Ecological Humanism?

The encyclical Laudato Si’ is remarkable for the new topics it discusses, but its novelty lies, above all, in the way it approaches the main issue, ecology.

Oct 01, 2015

By Joel Molinario
The encyclical Laudato Si’ is remarkable for the new topics it discusses, but its novelty lies, above all, in the way it approaches the main issue, ecology.

Pope Francis manages to think about ecology, economics, politics, poverty, technology and anthropology as a complex, inter-dependent whole.

At the core of Laudato Si’, Chapter III, introduces a fundamental reflection on the links between technology, anthropology and ecology.

Paragraphs 101 to 123 put forward decisive arguments, ,with a view to establishing an ecological humanism based on Christian anthropology. “(…) Many problems of today’s world stem from the tendency, at times unconscious, to make the method and aims of science and technology an epistemological paradigm, which shapes the lives of individuals and the workings of society,” explains the Pope.

Technology is not only a means with measurable ecological consequences, it is a paradigm, hence a way of being and of understanding with which our societies grasp the world, nature, human beings and animals.

Francis is not backward looking. He praises the benefits of modern technology for individuals and peoples (quality of life, medicine, transport, communications, etc.) and he admires the beauty of what man can achieve when he constructs an aircraft, a bridge or a skyscraper!

But for Francis, technology has ceased to be an instrument. It has become a power — here he is talking about technocracy. It is an ideology — here he is talking about technocrats.

The technocrat’s commonplace is consumable utility, which turns into domination, and technology becomes the focus of unlimited trust in a better tomorrow. But technology is a comprehensive principle that is never made explicit because it always intervenes in fragmented knowledge, which fails to appreciate the whole. The technocratic paradigm is thus paradoxical: it is, in fact, a global commonplace of human intervention in the world and on ourselves, and at the same time, technology creators are scattered and seem unaware of each other and of their repercussions.

When Pope Francis finishes explaining the technocratic paradigm, he invites us to go further and engage in an in-depth analysis of the anthropological crisis now affecting human beings subjected to technology.

As modernity has started to wane, it has deviated from Biblical anthropology towards anthropocentric excess in which man is no longer in his true place because nature and the life he has received have been turned into materials to be grasped, exploited and consumed.

Francis denounces this dominating, pretentious humanism which engenders violence towards animals, fragility, strangeness and nature. Environmental nature must be understood in the same way as vulnerable human nature.

When we fail to acknowledge the worth of a poor person, a person with disabilities or a human embryo, then nature has no intrinsic value either; it becomes merely a space of exploitation, “it will be hard for us to hear the cries of nature itself.”

The Pope is calling for a cultural revolution with a view to arriving at an ecological humanity, for “there can be no renewal of our relationship with nature without a renewal of humanity itself.”

For Francis, at the core of the ecological project, there is a genuine anthropological project in accordance with God’s project, which recognizes and values human beings as collaborators of creation, according to their unique capacities of knowledge, freedom, will and responsibility. --Commonweal

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