DEMETRIOS P. MATTHOPOULOS
& D. THEOCHAROPOULOS
ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT
Environmental Aesthetics and Hermeneutics in Environmental Management
Effective environmental management should be governed by deep ethical values. Evolution provided organisms with a set of values, referred as intrinsic value or ‘autaxia’, based on which they interact. Evolution provided humanity with the best possible systems to perceive and attribute this ‘autaxia’ to respond adequately. The development of the perceiving and attributing systems contributed to human sociopolitical promotion.
Human sociopolitical promotion provided the opportunity to develop philosophically. Thus, assessing environmental ‘autaxia’ represents our personality that is our ethical status. The reification of the environmental assessment viacolloquialspeechconstitutes ‘hermeneutics’. When we refer to speech we mean in the sense of the expressive ability of structured thinking.
The excelent knowledge of speeking is the basis of communication and the ability to externalize (interpret) the perceived representations. The process of interpretation develops relationships withmoralvalues. Our expressive ability, our hermeneutic ability, has to follow defined rules in order to render the aesthetic evaluation in its true dimension. Thus, the one who decides to perform an interpretation has to apply it on the basis of deep ethical values.
The interpretation in which we are engaged is closely related to our ethical status. However, although all organisms discern and attribute this set of values human intervention, particularly post scientific revolution era, gradually became intensive resulting to environmental weathering. Philosophical considerations regarding environmental aesthetics in relation to externalizing the perceived representations, hermeneutics, should govern environmental management decision makers.