Antinaturalism (politics)
Antinaturalism, or anti-naturalism, is opposition to essentialist appeals to nature or natural order.[1][2] In political and ethical contexts, the term has been used in relation to antispeciesism, anti-racism, feminism and transhumanism.[3][4]
Antinaturalist arguments have been associated with parts of the French animal rights movement and materialist feminism.[1] The term is also used in xenofeminism, whose advocates argue that social and biological conditions should not be treated as fixed simply because they are described as natural.[5] Writers associated with antinaturalist arguments include David Olivier and Yves Bonnardel.[6]
Views
[edit]Antinaturalist writers have criticised appeals to nature in debates about abortion, birth control, body modification, sex reassignment surgery and other forms of bodily autonomy.[5]
In animal ethics, antinaturalist arguments have been contrasted with forms of radical environmentalism that treat nature as sacred or as valuable for its own sake. Catherine-Marie Dubreuil describes antinaturalist antispeciesism as rejecting the idea that nature as a whole has inherent sacred value, while treating ecological preservation as important insofar as it affects the well-being of sentient beings.[7]
Yves Bonnardel argues that naturalist ideology can legitimise speciesist oppression of non-human sentient beings.[1] He has also criticised the use of natural law arguments to justify the reintroduction of predatory animals to control populations of other animals, describing this as a form of speciesism.[8]
See also
[edit]- Appeal to nature – Rhetorical tactic and potential fallacy
- Bioconservatism – Cautious stance towards modifying human nature
- Culturalism – Central importance of culture as an organizing force in human affairs
- Gender essentialism – Attribution of intrinsic qualities to women and men
- Gnosticism – Early Christian and Jewish religious systems
- Morphological freedom – Proposed civil right
- Naturalistic fallacy – Purported fallacy in explaining good reductively
- Predation problem – Consideration of predation as a moral problem
- Wild animal suffering – Suffering of wild animals due to natural processes
References
[edit]- ^ a b c Bonnardel, Yves (December 1994). "Appropriation and the concept of Nature". Cahiers antispécistes. 11. Archived from the original on 20 July 2020. Retrieved 25 July 2020.
- ^ Grosz, Elizabeth (20 May 2013). "Conclusion". In Gunew, Sneja (ed.). Feminist Knowledge (RLE Feminist Theory): Critique and Construct. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203094037. ISBN 978-0-203-09403-7.
- ^ Olivier, David (9 April 1999). "Contribution au débat à la maison de l'écologie" [Contribution to the debate at the House of Ecology]. Les Cahiers antispécistes (in French). Archived from the original on 12 August 2020. Retrieved 14 August 2020.
- ^ Ferry, Luc (2016). La révolution transhumaniste [The Transhumanist Revolution] (in French). Paris: Place des éditeurs. ISBN 978-2-259-25100-6.
- ^ a b Hester, Helen (2018). "What Is Xenofeminism?". Xenofeminism. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-5095-2066-4.
- ^ Siegler, Pierre (12 March 2020). "L'idéologie du 'tout social' nuit aux humains et aux animaux" [The ideology of the "all social" harms humans and animals]. L'Amorce (in Canadian French). Archived from the original on 8 November 2024. Retrieved 14 August 2020.
- ^ Dubreuil, Catherine-Marie (2009). "L'antispécisme, un mouvement de libération animale" [Antispeciesism, an animal liberation movement]. Ethnologie française (in French). 39: 117–122. doi:10.3917/ethn.091.0117. Archived from the original on 8 July 2024. Retrieved 21 December 2024.
- ^ Bonnardel, Yves (December 1996). "Contre l'apartheid des espèces: À propos de la prédation et de l'opposition entre écologie et libération animale" [Against species apartheid: On predation and the opposition between ecology and animal liberation]. Cahiers antispécistes (in French). 14. Archived from the original on 23 July 2020. Retrieved 25 July 2020.
Further reading
[edit]- Hester, Helen (2018). Xenofeminism. Newark: Polity Press. ISBN 978-1-5095-2064-0.
- Haber, Stéphane (2006). Critique de l'antinaturalisme: études sur Foucault, Butler, Habermas. Pratiques théoriques (in French). Paris: Presses Univ. de France. ISBN 978-2-13-055124-9.
- Bonnardel, Yves (March–June 2005). "Doing away with the concept of Nature, back to ethics and politics". Les Temps Modernes. Based on a text by Estiva Reus.
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