Is Man Just Another Animal? - a podcast by Daniel Dal Monte

In this podcast, I start a conversation based on the wonderful blog of Manuel Alfonseca, a Spanish thinker, known as Divulgacion de Ciencia. The piece is on whether man (including both sexes) has a special status in relation to the non-human environment. Certain contemporary biologists are advocating a value-free conception of life, indicating a complete egalitarianism that puts all species on the same level, which is a great rupture fro the tradition of the Judeo-Christian religious view (man is created in the image of God) as well as the Aristotelian view that nature is ordered towards the ends of man. Certain environmental movements have arisen in recent decades that blame humanity for upsetting the balance of nature with "unsustainable" practices, and recommend a restraint of population growth and industrialization in the name of the ongoing sustenance of the non-human domain. This new paradigm sees anthropocentrism as a philosophy that has given license to human beings to wantonly exploit their environment, and recommends re-centering value on the non-human domain in a biocentric manner. I do not agree that anthropocentrism entails that we have no regard for our environment--in fact, I argue that it can lead to a heightened regard!

Here is a link to Alfonseca's blog, which is in Spanish: https://divulciencia.blogspot.com/2015/06/es-el-hombre-un-animal-mas.html

---

This episode is sponsored by
· Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Further episodes of CultureCast

Further podcasts by Daniel Dal Monte

Website of Daniel Dal Monte