Tag: "Environment"

Perspectives on Integral Ecology—4

For an introduction to this series of dialogues between EnlightenNext magazine’s Ross Robertson and environmental philosopher Michael Zimmerman, see this post. For the previous blog in the series, click here.

Ross,

Your marvelous account of how profoundly affected you were by your first visit to Yosemite reminds me of what happened to my wife at the same place. About twenty years ago, we drove from Berkeley to Yosemite to spend a few days camping and hiking. As we emerged from a tunnel, Yosemite Valley, El Capitan, and many other features of that astonishing place suddenly manifested themselves in all their vastness, beauty, and glory. Confronted with this overwhelming display, her knees buckled. She experienced what Kant and several later thinkers called the “sublime.” According to Kant, great storms and gigantic natural phenomena may be called sublime not only because their sheer scale dwarfs us physically, but also because they stagger our ability to encompass them in terms of our conceptual and imaginative categories. In some respects, experience of the sublime is akin to or at least calls to mind certain exalted spiritual states, compared to which everyday affairs shrink to insignificance. Interestingly, your experience speaks not so much of oneness with nature (nature mysticism, as it is sometimes called) but rather awe in the face of the unimaginable heights, depths, and angles that Yosemite has to offer, Continue reading…