Ethics Walk: Nature

The main aim of this workshop is to question our attitude toward Nature and to examine some texts in philosophical tradition in regards to our own ideas and understandings.

We present the participants with three different short texts on Nature by different philosophers in different ages. Žižek and Thoreau offer their own personal opinions about the concrete and abstract understanding of Nature, while in the third text we see a short overview of the connection between Daoism and Stoicism.

Participants will be divided into three groups, each group being assigned with one of three texts, by random choice. They need to read the text and discuss it within the group in a 20 minutes walk around the venue (school, etc). After the group discussion - which needs to focus on the problematic of the text and their understanding of what the Nature is and what is their relationship toward the ideas within the text and their own relations toward Nature - all three groups will meet in the venue and facilitator (teacher) will start the discussion with all groups to present their results, leading the discussion is a Socratic method style.

Materials used for this workshop are the three texts provided in the attached PDF file. Each text represents a different view on Nature and serves as a provoking material for discussion and participant's ideas to develop within the discussions.

Urban surrounding can do just fine for the walk, but choosing the spot with more relaxed and natural surroundings (parks, forests, rivers, etc) would be preferable in order to connect the workshop with the discussion and the topic.

Usually, the introduction to workshop with explanation of the tasks should last for five minutes. The second part of the workshop is a 20 minutes walk which participants do in three groups. Last part is the general discussion where all three groups meet at the venue and present and dicuss their results in another 45 - 60 minutes, depending on the groups and facilitator's needs.

At the end, participants themselves can describe in one word the experience they had during the workshop.

Teacher's role is to explain the tasks at the beginning, which need to be clear and sound to all the participants. Teacher then can join a group during the 20 minutes walk, or can prepare further for the general discussion. During general discussion, teacher acts like Socratic coach, asking questions and leading the discussion, making sure that everyone gets their turn in discussion and that there are no digressions.

The group should be of at least 3 - 5 participants per group in order to have a quality discussion and flow of ideas, even though it could be done in three pairs in extreme situations.
The other solution with smaller groups could be to add another text (for example, if there are 12 participants, one could do the workshop in three groups of four participants, or even four groups of three participants, etc).