ABSTRACT
Existential philosophers remind us of our finitude and call for us to live in affective awareness of our mortality. Boundary situations such as severe illness or the death of a loved one can shake our ordinary way of being-in-the-world by confronting us with our own mortality. In situations like these, turning to our natural and cultural environment – forests, glaciers, cities, the world at large – can sustain us and give us hope; despite being finite itself, our environment is experienced as something that will outlive us and has a value independent of our own existence. But our forests are burning, our glaciers melting, our cities sinking, our Earth dying. We can no longer take for granted that the place we inhabit will still be inhabitable when our children or even we ourselves grow old. Not only are we and the people we love mortal; so too is our natural and cultural environment. This chapter explores the question of what it would mean for us as persons and as a society to live in affective awareness not only of our own but also of our world’s finitude; it explores the affective phenomenology of being confronted with and living in affective awareness of both our own and our world’s finitude. In doing so, it applies existentialist reflections to the context of climate-change-induced destruction, thereby offering an eco-existentialist analysis of climate emotions and critically reflecting on the promises, limitations, and dangers of eco-existentialism.
