This study is to explore the aspects of contradiction observed in the relationship between human and nature, or in the human attitude toward nature. All the environmental problems caused by human beings are considered to stem from the contradictory ontological condition of the human species, that is, the discrepancy between the existential and the perceptual condition inherent in humanity itself. Meanwhile, the practical inconsistencies are shown in the emotional, moral, and literary responses of human beings toward nature. Man is an inconspicuous part of nature in biological terms, while he subsumes the whole world of nature and beyond in his perceptive realm. Man discerns himself, a perceptive center, from nature, considering nature as an external environment. But his body, though a purely natural existence, can never be considered external, but it is himself. Man can never exist as a self-sufficient being completely independent of the natural environment. Nevertheless, he cannot but make a demarcation between himself and nature, and between wildness and civilization in order to survive in the given environment as well as to understand the world and the self. Human beings cannot be completely assimilated into the order of nature as the other species do, but they are a peculiar and self-contradictory species that can survive and thrive only through the act of at once demarcation from, and affiliation with, nature.