The Danger of Anthropocentrism

 

No philosophical system will ever be close to the truth as long as it is anthropocentric. This means that we can have no valid philosophy until we are willing to stop putting the myth of human superiority and importance at the center of all logic, ethics, aesthetics, epistemology and metaphysics. “When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples.” (i) From Rousseau to Nietzsche, Voltaire to Santayana, from Plato to Nussbaum the myth of human superiority and importance has been at the core of philosophy.

Philosophy comes from the Greek φιλοσοφία, philosophia, which means 'love of wisdom'. Most simply defined it is the study of questions about reason, existence, knowledge, values, mind and language. In modern times we also find a philosophy of just about anything and everything. However, in all honesty, all of the classic areas and questions are about and/or related to human beings. That, I would argue, may be valid and acceptable but it still does not require anthropocentrism. We can have an entire philosophy of birds, for example, without the belief that birds are the most superior of all animals. Therefore, I would hold that we can have an entire philosophy of humans without believing or claiming them to be the most superior of all animals.

One of the biggest problems I find in this regard is that instead of attempting to understand the truth of this thesis and why it is important to acknowledge it in our philosophy, humans get defensive; often verging on arrogance and even hostility. Santayana made the statement, "In a word, there is no ambiguity in the truth; it enshrines all the facts, no matter how complex, with their exact configuration." Would we challenge and deny, or even attempt to alter, the truth in order to protect our fragile egos? If we deny this fundamental truth and replaced it with a non-truth, we have negated everything we claim to be true and logical.

For example. If we say that A=1, B=1, and C=1 therefore A+B+C=3. No problem. It is easy to see that in base-10, 1+1+1=3. What happens if we find that, for millennium C has not really equaled one but, in fact, was zero? That would mean for all that time we had been proclaiming the truth that A+B+C=3, when the truth was actually that A+B+C=2 and we have been making decisions, judging situations and living according to a falsehood. Would we not want to correct that?

To admit that birds and insects are more important to the well-being of Earth than humans; which is a relatively easy fact to substantiate; human life and what positive characteristics we might find in it do not come to an end. It would impact our ontology but it would impact it in a positive manner. Instead of spinning our philosophical wheels trying to justify a false claim; viz. human supremacy; we would focus our energy on how we might regain our role as functional members of nature.

Deep ecologists (iii), Arne Naess and John Joseph Lupinacci, identify anthropocentrism as the root cause of our most basic problems and crises; viz. climate change, human overpopulation and mass extinction. (iv)

It is philosophy and psychology; often with the support of ethnology and history; that so often holds up the mirror of reality to an arrogant and anthropocentric species. Not only in philosophy, but in all of the other areas of research that study the various aspects of the human being, we must cease our fruitless effort to support and maintain anthropocentrism; we must accept and study what we truly are in relation to the natural world before there is no natural world to which to relate.

FOOTNOTES:

(i) Crane, Stephen. (1897) "The Open Boat" Scribner's Magazine.

(ii) Santayana, George. (1927). "The Realm of Essence: Book First of Realms of Being." New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. p. 123

(iii) deep ecology =df an environmental philosophy which promotes the inherent worth of all living beings regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs, plus the restructuring of modern human societies in accordance with such ideas.

(iv) Naess, Arne 1973. "The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement". Inquiry 16: 95-100 -AND-

Lupinacci, John Joseph (2017-07-06). "Addressing 21st Century Challenges in Education: An Ecocritical Conceptual Framework toward an Ecotistical Leadership in Education". Impacting Education: Journal on Transforming Professional practice. 2 (1). doi:10.5195/ie.2017.31. ISSN 2472-5889.