Biocentrism & anthropocentrism struggles in the solution of ecological problems

Abstract

In today's globalized new world order, nature itself has adapted to the globalization process. The series of moves that countries have taken out due to economic concerns has caused pressure, deterioration and even irreversible damage to nature and natural values. These damages and destructions unfortunately continue. This situation has resulted in a negative impact on the ecological balance and finally a global “ecological crisis” has emerged.

It would not be wrong to say that the basis of all these problems lies in the effort of the human being to position himself for nature. In other words, in the human-nature struggle, the desire of people to position nature in a secondary or objective manner has triggered the emergence of environmental problems.

Since the 1960s, especially when environmental awareness emerged with the understanding of environmental problems, various conservation-oriented approaches have been proposed. It is possible to divide these approaches into two sections. First one is the sustainable development-oriented approach that adopts the traditional conservation approach. The other is the deep ecology approach, which is shaped in the context of a biocentric paradigm. The purpose of this paper is to draw a theoretical framework on how people should position themselves subjectively or objectively at the point of nature conservation. For this purpose, from the past to the present, the origin of ecological based nature conservation problems and the approaches of philosophers on the philosophy of nature are examined and discussed.