Steps to a Moral Revolution – Contribution to GTI Forum Solidarity with Animals

Anthropocentrism and Its Discontents

The ways in which most human societies regard and treat animals are primarily informed by the ethics of anthropocentrism. It dominates mainstream environmental ethics that inform international practices and norms today. In a previous post, I argued that anthropocentrism presents a major cultural obstacle on the way to a Great Transition.¹ It imposes a fatal bias on our views on human procreation and progress; it espouses a self-defeating notion of human flourishing; it instrumentalizes all non-humans and our ecological relationships with them, which not only sets us up for ecological suicide but prevents us from feeling solidarity with animals. In her impassioned introductory essay, Crist criticized the anthropocentric “differential imperative” for its self-defeating and logically flawed rationale.

Beyond Western civilization, and throughout many centuries, anthropocentric value priorities—especially under strong anthropocentrism, which recognizes no intrinsic value for non-humans—have shaped the ways in which animals were treated in many cultures. This galvanized permissive attitudes towards the casual mistreatment, abuse, mutilation, murder, and extinction of animals for the sake of cheap resources, recreation, entertainment and rituals, economic growth, and the continuous expansion of our living space.

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