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The Importance of Nature for Thought

Gerardo Posada considers some of the philosophical benefits of green spaces.

One of the most important tasks of the philosopher, if not the most important, is to think. Nature presents her with a space where her task can be most easily carried out. Even in large cities, wooded groves, parks, and gardens, are some of the places the philosopher counts upon in order to be able to build authentic thought beyond the limitations and contingency of her normal, congested world.

Of nature’s many aspects, I have chosen to focus on three here, namely, nature as freedom, as inspiration, and as health. I will also show how three philosophers individually embodied these reactions to nature, beginning with the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), who praised nature as being where we’re able to break away from the lifestyle prescribed to us by society. Next we will look at Cuban philosopher Jose Marti (1853-1895), who referred to nature as a ‘healer’. Lastly we will consider Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), who saw nature as a source of inspiration. I will conclude by presenting some problems this argument faces, and potential answers to them.

Woman in Nature by Paul Gregory

Nature as Freedom, Inspiration, & Health

We cannot deny that oftentimes a thinker needs to be in their own company. In solitude they can best determine the extent to which they will allow the influence of others to affect their thought. In solitude, the philosopher is free from interruption, and free in a more profound sense too: they don’t exist merely as the passive recipient of what has been already tailored for them by others. In solitude, their thought becomes authentic and autonomous, and so do they.

Nature offers the thinker the space for this transformation to take place. In nature, the philosopher can embark on an unhindered journey of self-discovery and self-determination beyond the normal facts of their life: in nature, and in the solitude it gives, the thinker can elevate themself above chance limitations or a pre-conceived social identity, and challenge and examine these limitations to finally give shape to their own self and thought. Generally speaking, green spaces can serve as a refuge where thinkers can contemplate and freely build their thought. Nature provides them with space, offers them a choice; and if one of the agreed constituents of freedom is the capacity for choice, how can we call ourselves free if we have not chosen who to be and what to think? Hence, nature is freedom.

Nature also presents the thinker with an environment from which inspiration can be easily drawn. The colours of a field, the majesty of an old tree, or the sublime sight of a mountainous landscape, have contributed to the birth of some of the most important thoughts and artistic expressions throughout history. Within nature, the thinker’s creativity is triggered, allowing the great accomplishments in thought and art which have enhanced the life of so many around the world.

Finally, the demands of human society and its pace can be overwhelming to some. Financial worries, feelings of unhappiness, depression, unsatisfied desires, unfulfilled expectations, pollution, and so on, play their role in the genesis of many of the psychological ailments which loom over us nowadays. However, nature serves as a sanctuary from this; as a haven where the thinker is able to detach from whatever adversely affects their well-being – physical as well as psychological – and thus, where their thought can gain health and robustness.

Thinkers On Nature: 1. Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau’s cabin by the lake, from Walden.

Walden (1854), one of Thoreau’s many books, is the account of his experience while living in the wild near Walden Pond in Massachusetts, where he built a cabin. He moved in there on 4th July 1845, seeking to demonstrate to his fellow citizens a way out of their materialistic lifestyle, preaching a simpler living closer to nature instead.

Thoreau understood that the lifestyle established through capitalism and industrialisation was pushing people away from nature, and away from freedom. According to him, its imposition was making it impossible for people to see that there were alternative ways of living their lives, and that their liberty to become who they could potentially become.

Thoreau may have missed the fact that some of his fellow citizens might have chosen to live the capitalist/industrial lifestyle after careful consideration, and rather than being coerced into it. Nonetheless, his goal was to set an example, and to make everybody who wanted to renounce the life of working for profit realise that there was a way out of it, to being a free individual. As R.J. Schneider writes, “For Thoreau, the purpose of life’s journey is to explore this potential, and nature provided the world, the moral landscape, in which to explore it” (The Cambridge Companion to Henry David Thoreau, 1995). Thoreau was very aware of the effect a materialistic lifestyle was having on the health of his neighbours, who dedicated most of their time to keeping up with the demands of a fast-paced society. He often declared how his time living in the wild had helped him to overcome feelings of anxiety and loneliness: “The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in the house today is not drear and melancholy, but good for me too” (Walden). At first he was sceptical about his enterprise and afraid that he would become lonely and bored. However, while living in the wild those thoughts dispersed, as he discovered the tremendous value of the solitude which nature allowed for the development of his ideas.

2. Jose Marti

Jose Marti (1853-1895) is best known for his role in the process of Cuban independence from Spain. However, from an early age he was also devoted to the appreciation and conservation of the Cuban countryside.

Marti had been influenced by the philosopher, and friend of Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), of whom he says: “He was one of those to whom Nature reveals herself and opens and stretches out her many arms as if to envelop the whole body of her child in them” (‘Emerson’, 1891).

When writing on how Cuban communities ought to develop once independence from Spain was gained, Marti was keen to argue the importance for its communities to be built within natural surroundings, and that their inhabitants should always concern themselves with the conservation of nature in general, in order to promote their own health: “The forest restores man’s faith and reason; it is eternal youth” (Ibid).

Marti believed it essential to live in communion with nature, as a way of achieving a more virtuous life, and a healthier one too. He emphasized how he had often witnessed its benefits, according to him, “Nature inspires, heals, consoles, and fortifies man” (Ibid). These effects are very important for the development of thought. And since green spaces are usually the major representatives of nature within large cities, they can also benefit the city-bound thinker by inspiring, healing, consoling, and fortifying her.

3. Friedrich Nietzsche

Once Friedrich Nietzsche gave up teaching at the University of Basel for good in 1879, he moved to Sils Maria in Switzerland, a place he would refer to as ‘the Promised Land’. Nietzsche spent a great part of his life looking for somewhere he could develop a healthy kind of thought, as well as a place where his problematic physical health could improve. Sils Maria, nestling between two lakes in an Alpine valley, with the majesty of its natural surroundings, offered him the opportunity.

Nietzsche liked to say that thought and the life that proceeds out of it are strongly determined by the environment which surrounds the thinker. In fact, he considered the role nature plays in the development of thought as being crucial: “these little things – nourishment, place, climate, relaxation, the whole casuistry of egoism – are incomparably more important than anything that has been considered important hitherto” (Ecce Homo, 1908).

Nietzsche proudly describes in Ecce Homo how, while walking along the shores of Lake Silvaplana in Sils Maria, the idea that would serve as the cornerstone of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1889), the idea of eternal recurrence, struck him like a lightning bolt: “On that day I was walking through the woods by Lake Silvaplana. I stopped next to a massive block of stone that towered up in the shape of a pyramid…” to have the epiphany that we should live as if we will live the same life over again and again. The boulder he refers to is now known as the ‘Zarathustra stone’, and can still be found by the lake. Through this example we can see what Nietzsche meant when he talked about the importance of the surroundings within which the thinker dwells, and the influence this has on the development of their thought.

Lake Silvaplana
Giorgio Galeotti 2022 Creative Commons 4

Problems & Solutions

The reader might yet feel unconvinced about the extent to which profound thinking depends on the natural environment. The reader at this point be asking questions worth answering.

Against the idea of nature as freedom – that is, as the place the thinker counts upon in order to develop authentic, autonomous thought away from the determinations of the social world – the reader may object that many philosophers have achieved the same results within environments which have little or nothing to do with nature. Someone might argue that thinkers have also found the necessary solitude within confinement instead – for instance, in prison.

Doubtless, some thinkers have; but it has not been my goal to establish nature as the only place where the thinker will find freedom to build a thought of their own. I concede that this can occur within other settings. Yet, what kind of thoughts will the thinker produce within a prison, if not the bleakest of them? No true life affirmation will be found there; no strongly nourished thought will be built there. Indeed, where the openness and endlessness of nature is lacking, I contend that no truly free thought will be found.

Nonetheless, inspiration has not always come from nature and its manifestations. The free creator has also sought and found it elsewhere than in the majesty of a tree, a sublime mountainous landscape, or the otherworldly reflection of the sun in the waters of the ocean: some have taken inspiration from their daily experiences, or from their victories and defeats. Even a visit to the supermarket can inspire.

Although I agree with these observations, I consider their possibilities rather limited. The mundane daily experiences of the thinker – the feelings a supermarket visit produce in them, for example – are merely subjective. They might certainly provide them with inspiration, but what will be produced out of them will lack universality. That is, not all the recipients of their thought will identify with it. On the other hand, all humans without exception have an intimate and special connection with nature. What comes from nature, and nature itself, affects us all, and ultimately in the same manner: it overwhelms and awes us all. Here relativism is overcome; for be it a sunrise, a sunset, or the silver moonlight which inspires us, it is still nature.

The examples I’ve presented in this article generally refer to nature on a larger scale than the green spaces often found in modern cities. Still, city parks, as the tamed representatives of wild nature, can still serve as a source of freedom, inspiration, and health, contributing thus to the development of their thought. In this they are important.

It’s true that thinkers have not always sought a healthy natural environment to produce thought. Some of them owe their inspirations to their pains, troubles, and even their illnesses. Even so, have not also these thinkers, after time has taken its toll on their bodies and life, retreated to more peaceful, quiet dwellings? In nature, the put-upon thinker is allowed to rest and as if from a prolonged war, and regain their jeopardized and neglected health. Did not even the Romanian-French philosopher Emil Cioran (1911-95), during his final years, finally ask God for a truce, and dedicate the last of his time in this world to walks around the gardens of Paris?

Gerardo Posada is a Salvadoran philosophy postgraduate based in London.