Environmentalism as a Politics of Love

Abstract

The first result of the ecological crisis is the need to integrate what it was scattered in previous centuries, especially in relation to science, religion and ethics. The vulnerability of nature calls unexpected dimensions of accountability that reveal the ethical and religious emptiness of our time. This impasse forces us to think in an extended reflection that creates the conditions (not existing today) for humans to feel morally and spiritually involved with nature. This commitment can only be based on love. Given the complexity and diversity of values ​​and interests involved in environmental issues, it turns non-viable to state ethics only on rational and/or utilitarian basis. Considering that only humans are rational, setting ethics in love gives the possibility to go beyond the contemporary anthropocentric rationalism that excludes all non-rational beings from law. Our time requires us to discard the ideological certainties that tend to narcotize. Lost these certainties there is only love, understood as a free relationship with and between humans and non-humans, so each one of them can perform its intended freedom.