The Anthroponomist: The Moral Confusion of Environmentalism around the Notion of Anthropocentrism

The discourse of the anthropocene is morally confused. It focuses on the effects of human agency on planetary ecology. But, as in the ridiculous usage of the term “anthropocentric” so prevalent in environmentalism today, it does not understand the moral consequences of invoking the notion of humanity. That humans cause changes or that we humans value the world from our perspective does not explain why we ought to care about our agency or evaluation. The only reason we ought to care is that we are morally responsible beings who have reason to evaluate the effects of our lives on our environments. And this is what the Renaissance meant by humanism. Humanism is the moral capacity to be responsible for our values and for our effects. The issue, then, is that we lack humanity when we let our form of life distort the planetary ecology beyond our values or when we thoughtlessly disfigure, abuse or exploit other forms of life that anyone with humanity would find meaningful. The issue, then, is not that humanity is out of control or that we are too centered on our own humanity, but that we are not centered enough in our own humanity. We have the capacity to be thoughtful and caring in line with our values, but we have accepted an anarchic political economy where our actions outstrip our values and throw us into risk of a mass extinction cascade where we endanger future generations and callously and cruelly use other forms of life along the way. Misusing the term “anthropocentrism” deflects discussion away from our capacity for responsibility and breeds misanthropy. In this paper, I develop this argument about moral responsibility, situating it in a reading of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and show how it commits us to the political project of anthroponomy.