THE ROLE OF THE GLANCE IN OVERCOMINGTHE DISUNITY OF KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICEIN ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY
Wang Hai-qin
Abstract：Statistics show, that even though an ethical respect for nature is both widely advocatedby current mainstream environmental philosophy and is increasingly publiclyaccepted, this is not enough to ensure the needed practical actions to protect and preservethe natural world and its living beings. This reflects a disconnection between therelated intellectual or theoretical appreciation of the integrity or value within the naturalworld and the sorts of practices needed to heal or to motivate the actions needed forecological integrity and sustainability. Awareness of this disunity or disconnection callsfor a philosophical examination of this disconnection.This paper argues that the disunity between knowledge and practice reflects a “blindspot” in those sorts of mainstream environmental philosophy that attempt to establish arational basis for an ethical respect for nature and humans’ ethical responsibility to theenvironment. This paper shall reveal that blind spot and its origin by examining andbuilding on Ed Casey’s analysis and phenomenological description of an original andauthentic directly lived ethical response to the environment that he calls the “first momentof ethical response.”Casey’s description of this “first moment of ethical response,” rooted in his phenomenologicalhorizon, allows him to break away from the horizon of current mainstreamenvironmental ethics and uncover a field of original and authentic ethical experiencethat opens an area of investigation closed to current environmental ethics. In thisway Casey’s work can reveal the limitations of the scientific horizon of mainstreamenvironmental ethics and has great value in the overcoming of the blind spot and its illeffect.
Keywords:the disunity of knowledge and practice; The First Moment; ethical responseto the environment; glance; phenomenology.
（政治与公共管理学院李广宇）
