The conceptions of “environment” and eco-philosophy

“Environment” is an ambiguous, suggestive concept. In essence, an environment is something that encompasses systems (of people, things, organizations, lives, etc.) while existing alongside those systems. The environment is not the natural world in general. This notion of environment emerges clearly as a concept in European thought with the use of “environment” in Darwin’s evolutionary theory to mean the “set of conditions governing survival”. Living creatures do not inhabit the world as such. The “world as such” and “nature as such” are, as it were, conceptual constructs that come into being as objects of perception. And these constructs obviously only come into being when they have been isolated and separated from human life.

Related Subject(s): Environment and Climate Change