The Pioneering Philosophy of Communal Coexistence of Edward Carpenter : The Relationship between Man and Nature

The main objective of this research study will be to examine two major views of the relationship between man and nature. Views of nature formed in the modern enlightenment gave rise to a philosophy that aims for a restoration of an organic view of nature which foresees a new organic relationship between man and nature. The teleological view of nature is of a certain type of harmonic order (the cosmos) into which mankind’s cultural and social conduct is basically subsumed. The true nature of things is not an attribute of some other subject and things that are not within some other subject are considered to be individuals. An entity cannot exist apart from the individual. Therefore, the universal may not exist apart from the individual. Universal things and individual things are not separated and in conflict; rather, the universal exists within the individual, and it is through the individual’s transformation that the self is realized. Since the advent of the modern era, awareness of history has been based upon trends of progress and growth, i.e., the structure of time is thought of as a vertically-divided one. However, a change in the historical view reality to include nature necessitates extremely long units of time, 10,000 or 100 million years, and therefore cannot be adequately depicted linearly. An historical awareness founded on these multilayered, horizontally divided measures of time lies at the foundation of Carpenter’s criticism of civilization.departmental bulletin pape