Ethical Responses to Nature’s Call

James Magrini is Adjunct Professor of Philosophy and Ethics, College of Dupage, USA.

"With his excellent new book, Reticent Imperatives: Our Ethical Response to Nature’s Call, James M. Magrini has written an important and much needed contribution to the field of eco-phenomenology. Not only does Margini develop eco-phenomenology in an original way, but he also introduces a new stance on ethics and Object Oriented Ontology. With his book, Magrini is clearing a path for us, living in an era approaching environmental catastrophe, to hear and listen to the call of Nature, that is, what Magrini names "ontological aurality." This inception of an original ethics of ontological aurality and excess can be compared to Martin Heidegger’s insistence on "the silent power of the possible." In Magrini’s version of Heidegger’s adage, the environment, as an excessive object which reveals itself in its very withdrawal, is indeed the power of the possible, or as Magrini pointedly expresses it "a living force." This living force is the very possibility of a new foundation for an ethics developed out of, precisely, reticent imperatives. These imperatives which, indeed, resolutely sound out of the book’s call to our environmental conscience." — Elias Schwieler, Associate Professor of Education, Stockholm University, Sweden"This is an important book that explores in a philosophically rigorous manner the topic of nature’s ‘voice’ and its significance for achieving an authentic relationship with nature – that in turn is central to responding to the environmental crisis that currently besets us. Magrini has a gift for identifying the most germane issues and for interpreting and weaving together a wide range of cogent views. The result is a stimulating read that makes an imaginative and essential contribution to the literature in the field." — Michael Bonnett, University of Cambridge, UK

• Preface PART I Eco-Phenomenological Issues: Transcending the Metaphysics of Presence 1. Introducing Eco-Phenomenology: Methods, Problems, and Proposed Solutions 2. The Cultural WeltanSchauung: "Naturalistic" Framework and Our Interaction with Nature Part II The Ethical Call of Nature: Reticent Imperatives 3. A Reconceived Philosophy of "Objects" and Nature: Object Oriented Ontology and Eco-Phenomenology 4. Duties and Imperatives in a Reconceived Ethics of Nature: Ethical Intuitionism and Phenomenology 5. The Phenomenology of Human-and-Nature Involvements: The Ethical Call of Nature’s Reticent Imperatives