From spontaneous experience to the cosmos: Arne næss’s phenomenology

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to focus on Arne Næss’s phenomenological method and some of its anthropological and cosmological implications. Næss’s Ecology, Community and Lifestyle, in fact, can be fruitfully read as an example of phenomenological inquiry, in which the notion of “spontaneous experience” plays a fundamental role. This method leads Næss to develop a “relational ontology,” in which the “ecological self” is seen as a “relational junction within the total field.” In addition, I show how Tymieniecka’s philosophical thought can offer us the proper eco-phenomenological perspective to better understand Næss’s Ecosophy T.