Philosophy of Nature, Environment, and Landscape

Code: FIL14590M

6 ECTS

Duration: 15 weeks/156 hours

Scientific Area: Philosophy

Teaching languages: Portuguese

Languages of tutoring support: Portuguese, English

Regime de Frequência: Presencial

Presentation

The unit provides the historical, social, philosophical and scientific elements to understand, in the Western tradition and in other cultural areas, the implications between the notions of nature, environment and landscape and their repercussions on representations and on concrete human practices.

Sustainable Development Goals

Erradicar a fome - Acabar com a fome, alcançar a segurança alimentar e melhoria da nutrição e promover a agricultura sustentável.

Saúde de qualidade - Assegurar uma vida saudável e promover o bem-estar para todos, em todas as idades.

Educação de qualidade - Assegurar a educação inclusiva, e equitativa e de qualidade, e promover oportunidades de aprendizagem ao longo da vida para todos.

Energias renováveis e acessíveis - Garantir acesso à energia barata, confiável, sustentável e renovável para todos.

Cidades e comunidades sustentáveis - Tornar as cidades e os assentamentos humanos inclusivos, seguros, resilientes e sustentáveis.

Ação climática - Tomar medidas urgentes para combater a mudança climática e seus impactos (*).

Learning Goals

Conceived in a prolegomenic and problematizing way, this unit seeks to lead students to a critical and broad discernment of the different meanings and meanings of nature, environment and landscape, whether in common use and understanding, or in scientific, artistic and philosophical concepts, providing the historical and social, philosophical and scientific elements that allow us to understand, in the Western tradition and in other cultural areas, the implications between those notions and their repercussions on representations and on concrete human practices.
This implies the development of scientific competences by activating existing knowledge and information; and the hermeneutic, critical and dialogic abilities of students on the exposed subjects.

1. Amplitude, ambivalence and complexity of notions of nature, environment and landscape. The question of the natural and the cultural, the spontaneous and the artificial.
2. The notion of nature assumed in the notion of environment and the separation of the physical-mechanistic notion. The notions of physis and natura and the modern understanding of nature. The notions of evolution and ecology. The formulation of a science of the environment.
3. The constitution of the notion of environment. Biotic and abiotic factors, ecological and ethological aspects. The cultural transformation of nature.
4. The mediating function of landscape. Original conceptions of landscape, in China and Europe; the aesthetic experience and the geographical formalization of the notion of landscape.
5. Anthropological diversity of the implications of nature, environment, landscape. The ecological crisis, the contemporary "disappearance" of the notion of "Nature" and landscape multifunctional expansion.

Teaching Methods

Lectures by teachers; thematic comments and debates; presentations of work by students. Bibliographic reviews; written and oral knowledge assessment tests; individual and group research work.

Evaluation:
Continuous evaluation: assistance: 20%; participation and debate: 20%; final essay and discussion: 60%.
Exam: 100%.