ABSTRACT
My four-part argument connects nature experience to human liberty. Firstly, I discuss two pre-modern traditions of thought, agrarianism and sylvan liberty, which associate nature experience with the stimulation, construction, and defence of human liberty, each tradition attaching to different concepts of freedom and flourishing. Secondly, I link these traditions to Bryan Norton’s work on sustainability and preserving developmental growth options, arguing that the transformative possibilities of nature experience may help defend the nonhuman world, thus connecting the continued existence and experience of nonhuman nature to a particular conception of human liberty. Thirdly, I argue for an ontology of nature that avoids man/nature dualisms on one side and pure naturalism or social constructionism on the other, regarding naturalness as present in relative terms on a tripartite spectrum. This is defined according to the extent that an item or area remains untransformed by certain historically specific, objectifying and anti-naturalistic types of human instrumental rationality. Finally, I maintain that combining the liberty and ontology arguments shows the worth of some ontological conceptions of nonhuman nature in the Anthropocene, and reaffirms linkage between nature experience and human liberty.
