Immagine di copertina: Briton Rivière, A Roman Holiday (1881), National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Abstract: Some Historical Considerations on the Roots of Legal Environmental Anthropocentrism
The true roots of the Western, domineering-destructive, anthropocentric approach to nature date back millennia before the Christian era, with the spread of the culture of the “Indo-European” peoples, which overwhelmed and radically transformed the previous Neolithic agricultural civilizations. This culture then expanded to global domination thanks to its vocation for calculating and technological rationality, its inexhaustible thirst for conquest, its military and social hierarchy, its slavery, and the subjugation of nature and women. This mentality has eclipsed other innate human propensities, such as the contemplative, mystical, and poetic understanding of nature, which today are crucial to rediscover, including through an ecological education that is not only rational-scientific and factual, but also emotional and affective.