The aesthetic experience of nature and hermeneutic phenomenology. Issue 3 (2nd July 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Iared, Valéria Ghisloti; de Oliveira, Haydée Torres; Payne, Phillip G.
• Is Part Of: Journal of environmental education. Volume 47:Issue 3(2016)
• Page Start: 191
• Page End: 201
• Publication Date: 2016-07-02
• Subjects: aesthetic education -- environmental education research -- Freire -- hermeneutic phenomenology -- post-critical; Environmental education -- Periodicals; 333.7207
• DOI: 10.1080/00958964.2015.1063472
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0095-8964

Abstract

ABSTRACT: One aim of environmental education is to encourage different ways of generating meanings of, valuing, conceiving, and contextualizing "nature." The field of aesthetics provides an affective basis for interpreting our perceptions of environments and relations with other more-than-human beings. This critical essay examines some of the key concepts about hermeneutics and phenomenology introduced by philosophers such as Kant, Dufrenne, Bachelard, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, and Quintás and then indicates some methodological implications. Our Freirean purpose is to advance how understandings of the nature of the aesthetic experience of nature might inform different research framings, critical curriculum inquiry, and eco-pedagogical explorations of being in, becoming and relating with nature.