The Trumpeter - Journal of Ecosophy (Athabasca University)

Booth, Annie

A review of The World's Greatest Ideas: An Encyclopedia of Social Inventions. Edited by Nicholas Albery, Retta Bowen, Nick Temple, and Stephanie Wienrich

Buntin, Simmons

Volume 19, Number 2 108
The Trumpeter  
Volume 19, Number 2 (2003) 
ISSN: 0832-6193 
 
Great White Heron 
  
She is a ghost of her former bluegray 
self, cautiously feeling 
her way through mangrove 
roots twisted upon themselves  
like watersnakes held motionless in the wood. 
I want to say she is a pale 
Cleopatra, but then she calls— 
scroawk scroawk—and one cry 
reminds me she is queen only of marsh. 
 
∗ 
 
The cut of her eyes  
is sharp as her tawny beak, quick  
as the speared mullet she brings up 
gasping through blood-red gills. 
In one swift movement the fish  
is flipped and swallowed headfirst— 
to the surprise  
of a thieving tropicbird  
rising abruptly 
before facing that spear. 
 
* 
 
When the heat of late summer stales, 
she slips deeper into the shade  
of a bald cypress stand, and stares me 
into submission.
 
 
The Trumpeter 109
And I step toward her, 
lifting my reed-thin legs 
through the braided roots. 
Now I am spreading my dusty wings, coming  
upon her as she raises that sharpened spear. 
We twist our smooth necks 
like branches beneath the waterline. 
We move, eyes motionless 
to the slow rhythm of rising waves. 
And we dance, wings extended 
to the reckless wind... 
 
* 
 
Waking, the great white heron 
spreads her elegant wings 
across the bay—   
in the low cry that stills the air,  
we vanish. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Simmons B. Buntin 
 


Great White Heron

Vulpe, Nocola

The Trumpeter  
Volume 19, Number 2 (2003) 
ISSN: 0832-6193 
 
Two Poems by Nicola Vulpe 
  
How War Was Declared 
 
We were busy, I suppose, 
with other matters— 
 
our mortgages, our in-laws 
that unfortunate and sudden decline 
of the TSE, the Nikkei and the rest. 
 
We hardly noticed 
when our ships put to sea, 
and our jets shrieked off beyond the horizon— 
 
to settle things, our leaders said. 
 
The enemy, now we all know, 
has slipped hidden onto our shores 
I saw yesterday a message 
he, or someone just like him, 
had posted to a wall: 
 
“Under the rubble of my house 
the rats ate the face of my child.” 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The Trumpeter 110
 
 
But I’ll Speak 
 
 
I have intimate knowledge of the habits of cockroaches. 
I've known so many empty mornings, and days 
and days pissed away. 
 
I've watched my children one by one 
fold up their hearts like old boxes and go. 
 
I've dreamt  the stars dropped, every one, from the sky. 
 
My lungs will burst, and my tongue leap from its root 
in my mouth, but I'll speak:  
 
it need not be so!  
 
Volume 19, Number 2 111


How War Was Declared

Bluhdorn, Ingolfur

Unsustainability as a Frame of Mind-and How We Disguise It: The Silent Counter-revolution and the Politics of Simulation

Peters, Michael

Irwin, Ruth

Earthsongs: Ecopoetics, Heidegger and Dwelling

Bonnett, Michael

Sustainability as a Frame of Mind-and How to Develop It

James, Simon P

The Trumpeter c©
ISSN: 0832-6193
Vol. 18, No. 1 ( 2002)
Heidegger and the Role of the Body in Environ-
mental Virtue
Simon James
Simon P. James is Leverhulme Research Fellow in Philosophy
at the University of Durham, UK. His research interests include
the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, Mahayana Buddhist thought
and environmental ethics. He is currently working on a study
of Zen Buddhism and environmental ethics. His email address is
¡i¿S.P.James@durham.ac.uk¡/i¿
In this essay, I will draw upon the later (i.e., post c. 1930) work of Martin
Heidegger to argue that sustainability might be brought about by fostering a
special sort of attentiveness to things which should be thought of, not just as a
particular frame of mind, but also as a bodily comportment, a “frame of body,”
if you will. I will begin by outlining Heidegger’s views on “technological” society,
before moving on to consider his account of a non-technological understanding of
the world founded on a mode of being he calls a “releasement toward things.” I
will draw attention to the sensuous, bodily comportment toward nature implied
in Heidegger’s account before concluding by speculating on how this mode of
being could be developed in an educational context.
I
Many radical environmental thinkers proclaim that we are at a crucial point
in our historical understanding of nature. To pass beyond our current period
of environmental crisis, the story runs, we must relinquish the impoverished
conceptions of nature bequeathed us by the western tradition for a richer, more
spiritually satisfying account of the natural world and our place in it. Heidegger
would agree with this general project. On the one hand, he maintains that the
modern devastation of nature is the result of the predominance of our modern
“technological” understanding of the world,1 which, in turn, he sees as the
culmination of the western “metaphysical” tradition. On the other hand, in
his later writings on “dwelling” he presents an account of a wholesome “non-
technological” understanding of the world.
Briefly put,2 Heidegger’s account of technology is this: In the modern world, we
are increasingly finding that, to the extent that they reveal themselves as things
Heidegger and the Role of the Body in Environmental Virtue 2
at all, things reveal themselves “technologically,” which is to say that they reveal
themselves as resources for human ends, or as Heidegger puts it, as “standing-
reserve.”3 Revealed technologically, dandelions become weeds, old-growth forest
becomes timber, a wild wooded valley becomes a tourist attraction, a stretch of
meadow becomes a convenient site for a bypass, and so on. Heidegger laments
the fact that in the midst of this all-engulfing instrumentalism, things increas-
ingly reveal themselves not as worthy of attention in themselves, but only insofar
as they provide the means to some end. As the cliche´ has it, technological man
does not appreciate his journey to work, the motorway is there only to convey
him from A to B. His computer keyboard is not like a treasured fountain pen —
it has no value in itself, but is merely an interface, a means for him to input in-
formation.4 For Heidegger, the technological world is a world in which things no
longer disclose themselves as things, but a world in which they have evaporated
into a groundless, constantly shifting matrix of instrumental relations.
The prevailing telos in the technological world is a drive toward the ever-more-
efficient ordering of standing reserve. Thus practices come to be favoured in
terms of their performance according to some standard of efficiency, to the ex-
tent that in many situations an appeal to efficiency — usually couched in the
ubiquitous vocabulary of management-speak — is likely to provide the ultimate
criterion for deciding on a course of action. In many cases, the particular stan-
dard appealed to will be quantifiable, a percentage of outpatients, perhaps, or a
measure of the processing capacity of a computer. Heidegger therefore associates
technology with a distinctive sort of thinking, namely, calculative thinking, a
thinking that “computes ever new, ever more promising and at the same time
more economical possibilities.”5 Moreover, in keeping with the supreme neb-
ulousness of an appeal to efficiency, the most appropriate currencies for the
exchange of standing reserve will be those that prove themselves the most mal-
leable, the most interchangeable. It is perhaps for this reason that Heidegger
introduces his account of technology in terms of the extraction of energy : “The
way of revealing that rules in modern technology is a challenging, which puts to
nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy which can be extracted
and stored as such.”6 In this way, Heidegger links his account of technology with
the devastation of nature. To see the natural world as a reservoir of standing
reserve is to see it as something that can be challenged, set upon, in short,
exploited.
Although he does not use the language of sustainability, I suggest that there
is much in Heidegger’s diagnosis of our modern predicament with which many
advocates of sustainability would agree. That is to say that Heidegger’s tech-
nological world, in which nature can be exploited without limit, can be thought
of as the metaphysical basis of a society that is, in a sense, unsustainable.
Heidegger maintains that the dominance of the technological understanding of
the world manifests itself as an estrangement from the world, an existential
sense of homelessness. Technological man, swept along in the blind currents of
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Heidegger and the Role of the Body in Environmental Virtue 3
fashion, fluid money markets and job flexibility, is portrayed as being no longer
in touch with the earthiness of things. His is an all-too-human world, a world
of moulded plastic, asphalt, and air-conditioned offices, in which there is no
sense of “the earth.” Moreover, distracted by mobile phones, televisions, and
the Internet, his attention is constantly elsewhere. Technological man has lost
his connection with the ground beneath his feet; Heidegger claims that he has
lost his rootedness in the world.
II
To free ourselves of the alienating influence of technology and recover our root-
edness in the world, Heidegger maintains that we must cultivate a mode of being
he calls a “releasement toward things.”7 To be “released” toward a thing is to
attend to it as the particular thing that it is, rather than as a placeholder for
some other thing that would serve the same function. To be released toward
the hammer — to use a characteristically rustic Heideggerian example — is to
treat it with respect, taking care not to ruin it on stone or metal; to ensure that,
at the end of the day, it is returned to its rightful place in the workshop, and
so on. To be released toward a particular stretch of road is to attend to it for
what it is in itself, to appreciate the journey, rather than simply passing over it
in sullen indifference on one’s way to work.
When they are “let be” in this way, Heidegger writes that things “gather
world.”8 The idea here is that attending to a thing can illuminate a world,
a world, that is, understood not as an object (planet Earth, for instance) but
as an arena within which things show up as significant things in the first place.
In one sense, this idea is less abstruse than it might sound. Think here of
the phenomenon of nostalgia, those moments when an old photo or a school
satchel transports one to a long-forgotten world of family picnics or Tuesday
mornings after double maths. But it is essential to realize that, in Heidegger’s
understanding, the phenomenon of a thing’s gathering world does not primarily
involve one’s simply remembering a place distant in time, it can involve the
more interesting phenomenon of one’s “coming home” to the place where one
is presently abiding, the phenomenon when, in a moment of clarity, one looks
toward the cathedral of one’s hometown as if for the first time, and is filled
with a sense of belonging. In doing this, Heidegger maintains, we have made
the strange “leap” “onto the soil on which we really stand,”9 and out of the
alienating grip of technology.
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Heidegger and the Role of the Body in Environmental Virtue 4
III
This, then, is a bare sketch of Heidegger’s diagnosis and prescription. In the
face of the ubiquity of the technological understanding of the world and the
existential homelessness which it brings, we would do well to release ourselves
toward things and thereby come to appreciate our world (or rather our respective
worlds) anew.
But is releasement toward things a “frame of mind”? I do not think so. In order
to describe what releasement might involve, Heidegger cites examples of certain
practices — pouring wine from a jug, cultivating crops, and so on — which, he
holds, can be thought of as the constituents of a way of life he calls “dwelling.”10
Accordingly, releasement is exemplified not by the environmental philosopher
serenely pondering the possibilities of reawakening a respect for things, but by
the skilled craftsperson attuned to the materials with which he or she works —
the cabinetmaker, for instance, “answering” and “responding” “to the different
kinds of wood and to the shapes slumbering within the wood.”11 Clearly, when
the released individual acts, he or she acts in a certain frame of mind, she might
be attentive or appreciative or something of this sort, but releasement itself
would not seem to be something exclusively cognitive, it would seem to be a
bodily as much as a mental comportment.12
In maintaining that releasement is not a frame of mind, I am not being simply
pedantic, for it could be that speaking only in terms of environmentally virtuous
(or vicious) frames of mind might obscure the manner in which the body is
implicated in our relations with the natural world. Jane Howarth, for instance,
has drawn attention to the fact that many of our unsustainable practices (not
turning the kitchen light off, throwing the can in the waste bin rather than
taking it to the recycling facility, and so on) are habitual.13 Drawing upon the
work of Merleau-Ponty, she argues that habitual actions are not the effects of
“consciousness directing bodily movement,” but are rather the manifestation of
an implicit kind of bodily intelligence.14 In these situations, one’s body knows
what to do, even in the absence of a determining mental attitude. Certainly,
to render these practices perspicuous we must reflect on them, however, the
fact remains that these habitual practices are as much bodily comportments
as they are frames of mind. In this regard, it is worth noting that the radical
environmental ethics literature abounds with accounts (often caricatures) of the
dominant “modern western” mindset — faith in the power of reason, a belief
in the value of progress, a sense of separation from nature, and so on. Could
one also speak of a characteristic “technological” bodily comportment? After
all, it is not only our mental lives that are governed by technology. Perhaps,
for instance, technological man has forgotten the sensuous pleasure intrinsic to
eating, and only consumes in order to live. He grabs an energy bar on the way
to work to stand in for breakfast; he gobbles down his five servings of fruit and
vegetables to keep healthy. He is an efficient eater. And what of the rest of his
bodily life? How does technological man move? Does he have a characteristic
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Heidegger and the Role of the Body in Environmental Virtue 5
posture? How does he breathe?
These thoughts suggest a further question: if unsustainable practices are bodily
as well as mental, might the comportment which could bring about sustainability
be, to a certain extent, a bodily comportment, not just an exclusively mental
understanding of the world, but a way of acting as an embodied being?
It could be objected that one’s bodily comportment is merely the effect of one’s
mental attitude. Clearly, someone who adopts a respectful attitude toward
things will be led to act in a respectful way. But might the reverse be true?
Might it be that just as one can think of mental states — moods, attitudes, et
cetera — as causing distinctive sorts of action, one can also conceive of certain
mental attitudes arising from certain sorts of bodily comportment? Perhaps
what needs to be learnt is not just a mental attitude toward the natural world
which will be expressed in sustainable action, but also a way of acting which
will give rise to a mental attitude conducive to sustainability.15
With these speculations we are wandering into conceptual territory generally
alien to Western philosophical traditions, a landscape dominated by East Asian
thinkers.16 Here I will only note, very briefly, that for its part Heidegger’s con-
ception of a releasement toward things has much in common with the Taoist
idea of wu-wei or non-action, the spontaneous, non-deliberative action which
expresses one’s unity with the Tao.17 Central to both is the idea that one can
realize one’s belonging to the world in a practical attunement to things. While
Heidegger cites the example of the cabinetmaker “answering” and “responding”
“to the different kinds of wood,” the Taoist Chuang Tzu finds wu-wei exempli-
fied by the swimmer who swims with the current or the butcher whose carving
follows the natural articulations of the meat.18 It does not seem right to call
the harmony between man and thing conveyed in these descriptions a frame of
mind. Indeed it could be that in focusing on the possibility of sustainability as
a frame of mind, we overlook the implications of these practical ways of being
for our relationship with the natural world.
IV
Can releasement toward things be taught? Perhaps only so much can be taught
through books and lectures. In fact, a renewed appreciation of the role of
the body in relating to things might help to counter the impression, arguably
common amongst students of environmental ethics, that appreciating nature
must involve some sort of lofty intellectual understanding of ecological science
or metaphysics. Perhaps what we need to foster is rather an intimacy with
the natural world founded on a sensuous, bodily appreciation of things.19 How
might this be achieved? This question deserves more thought than I can give
it here. Maybe it could be developed through direct contact with nature, in
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Heidegger and the Role of the Body in Environmental Virtue 6
art, biology or drama lessons, say, or even in physical education, which, after
all, need not consist entirely of sport. But in whatever context releasement is
taught, it will require teachers themselves able to appreciate and convey the
thick sensuous thereness of things. And so perhaps it is to the task of educating
ourselves in this respect that we should turn first.
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Heidegger and the Role of the Body in Environmental Virtue 7
References
Cooper, David E. 1994. “Is Daoism ‘Green’?” Asian Philosophy. Vol. 4, No.
2.
Dreyfus, Hubert L. 1993. “Heidegger on the connection between nihilism, art,
technology, and politics” in Charles B. Guignon, ed. The Cambridge Com-
panion to Heidegger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 289 –
316.
Foltz, Bruce. 1995. Inhabiting the Earth: Heidegger, Environmental Ethics,
and the Metaphysics of Nature. New Jersey: Humanities Press.
Haar, Michel, The Song of the Earth: Heidegger and the Grounds of the History
of Being, tr. Reginald Lilly (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1987).
Heidegger, Martin. 1959. An Introduction to Metaphysics. Ralph Mannheim,
trans. New Haven: Yale University Press.
— — — . 1966a. Being and Time, J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson, trans.
Oxford: Blackwell.
— — — . 1966b. Basic Writings, David Farrell Krell, ed. London: Routledge.
— — — . 1966c. Discourse on Thinking, John M. Anderson and E. Hans
Freund, trans. New York: Harper & Row.
— — — . 1968. What is called Thinking?, tr. J. Glenn Gray, trans. New York:
Harper & Row.
— — — . 1971. Poetry, Language, Thought, Albert Hofstadter, trans. New
York: Harper & Row.
— — — . 1977. The Question Concerning Technology and other Essays.
William Lovitt, trans. New York: Harper & Row.
May, Reinhard. 1989. Heidegger’s Hidden Sources, Graham Parkes, trans.
London: Routledge.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1996. Phenomenology of Perception. Colin Smith,
trans. London: Routledge.
Passmore, John. 1980. Man’s Responsibility for Nature: Ecological Problems
and Western Traditions. London: Duckworth.
Pratt, Vernon. 2000. Environment and Philosophy. London: Routledge.
Suzuki, Shunryu. 2000. Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. Trudy Dixon, ed. New
York: Weatherhill.
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Heidegger and the Role of the Body in Environmental Virtue 8
Endnotes
1. The term “understanding” perhaps conveys the mistaken idea that, for Hei-
degger, technology is a perspective on the world that many people simply hap-
pen to have. But for Heidegger technology is not merely a way humans see the
world. On this difficult point, see Heidegger 1996: 312, 323 – 4, and also his
essay “The Age of the World Picture” (in Heidegger 1977: 115 – 54).
2. In this paper I only have space to present a grossly simplified account of
Heidegger’s account of technology. For more comprehensive treatments, see
Foltz 1995; Haar 1987; Dreyfus 1993.
3. Heidegger 1996b: 322.
4. It is tempting to interpret Heidegger as saying that we have lost sight of
the intrinsic value of things, seeing them as merely possessing instrumental
value. However, for reasons that would take us beyond the scope of this essay
to explain, Heidegger resists articulating his position in terms of value. See
Heidegger 1959: 196 – 9.
5. Heidegger 1966: 46.
6. Heidegger 1996b: 320. See also Haar 1987: 83.
7. Heidegger 1966: 54
8. See Heidegger 1971: 174, 199; Heidegger 1996: 355.
9. Heidegger 1968: 41.
10. The origins of the idea that a releasement toward things involves a practical
engagement with things can be found in Being and Time in Heidegger’s idea that
Dasein lets things ready-to-hand be by letting them be involved in a referential
totality (see Heidegger 1996a: 405).
11. Heidegger 1996b: 379.
12. On Heidegger’s treatment of the body, see Haar 1987, Chapter Three.
13. In Pratt 2000: 71.
14. Ibid: 70. Merleau-Ponty is often credited with drawing out the implications
for our understanding of the body of Heidegger’s analysis of human being in
Being and Time. See Merleau-Ponty 1996.
15. Or perhaps a non-dualistic vocabulary is called for here, such as the one
proposed in Merleau-Ponty 1996.
16. Consider, for instance, the role of the body in Zen meditation. As Suzuki
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Heidegger and the Role of the Body in Environmental Virtue 9
(2000) explains, in the sitting meditation of Soto Zen correct posture is “not
a means of obtaining the right state of mind. To take the posture itself is the
purpose of our practice. When you have this posture, you have the right state
of mind” (26).
17. This connection should not be surprising: as May has shown in his book
Heidegger’s Hidden Sources (1989), Heidegger was greatly influenced by East
Asian writers.
18. See Cooper 1994: 124.
19. Passmore (1980) argues that western thought has a generally Platonic,
puritanical tenor that has undermined the possibility of a moral consideration
of nature: “Only if men can first learn to look sensuously at the world will they
come to care for it. Not only to look at it, but to touch it, smell it, taste it”
(189).
The Trumpeter


Heidegger and the Role of the Body in Environmental Virtue

Reid, Alan

Teamey, Kelly

Dillon, Justin

Traditional ecological knowledge for learning with sustainability in mind

Chamberlain, Paul G.

A review of Stepping Lightly: Simplicity for People and the Planet by Mark A. Burch

Morito, Bruce

William Scott and Andrew Stables introduce this special educational issue of the Trumpeter.

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