The aesthetic experience of nature and hermeneutic phenomenology

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.

KEYWORDS:

• aesthetic education
• environmental education research
• Freire
• hermeneutic phenomenology
• post-critical

Acknowledgments

We thank Monash University for hosting this collaborative opportunity for cross-cultural studies.

Funding

We thank The National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), which supported the study in Brazil, and Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), who funded the PhD scholarship.