Introduction

In recent decades, objections and criticisms of the idea of humanism have punctuated philosophical debate.1 Criticisms have come in particular from the viewpoint of environmentalism, but sometimes they promote a possible dialogue between humanism and environmentalist perspectives, which some scholars have even hoped for and envisaged.2 Nevertheless, it is also essential to consider those internal tensions within the idea of humanism, which have been continuously re-proposed and re-actualised in the Western cultural tradition. Indeed, this study has investigated tensions and paradoxes within humanistic projects, which emerge when their rhetorical and conceptual tools are used to realise a decentralisation of perspective, dethroning the human subject from its self-proclaimed and presumed centrality in the cosmos, to consider human beings from the point of view of the animal or even to rethink their condition in a plural space of living beings and non-living entities.