According to Irwin, we rely on a false dilemma when describing environmental destruction that separates nature from the human world. His book explores the phenomenological ways this represents a loss in our lives. By dichotomizing nature and culture, we view the natural world as a "storehouse of resources," or pristine spaces humans enter and disturb. Contemporary living means residing in a forgetfulness about our participation in the environment, which leads to poor self-understanding, and manifests in a distorted relation to our environment. The result is this "uncanniness," made worse in the technological age. He uses the term intra-action to convey that an organism "acts within and as a part of its environment, rather than acting upon or toward it" (p. 13). Irwin asks if, in Heidegger's estimation, we are able to overcome this uncanniness.

Informed by Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of the flesh, Irwin envisions an embodied inhabitation in the world with the understanding that the uncanniness may be inescapable. Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.