Anthropocentrism and Its Discontents: An Intellectual History

Anthropocentrism, the commitment to the categorical superiority of human beings over nonhuman animals and the rest of the natural world, has a long and enduring history extending back to Greek antiquity and early Christian thought. This commitment persists virtually unmodified throughout the Middle Ages, early modernity, and the Enlightenment. Recent thinking about the moral status of nonhuman animals has sought to challenge this anthropocentric tradition, but it remains conspicuous that few if any contemporary thinkers make any categorical demand for veganism, let alone for vegetarianism. The prospects for arriving at a robust nonhuman animal ethic depend on a synthesis of two contemporary approaches to the question of the moral status of nonhuman animals.