Nature without Us or within Us? Some Ecological Reflections

Abstract

Why does nature refer to whatever is not-human? How did it come to be that, in the cultures we live in, we separate nature from the human world? This article argues that as long as human beings have lived, nature has not been without us, unaffected by us, and we certainly have not and could not live outside nature. Nature is within us as we are within nature. I hold this thought to be fruitful for the care that the Earth deserves and for the care we humans are called to give. Nature within us, and we within nature is a guiding idea of many indigenous peoples who can teach urban, industrialized populations how better to live on earth. Their stance contrasts with the current notion of an “anthropogenic” era in which “nature” no longer acts and evolves apart from human beings. It suggests rather that, as long as there have been living beings on Earth, they have interacted with and transformed nature. The Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitarō proposed that we humans not only display or disclose a world already there; we enact it— that is, interact with it in such a way that both world and self arise in mutual formation. I draw out Nishida’s implication whereby the world (or nature) itself becomes aware via the awareness of all sentient beings. Finally, the medieval Zen abbot Dōgen puts all anthropocentrisms in perspective when he teaches that we must be open to the ways that other beings experience and construe the world.