Eco-Phenomenology and the Interiorization of Man – Using Merleau-Ponty and Nietzsche to Release the “Psyche” from the Human Skull

Abstract

This paper will explore if phenomenology is capable of delivering a philosophical point of view which can be called “ecological”, and how we are to understand this concept. The main hypothesis of this paper is that the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and Nietzsche can serve as a point of departure for a radical rethinking of the human condition because they both tried to radically reformulate the human relation to the self by making the body as the starting point. For Merleau-Ponty, the human self is through its language and its breathing body deeply rooted with what he calls the “flesh of the world”, and for Nietzsche, the notion of will to power as physiology reveals the fundamental connectedness between man vs. world. To reach an understanding of this ecological consciousness, our pursuit shall be that of a via negativa; an examination of Nietzschean and Merleau-Pontyan approaches to how the traditional mechanistic worldview originated. How did we come about to raise an impenetrable barrier between the human and the nonhuman, where the psyche as pure interiority beholds nature as pure exteriority?