The Humanism in Posthumanism

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The growth in environmental concern during recent decades has prompted much discrimination around the concept of ‘nature’, and this has been reflected in the now complex and ramifying field of ecophilosophy. But in a broad brush way we can distinguish between two main tendencies: on the one hand, in the calls to re-value nature as a site of intrinsic value, to recognize our kinship and continuity with other living creatures, and to abandon anthropocentric conceptions of humanity’s privileged place within the eco-system, we have been witness to what can be termed a ‘nature-endorsing’ tendency. Nature endorsers lament the loss or erosion of nature, emphasize human dependency on the planetary eco-system, and demand that we both acknowledge environmental limits and revise our consumption with a view to keeping within the confines they impose. As a counter to this, on the other hand, although sharing some of its naturalistic arguments on humananimal affinities, we have the contructionist tendency that emphasizes the formation or mediation of human culture in whatever comes to count as ‘nature’. This approach is sceptical of any redemptionist appeal to nature’s powers, while also often celebrating the breakdown of clearcut distinctions between artifice and nature (organic and inorganic) as an emancipatory advance. Both sides to this debate have important things to say and need to be heard. But both, too, it can be argued, fail to distinguish adequately between differing invocations of the idea of nature or to explore the coherence of their normative implications. The ‘hands off’ nature approach to conservation encouraged by the endorsing perspective has often proved too ready to give preference to wilderness preservation for the eco-tourists over the welfare of indigenous peoples; or too quick to make humanity in general responsible for the environmental