The Import of Heidegger's Philosophy Into Environmental Ethics: A Review

On one hand, Heidegger is one of the most referenced philosophers in environmental ethics, on the other, there is an ongoing debate regarding the formulation of any kind of ethic based on Heidegger's philosophy as he himself was skeptical about the same. In such context, this review teases out why environmental ethics borrows extensively from Heidegger philosophy and how that in turn provides the necessary underpinnings of different schools of environmental ethics. This essay delineates the import of Heidegger's phenomenology, critique of technology, and post-metaphysical conception of nature, in schools of environmental ethics, particularly, the radical schools like deep ecology. This also highlights that overemphasis on the Heidegger's later work considerably limits the contribution of his philosophy to this discipline and on that note, it concludes that there is a need to bring in the hermeneutic phenomenology of early Heidegger in order to reinterpret his later celebrated concepts in environmental ethics.