Grundfragen einer phänomenologischen Oikologie

The article begins by posing some preliminary questions in order to develop a philosophy of the oikological. In this sense an Oikology clarifies, on the one hand, the conditions that enable human beings to intervene in the world and in its social and natural contexts and on the other hand, demonstrates the basic options available for such an intervention as well as addressing what “option” in this specific sense might mean. This essay concerns itself only with the first of these two aspects and provides us with the initial rudimentary stages of research in this area. It attempts to provide answers to the question of what place and ethos mean in relation to the sphere of human bodily experience. The first part of the essay addresses which sites of the living subject allow for and regulate the fact that human beings can intervene in the world. The second part attempts to demonstrate how such sites, anchored in the living body, form the conditions for the possibility that wo(man) is an ethical being.