NATURE AND FREEDOM - A HEIDEGGERIAN CRITIQUE OF BIOCENTRIC AND SOCIOCENTRIC ENVIRONMENTALISM

A reformulation of our understanding of freedom is required if we are adequately to confront the environmental crisis. Engaging the debate b etween biocentric ecologists and sociocentric ecologists, I argue that the biocentric effort to ascribe rights (negative liberty) to nature is misbegotten. In turn, I suggest that the sociocentric effort to see k ecological realignment through the extension of human reason (positi ve liberty) is equally problematic. Martin Heidegger, who rejects both ''negative'' and ''positive'' notions of liberty, offers an understan ding of human freedom that constitutes an ecologically attuned alterna tive.