Hermeneutics and Field Environmental Philosophy: Integrating Ecological Sciences and Ethics into Earth Stewardship - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 236

15.3 Hermeneutical Steps that Support the FEP

Methodology

We should not forget a central purpose of the FEP hermeneutical itinerary for Earth
Stewardship: to persuade the neoliberal mindset to consider the land as biosphere ,
in order to foster respect for the planet Earth . This requires transposing the sign
“land” into the symbol “biosphere,” through the new meanings generated by the
metaphor. Metaphor, as Ricoeur has shown, has an instructive value: “to instruct by
means of an unexpected relationship between things that seem totally unrelated at
fi rst” (Ricoeur 2001 , p. 52).

15.3.1 Embracing One's Own Perspective

The hermeneutical journey begins with embracing our own perspective. That is, to
recognize our own horizons of meaning. To recognize that every subject belongs to
a historical context and to a tradition, which is conserved and transmitted through
one's own language. Along with the language, one has a set of pre-conceptions.
These pre-conceptions should not be condemned, but understood as anticipated
ways of seeing, feeling, thinking, and acting in the world. Hermeneutics does not
wish to change preconceptions, including prejudices, in spite of the negative evalu-
ation that was attributed to them by Bacon and the Enlightenment. On the contrary,
it values them as cores that help to understand the worldview of the one who looks
at and interprets the world, because hermeneutics considers them as “ … [the] judg-
ment that is formed before the fi nal validation” (Gadamer 2000 , p. 337). In other
words, pre-conceptions are not judgments that lack foundations and are therefore
false; instead, they are judgments whose content is useful to evaluate.
Preconceptions, including prejudices, are the lenses through which we view the
world, and through which a tradition is constituted. They are the bone that has
formed the mode of being of a person. Consequently, they are the key to discovering
what and why something is signifi cant in an ethical attitude. The preconceptions of
the individuals are the historical reality of their being (Gadamer 2000 , p. 334).
Preconceptions or prejudices, as prior data to all experiences of the world, are the
pre-structure of our understanding. They become evident only through self-refl ection
or when confronting otherness , which obligates subjects to exit their own conceptual
parameters. Confronting an anomaly, one discovers something in herself or himself:
the possession of prejudices and the awareness that the world is interpreted through
the lenses of one's own horizon of meaning. For example, an anomaly in the fl ora of
the Magellanic sub-Antarctic ecoregion in southwestern South America, which pres-
ents the singularity of having a greater diversity of non- vascular than vascular plant
species (which is the global standard), stimulated an ecologist, such as Ricardo Rozzi
and his research team at Omora Park, to “change the lenses to assess biodiversity