The Ecopoetics of Walten and the Phenomenology of Nature

The paper formulates an ecopoetics through the conjunction of three ideas: walten, metaphoricity, and the uncanny. Heidegger’s conceptualisation of the relation between phusis and walten serves as the model for an ecologically viable approach to nature. In The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics and The Introduction to Metaphysics, walten is the pre-onto-theological force involved in the self-forming of nature which can be expressed through the non-apophantic language of metaphors. Metaphoricity indicates the presence of an earth that does not yield to apophantic reductions. The paper critiques the tendency to base nature’s sovereignty on a primordial purity by instead emphasising the fecundity of nature that proves too uncanny to be the basis of some oikos. Ecopoetics is the contemplation of this impossibility which nonetheless enables existence through a gesture of letting be.