Tenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

We live in the Anthropocenee, a geological epoch in which humans are permanently impacting the environment for profit and progress. This has come about because of developments in the Western world since the early modern period–most importantly the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution–because of which a specific kind of relationship between humans and nature was conceived. The tenth-century fable, “The Case of Animals versus Man Before the King of the Jinn,” by the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾoffers some critical insights into animal ethics and human behaviour that allows for the potential to rethink and reform the current paradigm of the human-animal relationship. Taking the above fable as example, this paper uses discourse and literary analyses to examine the historical and philosophical processes that have contributed to the move from ideas of human stewardship of nature, and the interdependence of the two, to the ideas of human dominion over nature, and nature as a resource to be exploited. This move, the paper maintains, is crucial to the current ecological crisis, and a better historical and philosophical understanding may inform better policy-making.