The Natural Environment!

This book examines the natural environment as an integral dimension of human identity, framing it as the 'Other Threatened Self.' The 'Other' is understood not as an alien entity but as that which shapes and complements human identity from beyond the self (a silent partner in existence). From philosophical, ecological, and phenomenological perspectives, the book argues that estrangement from nature is not only an ecological crisis but also a crisis of selfhood. The destruction of ecosystems reflects the fragmentation of human subjectivity; to forget nature is to lose the fullness of being. On the other hand, taking it into account restores an ontological wholeness where humanity and the natural world share their essence. Modern technological rationality, however, tends to reduce the environment to a calculable resource, abstracted into units of use and exchange. Against this reduction, the book reclaims the environment as the 'Other Threatened Self, ' reawakening the ethical imperative of responsibility in which care for the earth is inseparable from care for oneself. Such a reorientation opens a path to ecological renewal, not through technical fixes, but through grounding human life in an ontology of interdependence and reverence for the more-than-human world. The book, therefore, proposes an integrative vision of sustainability that heals the fractured relationship between humans and their threatened ecological self, calling for a renewed consciousness that recognizes care for nature as care for one's own being.