PEDAGOGIA ANTROPOCÊNTRICA VERSUS ECOPEDAGOGIA

a ruptura necessária para uma educação libertadora

Abstract

This study discusses the practice of anthropocentric pedagogy and proposes the Ecopedagogy paradigm as a liberating praxis. It presents a reflection on the trajectory of modern anthropocentrism and on the dimensions of the environ‑mental crisis in contemporary society, pointing out some conceptual coordinates to address the “Pandora’s box” opened by the capitalist spirit. The study starts from the assumption that in the context of the European Renaissance, the “ra‑tional man” is designed not only as the center of the new mechanistic worldview, but also forged the capillaries anthropocentric foundations of modern science. During the eighteenth century, the Enlightenment movement was essential to face the forces of tyranny and oppression coming from the Absolutist State, but most philosophers projected too much hope in the development of science and technology, economic progress and material culture. In the dominant cultural context, nature was conceived as a mere object to be known, explored, and tamed. This instrumental view was consolidated in the nineteenth century, when capi‑talism became the dominant socioeconomic system, with power of exploitation and environmental devastation on a planetary scale, and with the cycle of con‑quest of the indigenous peoples of America, the aborigines of Oceania and tribal communities of Africa. In the twentieth century, the human condition is modeled under the imperatives of capitalist culture, anthropocentric pedagogy, and the device of voluntary servitude, this device powered by the culture industry and other ideological systems in modern contemporary society. With the scientific and technological development, and the mechanisms of anthropocentrism and voluntary servitude, humanity begins the journey of the twentieth century per‑petuating old practices of violence against human and nonhuman groups. In the first decade of the new century, we are witnessing in Brazil (and other countries) the banality of environmental evil, that is, the barbarism of the “Final Solution” for indigenous peoples, natural ecosystems, and nonhuman animals. Against the dialectics of barbarism, in turn, we are also witnessing new paradigms, changes in sensibilities, lifestyles, and ways of thinking. It is in this sense that of ecopedagogy may become a liberating praxis essential for the formation of the homo ecologicus.