An evaluation of the evolved African conception of the environment

Abstract

The African system today is bedeviled by a number of environmental problems. These problems, mostly man-made, are blamed on the way the evolved African views his environment. For clarity, the ‘evolved African’ is the African caught up in the web of development and cultural interaction. In a bid to understand his identity, he appears lost in the search of what exactly constitutes his value system. It is in this circumstance that this evolved African demystifies nature and extremely drives his anthropocentric tendency to exploitation of nature. The result is that nature loses value and exists at the behest of man who harnesses it at will. In vain of this exploitation, there is exposition of the environment to sever danger which in the long run affects the human beings that creates this problem. This work therefore attempts at evaluating the problems caused by the negative side of this anthropocentricism with a view to seeing how these environmental problems can be managed.

Keywords::

• evolved
• Africa
• anthropocentricism
• environment

Notes

^1. Plato – Gorgias 507 – 508a.

^2. Kant here gives his formulae for ‘end in itself’ thus: Act in such a way that You always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means but always at the same time as an end. This gives credence to the conceptualization of the tenets of intrinsic value to man and not just instrumental.

^3. Aristotle (1948) Politics. (Baker, Trans.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, BK 1–6, 987, 29–610.

^4. See The New Jerusalem Bible Gen. 1: 22–29.

^5. See The New Jerusalem Bible Luke 8: 26–34.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chuka Albert Okoye

Chuka Albert Okoye is a Doctor of Metaphysics and teaches metaphysics and enironmental studies in the University of Nigeria, Nsukka- Nigeria.