The Geology of Movement: The Earth and the Dynamic of Phenomenalisation in Merleau-Ponty and Patočka

To what extent can phenomenology provide a better understanding of our contemporary environmental crisis? What can phenomenological analysis specifically offer in order to sketch solutions for the impact of global climate changes, the hydrogeological risks, the pollution and, generally speaking, for the uncontrolled exploitation of the planet? Phenomenology cannot actually give answers to such questions of “shallow ecology” that considers nature as a resource to be freely exploited by humans to meet their needs. From this point of view the overexploitation of the Earth is only a question of natural resources management. On the other hand, if we consider the point of view of “deep ecology” we will take into real account the non-empirical explanations of this overexploitation, considering the relationship between men and the Earth differently. Beyond the scientific naturalism and the metaphysical idealism it seems possible to conceive current environmental problems and, generally speaking, the interrelationship between man, environment and habitat in new forms. Throughout an “eco-phenomenolgy” we can open a methodological bridge between the natural world and our own. Giving an alternative experience and account of nature eco-phenomenology offers an appropriate philosophy of nature, a “phenomenological naturalism” (Charles S. Brown and Ted Toadvine, Eco-phenomenology. Back to the Earth Itself). But what really is the phenomenological naturalism? To give an answer to this question we will take into account Husserl’s short manuscript on Earth (Overthrow of the Copernican theory in the usual interpretation of a world view) and its critical reception by Merleau-Ponty and Patočka. This text is an introduction to an investigation on the original spatiality of nature, neutralising the knowledge of physical sciences without deny their value, in order to investigate the corporeal experience of space. The Earth is thus an absolute kinaesthetic zero, a total body or Boden-Körper (body soil) and not only a mere Körper (object body). Husserl achieves a brave phenomenological investigation, which has an impact on the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty and Patočka. Merlau-Ponty stresses the parenthood between Earth and body (Leib); in other words the intercorporeality of the carnal adherence of the sentient to the sensed and of the sensed to the sentient. On the other hand Patočka goes further on the idea of a phenomenological epoche “without reduction” so to consider Earth as the horizon structure of the human motricity and of the most original movement of the phenomenalisation of the appearance. Merleau-Ponty outlines a living geology while Patočka defines the dynamic of the manifestation of the appearance as a real “science of the movement”. In both cases and thanks to the husserlian original intuition we have the opportunity to question the ecosystem of the primordial and topological space as a “total voluminosity”.