This collection responds to widespread, complex, and current environmental challenges by presenting eleven original essays on a new elemental-embodied approach in environmental humanities. This approach has a special focus on elemental and indigenous philosophies as well as localized experiences of terrestrial forces: from earthquakes and eruptions to pandemics and natural disasters. Representing a shift in modern Western scientific and disembodied thinking of nature, this edited book approaches the question of relationality and intertwining of human and natural being by utilizing the elemental-embodied methodologies within philosophy of embodiment and nature. Supported by research in cognitive sciences, the contributors represent the experiential and affective turn within research into human cognition. As embodied, the human being is embedded and interacting with all there is. The aim of this edited volume is to indicate new paths toward regaining our access to natural being within usand thus toward reconnecting with the natural environment and the things and beings around us in a new, environmentally enhanced way. It appeals to researchers and students working in many fields, predominantly in philosophy, as well as religious and environmental studies.
Lenart Škof is professor of philosophy and religious studies and is among the leading international scholars in the field of respiratory-elemental thinking. His main research interests lie in ethics, philosophical theology, comparative religion with intercultural philosophy, and feminist philosophy. His most recent books include God in Post-Christianity: An Elemental Philosophical Theology (SUNY Press, 2024), Antigone’s Sisters: On the Matrix of Love (SUNY Press, 2021), Atmospheres of Breathing, ed. by L. Škof and P. Berndtson (SUNY Press, 2018), Ethik des Atems (Freiburg: Herder/Karl Alber, 2017) and Breath of Proximity: Intersubjectivity, Ethics, and Peace (Springer, 2015).
Sashinungla is professor of philosophy at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. Her main research interests are ethics, feminist philosophy, environmental philosophy, and indigenous philosophy. Her books include Tradition and Modernity: Essays on Women of India (coedited; Suryodaya Books, 2015), Environment Preservation: A Philosophical Critique (Decent Books, 2005), and Ethics and Culture: Some Indian Reflections (co-edited; Decent Books, 2010). Her current research projects focus on tribal philosophy, elemental and embodied cross-cultural philosophy of nature, and social and political ethics.
Sigridur Thorgeirsdottir is professor of philosophy at the University of Iceland and former Erkko professor at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. She is an internationally known Nietzsche-scholar and a leading scholar in feminist philosophy with a special emphasis on philosophy of embodiment, nature and the environment. Among her recent publications are Embodied Thinking in Research and Learning (Routledge 2024, ed. with D. Schoeller and G. Walkerden) and Methodological Reflections on Women´s Contribution and Influence in the History of Philosophy (Springer 2020, ed. with R. Hagengruber).
