The powers that be: Environmental education and the transcendent

Abstract

This paper argues that with regard to addressing the potentially catastrophic environmental problems recognized by many as now confronting us, the most fundamental disaster that threatens is a deep-seated and increasing inability in Western style societies to think properly about the issues involved. The highly anthropocentric motives embedded in modernist humanism that prevail, and that view nature as essentially a material resource ultimately comprehended through natural (including ecological) science narratives, has led to important aspects of nature becoming invisible. This stymies both our relationship with nature and our understanding of ourselves in nature, resulting in a defective basis for decision-making on environmental issues. This paper explores the significance in this context of what are considered to be essential transcendent aspects of nature, in the sense that they lie ever beyond our authorship and authority and yet are capable of exercising profound agency in our lives. Included here are what are argued to be nature’s inherent otherness, mystery and integrity, normativity and intrinsic value, and the enlivening elemental powers that run through them.