In Communion with God's Sparrow: Incorporating Animal Agency into the Environmental Vision of Laudato Sí
Although a conventional environmentalism focuses on the health of ecological systems, Pope Francis's 2015 environmental encyclical Laudato Sí invokes St. Francis of Assisi to emphasize God's love for the individual organism, no matter how small. Decrying the tendency to regard other creatu...
| Published in: | Sophia |
|---|---|
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Springer Netherlands
[2018]
|
| In: |
Sophia
|
| RelBib Classification: | KAJ Church history 1914-; recent history KDB Roman Catholic Church NBD Doctrine of Creation NCG Environmental ethics; Creation ethics VA Philosophy |
| Further subjects: | B
Agency
B Catholic B Franciscan B Kenneth J. Shapiro B Merleau-Ponty B Laudato Sí B Phenomenology B Telic naturalism B Kinesthetic empathy B Pope Francis B Alasdair MacIntyre B Communion B Animal B Pope Benedict XVI B Nonmaleficence B Saint Francis of Assisi |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
| Summary: | Although a conventional environmentalism focuses on the health of ecological systems, Pope Francis's 2015 environmental encyclical Laudato Sí invokes St. Francis of Assisi to emphasize God's love for the individual organism, no matter how small. Decrying the tendency to regard other creatures as mere objects to be controlled and used, Pope Francis urges our enactment of a universal communion' governed by love. I suggest, however, that Laudato Sí's animal ethic, as focused on ordering human and animal need, is inadequate to its overarching vision of cross-species communion. This vision requires the sort of cross-species relational bridge implicit in Maurice Merleau-Ponty's view of agency as an irreducibly animate' expression of choice and afforded further definition in Kenneth J. Shapiro's conception of a kinesthetic empathy.' As the phenomenological epistemology underlying both discourses makes possible a rough correspondence, I put these in conversation to demonstrate that a Merleau-Pontyan and reciprocal agency is a constitutive aspect of the fullest sort of cross-species relation, such that recognition of this agency can both deepen our understanding of universal communion' and foster engagement in its practice. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1873-930X |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Sophia
|
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s11841-017-0630-9 |