The ecological epoché

Michael Barber

doi:10.15448/1984-7289.2017.3.27867

Authors

Michael Barber Saint Louis University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15448/1984-7289.2017.3.27867

Keywords:

World of working. Epoché. Sustainability. Multiple realities. Empathy.

Abstract

In Alfred Schutz’s discussion of the world of daily life, which differs from other multiple realities, though all these realities pertain to the life-world preceding the implementation of the full-blown phenomenological reduction, he emphasizes that the world of daily life is a world of working. In this paper I will describe what working is and its potential for impairing our relationships with animals and negatively impacting ecological sustainability. I will then suggest two resources within the phenomenological tradition for challenging the potential for such impairment: Husserl’s notion of empathy, which reaches to animals, and Schutz’s idea of multiple realities, which, I will argue, could include a distinctive ecological attitude initiated by an ecological epoché.

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Author Biography

Michael Barber, Saint Louis University

PhD in philosophy (Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA), professor at the Department of Philosophy, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri, EUA. Member of the executive council of the International Alfred Schutz Circle for Phenomenology and Interpretive Social Science, and author of The participating citizen – a biography of Alfred Schutz (New York: Suny, 2004)

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