Phenomenology versus pragmatism: Seeking a restoration environmental ethic

In this paper, I challenge the work of David Abram, who makes a case for ph enomenology as the only philosophical tradition amenable to restoring balan ced human-nature relationships. While phenomenology provides a useful conce ptual framework for understanding the environmental ethics of oral cultures , this paper considers the tradition of American pragmatism to be more appl icable to the environmental task at hand: devising an environmental ethic o f reform for modern, capitalist, Western culture. The application of phenom enology and pragmatism to environmental ethics is compared according to fou r main philosophical questions: the essential uncertainty of life, the exis tence of a human/ nature divide, the necessary conditions for claiming trut h, and the relative role of metaphysics or imagination and that of science in relating to the world.