Abstract
D.Litt. et Phil. (Philosophy)
Humanity’s relationship with the natural world is problematic – not only is the globe teetering on the edge of environmental catastrophe due to human interference and exploitation, but individual animals are also treated like commodities in increasingly desensitised ways. This thesis explores this problematic relationship, and aims to provide a solution thereto. In doing so, I argue that it is the human, shaped by modernity – as it developed in the West and was exported around the world through colonialism – who has an especially problematic relationship with the natural world. This relationship is rooted in a particular ‘view-of-nature’, which I argue developed in Ancient Greece, and was reinforced through Judeo-Christianity. This view-of-nature informs the modern human’s view of herself as apart from, and superior to, the natural environment and its inhabitants. I argue that some salient ideas originating in sub-Saharan Africa may provide a potential alternative view-of-nature, based in communitarianism and interconnectedness, which may remedy the modern human’s relationship with her environment. To this end, I develop an alternative view-of-nature, named ‘critical re-wilding’. Critical re-wilding is a view-of-nature that is essentially communitarian and emphasises humanity’s interconnectedness with the global biosphere and its inhabitants. As such, it flows from the realisation that the Western inherited intellectual tradition that places the modern human in dominion over and as superior to nature is fundamentally flawed. Critical re-wilding is a process that accentuates reintegration with the web-of-life and peaceful co-existence with the environment and its dwellers. Critical re-wilding is a cognitive, emotional, physical, and psychological shift in how the modern human views nature.
This thesis offers originality in at least four respects. In the first instance, I provide a novel approach to the environmental crisis by developing a theory of critical re-wilding. This theory proposes a philosophical anthropology with strong ethical tenets, which is the second aspect...