Beyond the Human-Nature Dualism. Towards a Concept of Nature as Part of the Life-World

In this paper we demonstrate how dualism was finally installed by the philosophy of Descartes. He not only establishes a dualism between mind and body, he also established a dualism within epistemology; a dualism between the knowing subject, -the cogito ego- and the nature beyond. Although Husserl was fascinated by the philosophy of Descartes and his quest for a true foundation of knowledge, he formulated a critique on the dualism and the separation of human being from the life-world. We are bringing together Husserl's criticism on the misinterpretation of the relationship between scientific theories and the life-world, and contemporary ideas on how to overcome this dualism. Therefore, we introduce the work of contemporary philosophers like Haraway, Latour and Boehm. We demonstrate how these new insights change the way we think about ourselves and our place in the world in fundamental ways: the world now becomes something that we are embedded in and part of, rather than something we are detached from and merely observers of, as representationalism suggests.