The elemental is that indescribable force of nature that resists our dualistic categories. Elements are liminal things. And they hint to us that there are certain truths in life that can be sensed or perceived but not described. During a thunderstorm, he writes, we recognize that we are not the masters of our world, but that something more fundamental than humanity itself encompasses our living and moving and being. And the elemental makes itself known to us through imagination.
Elements allow the Other to show itself in ways that intellect alone can never accomplish.
Of course, nature and the elements during the time of Coleridge differs from nature as we know it today. In this respect, there is a certain irony to Sallis' use of 18th and 19th century texts within a discussion of environmental devastation. While we may agree with Sallis that these philosophers offer important methods for retrieving a new sense of the natural world, we may well wonder if his argument comes as too little, too late. But even this disparity between nature as it was two hundred years ago and nature as it has been ravaged during the 20th century does not discourage Sallis from venturing his final claim. If philosophy would return to its original reflection upon the natural elements, then the philosopher would find herself receiving a vision of the self as situated within a much larger picture.