The article analyzes Lynn White’s thesis that anthropocentrism – seen as the root of the modern ecological crisis – originated in Western Christianity, particularly in its medieval form, which desacralized nature and legitimized an absolute human domination over it. However,
this essay challenges this interpretation, arguing that it relies on an immanentist conception of freedom and nature. This leads to a dilemma for the critic of anthropocentrism: either they accept immanentism (i.e., the rejection of the natural-unnatural and natural-supernatural distinctions, resulting in the denial of ethical indifferentism and thereby trumping any criticism of anthropocentrism) or they reject it (and must then acknowledge the legitimacy of non-immanentist forms of anthropocentrism that view nature as sacred within a broader supernatural framework).
