The Jewish and Christian Conceptions of the Reality and the Environment

Abstract

In my paper I try to search for a justification of the claim that the Jewish and Christian conceptions of the world, because of their anthropocentrism, are responsible for the contemporary ecological crisis. My reflections are more analytic than historical; they concern the basic concepts contained in the Jewish and Christian conceptions of the world. First, I try to point out the main premises of the anthropocentrism to be found in the Bible, and, next, I adduce the interpretations of those Biblical premises by some philosophers and theologians. The views of Nemesius of Emesa, Abelard and Thomas Aquinas are taken into consideration, and they serve as a starting point for a better specification of the concept of anthropocentrism in the context of the Bible. The result of the specification in question is that anthropocentrism is the conjunction of the following three propositions: that man is the crown of creation (the most developed being among all the divine creatures on the Earth), that man is the master of creation (the owner and holder of the less developed creatures on the Earth), and that man is the final aim of creation (processes and events taking place in the natural world are teleological; their final end is the existence and prosperity of humankind). Next, the question is considered whether it is really the case that statements regarded as the Biblical premises of such anthropocentrism sufficiently justify this anthropocentrism.