Volume 6, Issue 1, Spring 2014
Luke Fischer
Pages 7-32
A Poetic Phenomenology of the Temperate Seasons
Drawing on the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, key ideas in the writings of the poet and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a phenomenological conception of affects, and poems that address the seasons, this article outlines a poetic phenomenology of the temperate seasons. It aims to unite a poetic sensibility for seasonal phenomena with a structured phenomenological approach. In doing so, it presents the seasons as a meaningful polyphony in which human beings also participate. It gives a non-reductive account of how the human experience of the seasons is deeply connected to natural seasonal phenomena and indicates ways in which we can deepen our understanding of, and participation in, the seasons.