The Ecological Citizen: Confronting human supremacy
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What is anthropocentrism? (A definition)
Anthropocentrism restricts value to human beings, either mostly or entirely. Such an attitude frames the natural world as 'the environment', consisting of 'natural resources', 'ecosystem services', 'spiritual support' and so on. That view then permits measuring the value of the natural world in terms of its usefulness to human beings alone. Its value in its own right, to itself, and in ways that resist calibration are sidelined. So are questions of ethics respecting non-humans.
From a broader, deeper and longer point of view, such an approach to nature underwrites ecocide, whether gradual or sudden, as a result of its failure to recognise and address the natural world in ethical terms. In addition, anthropocentrism suffers from crippling limitations including the power of selfish interests, a narrow frame of reference and view of relevant non-human stakeholders, a short-term time scale, our ignorance and our fallibility.
It is sometimes argued that since humans are doing the valuing in this context, anthropocentrism is unavoidable. This is wrong. Humans may be the relevant valuers (although they are far from the only ones), but there is no good reason why what they value – what they put at the centre – must also be human.
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For further reading, see: Curry P (2017) Ecological Ethics: An Introduction, Polity Press.
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