BEYOND ANTHROPOCENTRISM: MULTISPECIES NARRATIVES AND BIOCENTRIC ETHICS

From the Enlightenment to the Anthropocene, human civilization has been shaped by the belief in its own supremacy. This belief—rooted in the philosophical, religious, and scientific discourses of modernity—has contributed to what environmental philosopher Val Plum wood calls the “hyper separation” of the human from the rest of nature. In this worldview, humans are framed as autonomous agents, rational decisionmakers, and moral subjects, while the non-human world is relegated to the status of passive, mute, and mechanistic matter. This ontological division between nature and culture, human and animal, subject and object, forms the bedrock of anthropocentrism