The aesthetic experience of nature and hermeneutic phenomenology

One aim of environmental education is to encourage different ways of
generating meanings of, valuing, conceiving, and contextualizing “nature.” The
field of aesthetics provides an affective basis for interpreting our perceptions
of environments and relations with other more-than-human beings. This
critical essay examines some of the key concepts about hermeneutics and
phenomenology introduced by philosophers such as Kant, Dufrenne,
Bachelard, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, and Quintas and then indicates some
methodological implications. Our Freirean purpose is to advance how
understandings of the nature of the aesthetic experience of nature might
inform different research framings, critical curriculum inquiry, and ecopedagogical
explorations of being in, becoming and relating with nature.