Class #24: Steven Vogel, “On Environmental Philosophy and Continental Thought”


Nature as origin critique represents the background prior to humans, therefor making this view separate to humans. However humanity emerged from this nature, the sphere of nature is separate from the human social sphere. In this critique nature is positioned versus artificial, and nature versus social. The problem is when us humans forget that we are a part of nature, and this sense of alienation is created. Humans are natural, however human activity is unnatural. The critique nature says à nature is a social construct. We lack a concept for that thing to be saved or preserved when we don’t look at nature as an origin, if we want to defend nature, their needs to exist a thing to defend in the first place. Nature as difference critique represents nature as this otherness, a resistance, and nature just is the inescapable moment of otherness. The problem is we can’t talk about it. Nature is built through our practices, constructed through our labor. This is the nature and practice view, which Vogel endorses. Humans are laboring animals and nature is constricted through our individual and collective practices. Vogel states, “It is through our practices, which are in the first instance above all laboring practices, that the world around us is shaped into the world it is. He states that through practice we constitute the environing world as such, the world of real objects that surrounds us, a world that s quite literally social constructed. The nature as origin and nature as difference that Vogel presents to s earlier in the reading fails to grasp the active character of the relation between humans and their environment.
I think it is important to take into perspective our attitude towards nature and the environment is a result of the active participation we have in society. These practices that have socially constructed where how we weigh nature on the scale of importance, influence our attitude towards nature. I agree with Vogel’s point that in the critique of nature as difference, it lacks a foundation to create a dialogue about human relations with nature. If we see nature as this wild otherness, we will begin to alienate ourselves from it, leaving humans and nature at a dead end in terms of working together and problem solving. While it is important to understand the nature as origin critique, because we must understand nature’s positioning on this planet before human interruption; it doesn’t sufficiently account for the practices and habits us humans have formed over the years that has drastically affected our relationship with nature.

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