Reimagining Nature: The Transformative Function of Nature Imagery in the Haggai-Zechariah 1–8 Corpus (original) (raw)
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Conceptions of Nature in Religious, Scientific and Historical Overview: A Brief Analysis
Philosophy and Progress , 2022
It is difficult to identify nature with an exact meaning. Depending on circumstances and perspectives the term “nature” has various meanings ranging from spiritual participatory to mechanistic understanding. Having these complexities and ambiguous connotations the current research tries to investigate into some conceptual understanding of nature regarding traditional ideas and modern scientific views. There will also be an endeavor to see nature from a short historical survey. The paper aims to examine these conceptions in the light of environmental sustainability: which understanding of nature seems better to reform the dominating attitudes of humans toward the natural environment? Being critical of conventional and secular meanings of nature, the current paper proceeds to show how an understanding of a different kind can allow humans to behave with their surroundings. In so doing, the present study wants to shed more lights on natural environment, and to add more knowledge to the present discussions of ecological equilibrium.
Abstract : This article discusses the expectations of happiness and moral elevation we place on nature in the present secular context and the implications for environmental education practices based on direct contact with natural ecosystems. It locates the origins of the moral value of wilderness in the American conservationist ideals of the nineteenth century and argues that, currently, this subject-moral, associated with the liberal-democratic context of the nineteenth century, corroborates with the perception of nature as a place of virtue and beauty. However, this does not mean a simple reiteration of nineteenth century ideals. The paradigm of contemporary ecological virtue recovers and transforms this notion of nature, combining nineteenth century inspirations with a new axis of secularization and transcendence within the context of immanent spiritualities such as New Age. Keywords: wilderness, transcendence, immanence; environmental education. Resumen: Este artículo analiza las expectativas de felicidad y elevación moral atribui- das a la naturaleza, en el contexto secular contemporáneo, y sus implicaciones para las prácticas de educación ambiental que se basan en el contacto directo con los ambientes naturales. Ubica la génesis del valor moral de la naturaleza prístina (desierto) en los ide- ales conservacionistas norteamericanos del siglo XIX, y sostiene que el sujeto-moral del  conservacionismo, asociado con el contexto democrático-liberal del siglo XIX, corrobora, en la actualidad, con la idea de naturaleza como lugar de la autenticidad, de la bondad y de la trascendencia. Sin embargo, esto no significa una simple repetición de los ideales del siglo XIX. El ideal contemporáneo de la virtud ecológica incorpora y transforma la noción de naturaleza, articulando parte de esa inspiración del siglo XIX con a las nuevas configu- raciones de la secularización y de la trascendencia en el contexto de las espiritualidades de la inmanencia de tipo de la Nueva Era. Palabras clave: Naturaleza; Trascendencia; Inmanencia; Educación ambiental 
Images of Nature: From the Middle Ages to (Non-)Western Modernities
2023
'Natura' is a polysemic Latin word that has accompanied the historical development of the West for centuries, spreading around much of the globe with colonialism and imperialism. It has been adopted in numerous languages. The nine contributions gathered in this volume deal with the dimension of perception and its long-term development from the Middle Ages to the present time. They trace in detail how images of nature were adopted, modified, and transmitted for specific purposes in specific situations. The introduction to the volume provides an overview and draws the contributions together.
Human Ecology: nature as archetypal deity
Revista Ártemis, 2018
The term nature, in a broad sense, refers to the phenomena of the physical world and life in general. Complex are their definitions, involving qualities of essentiality, origin, spontaneity, and everything that was not directly manipulated or produced by human action, including the universe itself. Taking into account that the sciences in their entirety have developed through their observation, the objective of this study is to promote the worldview of nature as a foundation for human self-knowledge, since according to the conception of human ecology, humans are conceived as an indivisible part of their environment. Faced with the current ecological constraints, the proposal is justified, above all, by the need to reconnect man with nature in a superficial and deep sense. For that, we used the theoretical revision method (especially conceptual contributions of Arne Naess and Carl Gustav Jung) and Aristotelian deductive thinking to reach the proposed reflections. The results suggest man as being indivisible from nature, reigned by forces, tendencies, instincts, and cycles similar to those of the natural environment. From natural contemplation it is believed possible to formulate deep understandings of human nature, be they biological, psychological or spiritual.
Replenish the Earth. The Christian Theology of Nature, 1922
The Iconography of Nature: Fifth to Fifteenth Century A paper for the Eleventh Theological Conference published in Replenish the Earth. The Christian Theology of Nature, ed. Susan Harris (Charlottetown: St. Peter Publications, 1992), 39-56. Despite Our Lord's rebuke of Thomas, demanding to touch and see, that the blessed were those who believe not having seen, and the Pauline definition of faith which opposes faith and sight, we tend to accept the axiom that seeing is believing.1 Partly because of the domination of communication by television, the character of our relation to nature, the problems with that relation, and the solutions seem obvious. I want to show you something about the Christian understanding of nature which can quite literally be seen. Moreover, it can be seen because, as an historical transformation of the understanding of nature, it is fundamentally simple. However, I hope that what you will see and understand will give to the questions before this conference the complexity they deserve. Our Christian relation to nature is what it is because, nature is, first of all, "hid with Christ in God,"2 it has died and been resurrected with him. Second, we only have the modern relation to nature in which we are at home in the world as Christians and are not afraid of it, or afraid to use it, because the nature which has appeared out of its hiddenness in the heavenly places is God's, and Christ's, and so ours.3 The Christian transformation in how we see and understand nature and our place in it I propose to treat in two parts.4 First, we shall see what happened to the human view of space; namely, how modern western painting came to develop the perspective box in which objects are placed in an infinite space formed by locating them on planes erected horizontally on parallel lines which converge at a necessarily hidden, or invisible, point in the beyond. This development, which arises out of certain necessities of western Gothic sculpture and painting, was a discovery of the Italian renaissance and perfected by the Flemish renaissance painters. The slides shown in Part I, "Perspective and infinite space: making the world infinite," will illustrate this historical movement of western Christian culture. Second, we shall try to understand what this bringing of the infinite into the natural world of humans means. Part II, "The Presupposition of an infinite nature: the union of the heaven and the earth," will explore the theological presuppositions of the Christian renaissance of the Fifteenth and early Sixteenth centuries under three headings. One aspect of this Christian renaissance is a new understanding of the Christian relation to non Christian culture, especially, though not exclusively, the culture of the pagan Greeks and Romans. It is well known that the Christians of the modern renaissance greatly admired these pagan predecessors and thought of themselves as recovering the pagan golden age. But, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth century humanists, who, like their mediaeval predecessors, called themselves "modern" because they were Christians, also thought they had surpassed the ancients. So we must begin by appreciating both what the pagan Greeks and Romans accomplished and what lay beyond them.
Discursion and Excursion:" Poetry of Bodies, Place, and Landscape in the Ecocritical Movement
2016
My thesis project focuses on the current literary field of Ecocriticism, its historical transmutations, and the correlation of the pastoral genre, as one begins to understand current human understandings of "nature." By applying a deeper understanding of the Deep Ecology movement, along with shifting understandings of the human and the non-human, specifically in our usage and attention to landscape and wilderness, I hope to explore the role that the aesthetic, and the function of the poem, can play a crucial role in the environmental movement. By building a foundational understanding of our cultural context and critical theories of Environmental criticism, I hope to illuminate the necessary ways that place, body, and language/perception all interact with each other to create a specific experiential moment of nature. This environmental epiphany can be modeled best in the poem that reflects the "thisness" of nature, as Hopkins calls it, and emphasizes the aura/essence of the land with which we interaction. This project will apply its theoretical concerns to the poetry of Brian Teare, who illuminates many of the concerns of landscape, perception, and bodily engagement. iii Table of Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………………………1 Philosophical and Cultural Conceptions of Nature……………………………..........15 "This-ness" and Brian Teare……………………………………………………….….34 Environmental Application………………………………………………..…………...56 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………..67 Appendix A……………………………………………………………………………...77