreducible to our subjective biological life and the natural world to which it opens us. Finally, I demonstrate how this position goes some way toward addressing certain shortcomings of the alternatives in question, while also highlighting where Henry’s conclusions remain problematic.