Anthropocentrism

Anthropocentrism is the belief that humans and human interests are of central importance. In an anthropocentric worldview, human values, preferences, and experiences are definitive. Anthropocentric theories attempt to make sense of the world in terms of these values, preferences, and experiences.

Anthropocentric beliefs and actions tend to prioritize human interests over those of other life forms. An anthropocentric interpretation of existence may regard humans as the most important form of life on Earth, or even in the entire universe.

Quotes

• "Now, I would like just to give a quick visual perspective on the idea that we are at the center of the universe. There is a recent Hubble Space Telescope photograph of an obscure edge of the Virgo Cluster some 45 million light-years away. This is a giant elliptical galaxy in the Virgo Cluster, but almost everything else you see, all these other things, are not stars in our galaxy, and not galaxies in the Virgo Cluster, but galaxies behind the Virgo Cluster; and there are some hundred billion other galaxies in the known universe. Now, suppose you were an intergalactic traveler seeking interesting galaxies, and you were told that the beings who are the point of the universe live on one of those galaxies. 'See that little one right there? That's the center of the universe! And they are the reason the whole universe of 100 billion galaxies was made. Just ask them!' What's your sense of them?
  • Carl Sagan, from the foreword to Life in the Universe: Essays (1995)
• It is important to note that a form of anthropocentrism remains in Heidegger, according to whom: “Man is not the Lord of beings. Man is the shepherd of Being. Man loses nothing in this ‘less’; rather, he gains in that he attains the truth of Being”. Although Man is not the “Lord of beings anymore,” he is still granted the privileged position of “shepherd of Being.”
  • Francesca Ferrando, Philosophical Posthumanism (2019), p. 57