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Geo-societal Narratives pp 67–80Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

A Critique of (Weak) Anthropocentric Geoethics

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Abstract

This chapter contributes to the debate about the emerging field of geoethics by questioning a central philosophical feature: (weak) anthropocentrism. Anthropocentrism is a mainstream ethical position held by many people in contemporary societies. It is difficult to recognise it as problematic because it pervades the language of many different discourses, including (geo)scientific discourse. Although geosciences may study the functioning of Earth systems purely for the sake of increasing knowledge (e.g., understanding geologic phenomena), the reality is that a sizable portion of geoscientific knowledge is used to benefit humans by extracting something from nature (e.g., minerals, fossil fuels, water, and rare earths). That is, the non-human world (living and non-living) is essentially understood in instrumental ways. We hypothesise that weak anthropocentrism as a mainstream cultural and theoretical assumption has also been percolating within the geoethics scholarship, which many scholars assumed without further analysis. To assess this hypothesis, we surveyed and analysed about 100 geoethics publications written in the last decade. After discussing several linguistic instances that exemplify weak anthropocentric thinking, we argue that geoethics should constructively criticise the underlying assumptions and move towards non-anthropocentric positions that seem more compatible with geoscientific knowledge, and insights such as ecocentrism or geocentrism.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany

    Giovanni Frigo

  2. Institute of Geosciences, University of Campinas, Campinas, Brazil

    Luiz A. Ifanger

Authors
  1. Giovanni Frigo
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  2. Luiz A. Ifanger
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Giovanni Frigo .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Ronin Institute for Independent Scholarship, Montclair, NJ, USA

    Martin Bohle

  2. International Association for Promoting Geoethics (IAPG), Rome, Italy

    Eduardo Marone

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Frigo, G., Ifanger, L.A. (2021). A Critique of (Weak) Anthropocentric Geoethics. In: Bohle, M., Marone, E. (eds) Geo-societal Narratives. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79028-8_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79028-8_5

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-79027-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-79028-8

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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