Dissertation Construction 02

Wilderness Matters: Understanding Inter-constituent Wilderness Worlds

02

World

Heidegger gives four definitions for world. The one most applicable for this investigation is:

that 'wherein' a factical Dasein as such can be said to 'live'. "World" has here a pre-ontological existentiell signification. Here again there are different possibilities: "world" may stand for the 'public' we-world, or one's 'own' closest (domestic) environment. (BT p. 93)

Umwelt

His word for environment in this case is umwelt. Umwelt—“domain that a species is capable of modeling (the external world of experience to which a species has access” (Sebeok, 2001, p. 157); “the tacit, taken-for-granted context, tenor, and pace of daily life to which normally people give no reflective attention” (Seamon & Sowers, 2009, p. XXX).

I am interested in doing what Heidegger called "an ontological Interpretation of those entities within-the-environment [umwelt] which we encounter as closest to us" (BT p. 94). Harman (2011) considers this to be ontography.

Ontography

"Rather than a geography dealing with stock natural characters such as forests and lakes, ontography maps the basic landmarks and fault lines in the universe of objects" (Harman, 2011, p. 125). Dasein has dealings in an umwwelt with these objects [Heideggerian "things"]. Dealing involves a skillful coping (Sean Kelly on BT) and we term Dasein (somebody) doing the skillful coping to be involved in a kind of carpentry. Not only is somebody-in-the-world doing carpentry in their skillful coping, but carpentry is also another term for ontography. Bogost (2012) cites Harman (Guerrilla Metaphysics, pp. 2, 72, 166) who borrowed the notion from Lingis (Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common, p. 41). Harman and Lingis relate carpentry in reference "to how things fashion one another and the world at large" (Bogost, 2012, p. 93). Bogost (p. 93) goes further to quote Thomson (Heidegger on Ontotheology, p. 164) and circles back to Heideggerian investigations noting that by way of them "we come to understand and experience entities as being richer in meaning than we are capable of doing justice to conceptually."

Gear

With what entities does somebody involve themselves with? I intend to make the case that just as carpenters involve themselves with tools, wilderness constituents involve themselves with gear. Gear or as in Being and Time, equipment, is "that which one has to do with in one's concernful dealings (praxis)" (pp. 96-97). This brings us to Heidegger's tool analysis, a fundamental concept for my investigation of interconstituent wilderness worlds.