THuNB – Temperamental roots of the human-Nature bond

This project aims to recover a forgotten meaning of temperament, which can be described as elemental and spiritual. This notion is recovered as the foundation of a new conception of human nature. Indeed, as it will be demonstrated, being seen from its temperament, the human being is immediately placed in communion with Mother Nature, so that the description of its fundamental traits immediately becomes a description of its primal relationship with Nature. In the first part of the project we will reconstruct both the gradual loss of the elemental and spiritual meaning of temperament and its sporadic resurfacing in certain historical moments, with particular attention to the nineteenth century. Meanwhile, in the second part of the project, the results of the previous part will be used to construct a new philosophical-anthropological model, such as to inspire today’s debate in philosophical ecology and political ecology. The project aims, therefore, to make new contributions both to the history of thought, recovering a lost conception, and to the political ecological debate, urging decision makers to look deeper into the options of ecological wisdom, by means of a new conception of human nature and its relationship with Nature.