IGWEBUIKE: African Journal of Arts and Humanities

The environmental crisis bedeviling the world today has led to a growing interest in the field of environmental ethics, an academic discipline whose concerns involve the articulation of moral obligations of humans towards the natural environment and justifications of such obligations. Among the theoretical frameworks in this enterprise is anthropocentrism, whose tenets include the view that only humans have intrinsic value, while nonhuman entities have instrumental values to satisfy human interests. The critics of the theory accuse it of being the cause of environmental crisis. As a remedy to the crisis, they generally argue that nonhumans too have intrinsic value. In defense of anthropocentrism, Norton and Hayward argue that it is not anthropocentrism that causes environmental degradation. The former holds that the cause is rather ‘felt preferences,’ while the latter holds that it is ‘illegitimate human desires.’ Both regard these causes as not being essentially anthropocentric, but anti-anthropocentric. By employing an expository and analytic method, this paper advances the argument against anthropocentrism by demonstrating that the solution to environmental degradation is attainable through universal dialogue, whereby the intrinsic values of all beings, whether human or nonhuman, are recognised, enabling humans to understand themselves as beings in a dialogical relationship with other beings. In this dialogical relationship, the survival and interests of all entities are respected.

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