Toward a Phenomenological Grounding of the Geographical Conception of Therapeutic Landscapes

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to provide the propaedeutic for the philosophical grounding of the geographical concept, “therapeutic landscapes.” The propaedeutic for a more detailed fleshing and exfoliation consists in establishing the meaning and overall extent of the concept, as well as considering how the notion relates to praxis. As a guiding, preliminary definition, a therapeutic landscape provides a placial nexus for the promotion and maintenance of health and well being. By this definition I do not condone or disapprove of any particular human relations with nature and human society or want to immediately imply any particular agenda. Nothing beyond a general skeleton of the study is intended in order to avoid perspectival assumptions leading to ideological contexts and premature advocation of policy implementation, which would theoretically limit the project. I elaborate the sense of the notion in light of Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s Phenomenology of Life, which I advocate as providing the most viable framework.¹ The description that follows will engender general implications of Tymieniecka’s phenomenology, which allows for the development of the concept of therapeutic landscapes in terms of a function of life’s evolutionary progress, or in Tymieniecka’s phenomenology, ontopoiesis — first makings of life. In this form of descriptive phenomenological investigation, “beingness” (the non-substantive dynamic organization of real entities) naturally unfolds into implications for ethico-valuational prescription.