Can we overcome the anthropocentrism bias in sustainability discourse?
Abstract
Based on a turn to the rational human subject in Descartes, Kant and Feuerbach, this paper critically examines four efforts at shaping sustainability discourse: the definition of sustainability in Our common future; stewardship Christian theology; forms of partisan justice; and GDP as measure of economic growth. These efforts made certain advances, but because they share the underlying anthropocentric bias of Western philosophy, they fail to step out of the current sustainability paradigm. The paper closes with two suggestions of how to de-centre the human subject and to build a network-view of all species.Downloads
References
Conradie, Ernst 2006. Christianity and ecological theology. Resources for further research.
Stellenbosch: Sun Press.
Descartes, R. 1952. Meditations on first philosophy (trans. E.S. Haldane & G.R.T. Ross). In
Great books of the Western world, vol. 31. London: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 69–103.
Feuerbach, Ludwig 1957. The essence of Christianity. (Translated from the original German by George Eliot). New York: Harper & Brothers.
Garland, Grace 2016. Economic growth and progress: A paradigmatic conflation. Stellenbosch: University of Stellenbosch, unpublished MBA treatise.
Gutierrez, Gustavo 1973. A theology of liberation. London: SCM.
Gutierrez, Gustavo 1993. Option for the poor. In Ellacuria, Ignacio and Sobrino Jon (eds.) Mysterium Liberationis. Fundamental concepts of liberation theology. New York: Orbis, 235-250.
Hall, DJ 1990. The steward. A biblical model come of age. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock.
Kant, Immanuel 1999. Ausgewahlte kleine Schriften. Hamburg: Felix Meier.
Kant, Immanuel 1998. Critique of pure reason. (The Cambridge edition of the works of Immanuel Kant. Translated and edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood). Cambridge: CUP.
McFague, Sallie 1987. Models of God. Theology for an ecological, nuclear age. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
Naudé, Piet 2007. In defence of partisan justice? An ethical reflection on “the preferential option for the poorâ€. Verbum et Ecclesia 28/1, 166-190.
Rawls, John 1971. A theory of justice. Oxford: OUP.
Rawls, John 1999. The law of peoples. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Stiglitz, Joseph, E 2002. Globalization and its discontents. New York: WW Norton.
Stiglitz, Joseph, E 2006. Making globalization work. New York: WW Norton.
Stiglitz, J; Sen, A; Fitoussi, J 2009. Mismeasuring our lives: Why GDP doesn’t add up. Paris: The New Press.
Stuchty, Martin R; Enkvist, Per-Anders; Zumwinkel, Klaus 2016. A good disruption. Redefining growth in the twenty-first century. London: Bloomsbury.
Swanson, Lori J. 2015. A feminist ethic that binds us to mother earth. Ethics and Environment, 20 (2), 83-103.
United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development 1987. Our Common Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Warren Karen J. and Cheney, Jim 1991. Ecological feminism and ecosystem ecology. Hypatia, vol. 6, No.1:179-197.
White, Lynn Jnr. 1967. The historical roots of our ecological crisis. Science, 10 March 1967,
volume 155, number 3767.
Wootton, D. 2015. The invention of science: A new history of the scientific revolution.
London: Penguin Random House.
www.anthropocene.info
This journal is an open access journal, and the authors and journal should be properly acknowledged, when works are cited.
Authors may use the publisher's version for teaching purposes, in books, theses, dissertations, conferences and conference papers.
A copy of the authors’ publisher's version may also be hosted on the following websites:
- Non-commercial personal homepage or blog.
- Institutional webpage.
- Authors Institutional Repository.
The following notice should accompany such a posting on the website: “This is an electronic version of an article published in the African Journal of Business Ethics, Volume XXX, number XXX, pages XXX–XXX”, DOI. Authors should also supply a hyperlink to the original paper or indicate where the original paper (http://ajobe.journals.ac.za/pub) may be found.
The following Creative Commons license applies:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
