Shulga E.N. Ecophilosophy and Symbolical World of Nature: an Issue of Interpretation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15688/lp.jvolsu.2018.1.3
Elena N. Shulga
Doctor of Sciences (Philosophy), Leading Researcher, Institute of Philosophy,
Russian Academy of Sciences,
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Goncharnaya St., 12, 119019 Moscow, Russian Federation
Abstract. The need to expand the range of issues traditional for the philosophy of nature, led to the emergence of ecophilosophy - a philosophical discipline, focused on the knowledge of various aspects of life through the synthesis of knowledge about the man, the natural environment and the essence of the living. Having abandoned the fundamental position of the philosophy of nature - anthropocentrism, ecophilosophy at first replaced it with the principle of biocentrism, when all living beings have an unconditional value, and then with the principle of ecoсentrism, according to which the recognition of the sovereignty of the natural world requires that we give up any desire to dominate it. At the same time, ecophilosophy, relying on the methods of hermeneutics, searches for the answer to the question of how the symbolic world of nature is environmentally “arranged” and how it is interpreted. The hermeneutics of the symbolic world of nature becomes, in this case, “biogermeneutics”, since it is not a matter of interpreting texts created by man, but of natural texts. The rules of interpretation here are recorded through prohibitions and regulations, their effectiveness and effectiveness are verified in practice and subsequently fixed in the ecological tradition of a particular people. By reconstructing the meaning of natural texts on the basis of the hermeneutical approach, we learn not only the specifics of figurative thinking and the symbolic language of the people, but also the perception of the symbolic world of nature in the human culture. The presence of archaic elements in the ecological thinking of modern man confirms the continuity of knowledge and tradition, the desire of a person to record and transmit the received information of everyday life, preserving them as creative patterns of perception of the unity of man and nature. They attach importance not only to the purely pragmatic, useful for survival in specific natural conditions, but also the universal and philosophical significance. In the article on the material of the folklore of the peoples of Russia it is shown how the continuity of knowledge within the world view is preserved and how the original archaic symbolic world of the images of nature acquires a value meaning and a philosophical status.
Key words: ecophilosophy, hermeneutics, culture, prescriptions, beliefs, prohibitions, meanings, interpretation.
Ecophilosophy and Symbolical World of Nature: an Issue of Interpretation by Shulga E.N. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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