RSS

Hulings Lecture series at Northland features presentation on connecting with the environment

October 6, 2011

Dr. Samuel Cocks, UW-La Crosse Assistant Professor of Philosophy, will speak about the study of meaningful experience with the natural world at the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute on Thursday, Oct. 13, at 7 p.m. The event, another offering in the Northland College Community Connections series, is free and open to the public. Cocks studies Environmental Philosophy and Eco-Phenomenology.

"Phenomenology is interested in the study of our concrete, lived, and meaningful experience of the environment in all of its diversity, rather than a study of the environment," says Cocks. "Such an approach can lead us to better understand and fundamentally reevaluate our relationship with - and moral responsibility - to the environment."

Dr. Cocks also examines how Asian philosophy may help society approach issues concerning the natural world.

"I am looking forward to having Dr. Cocks illustrate the manner in which humans orient themselves when beginning to learn of others and form relationships. This happens when we meet people for the first time and when we meet landscapes," says Clayton Russell, A.D. & Mary Elizabeth Andersen Hulings Chair in the Humanities at Northland College. "We will come away with a realization of ways to invite relationships with nature and ways we have been blocking our understanding of nature."

The A.D. & Mary Elizabeth Andersen Hulings Chair in the Humanities was established in September 1990 to support a senior scholar in the humanities. The endowment funds promotion and strengthening of the Humanities at Northland College.