ABSTRACT
This book explores our understanding of the relationship between humans and Nature will require the typical phenomenological move beyond the naturalistic and biological world of abstraction. It introduces the concept of the human’s relationship with Nature and show that it is grounded in the ontological phenomenon of sonority, wherein the other’s presencing and recession into concealment and silence occurs within an ever-renewed “dialogue” structured through the process of address and rejoinder between the human-and-Nature. The chapter considers the technological noise of the sonic blasts occurring with a staccato-like regularity when mining mountaintops, disturbing both human and non-human dwellers in the area, drowning out the sounds of Nature’s communication. Martin Heidegger’s phenomenology, or the fundamental ontology of Dasein, presents us with a sustained discussion of “ontological space,” or spatiality, highlighted by two revolutionary notions, de-distancing and directionality, and with these ideas Heidegger reveals an intricate phenomenology of “space” and “dwelling.”.
