Authors : Arvind Barde, Dr. Mohammad Aslam Sheikh
Page Nos : 110-113
Description :
In the West, Christianity’s story of Creation, in absolute contrast to ancient paganism and Asia’s religions, not only established a dualism of man and nature but also insisted that it is God’s will that man exploit nature for his proper ends. In ancient paganism, every tree, every stream, every hill, in fact, every natural object had its own guardian spirit. By destroying pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects. In the Middle Ages the notion of ‘Great Chain of Being’ viewed the whole creation as a chain or ladder of the life forms with humans above the beasts and a little below the angels. But, when this idea was inherited by Renaissance and Enlightenment, it was given a new configuration by ‘humanism’. Humanism, basically an advocate of classical learning, gave importance to reason, intellect and progress and argued that only humans had a rational discourse as opposed to animals. Later, during the progress of science and technology, the Baconian principle that “scientific knowledge means technological power over nature” further strengthened this anthropocentric attitude. Ecocriticism, by using the insights provided by ‘deep ecology’ and critical theory, questions the validity of these ‘homocentric’ traditions of thought and advocates ‘biocentrism’.
