| A critical consensus within the field of environmental philosophy and ethics holds that anthropocentrism, the philosophical view that humans beings stand as ontological distinct and superior to the rest of nature, lies at the conceptual root of the current "ecological crisis." A vast majority of people, both within and apart from religious circles, have offered environmental stewardship as an anthropology that eschews anthropocentrism. However, other secular environmental thinkers and Christian ecotheologians have begun to call stewardship's ecological soundness into question.;In Part One of this dissertation, I offer historical, sociological, and theological examination of the anthropology of environmental stewardship and those alternatives put forth by representative Christian ecotheologians. My analysis reveals that as a byproduct of a dialectic between "despotic" and "mystical" anthropologies, stewardship remains rooted in anthropocentric modes of thought. At the same time, because of methodological incompleteness and categorical vagueness, Christian ecotheologians, despite their best intentions and efforts, fail to generate a genuine alternative to environmental stewardship. Given these difficulties, I conclude Part One by suggesting that only by attempting to construct a truly non-anthropocentric anthropology can one adequately uproot anthropocentrism.;In Part Two of the dissertation, I cull what I've found to be the "best available" conceptual resources from a variety of fields: Val Plumwood's ecofeminist philosophy; Donald Gelpi's philosophical theology; James Kay's "post normal" ecosystem science; "green" biblical exegesis of Genesis; Catholic feminist Trinitarian theology, and Hannah Arendt's ethics of natality. I argue that when planted together, these resources provide the requisite conceptual "seeds" for re-thinking human, non-human, and divine agency and self according to qualities of "responsiveness" and "re-creativity." Such a "transcentric" (i.e. avoiding all forms of centrism) and "poly-relational" (i.e. opting for multiple identities of relating) understanding of selfhood allows for an alternative set of identities to stewardship within the various realms of life: "kinship" in the bio- and metaphysical realms, "fellowship" (citizen-partner) in the socio-political-economic realm, and "companionship" (i.e. "to break bread together") in the religious-theological realm. |
