Posthumanism, analogical humanism, and the future of the church

Abstract

The new ecological challenges as well as the challenges of decolonial and feminist thinking – in essence, what Boaventura de Sousa Santos calls “epistemologies of the south” and which are not only of the south – have provoked various deconstructions of the humanist tradition, considering it anthropocentric or asymmetrical and, for that very reason, not adequate for a new understanding of the human place and task in regard to the planet as a whole. These deconstructions have led either to the proposal of a new humanism or to the proposal of a posthumanism (or even anti-humanism). In both cases, however, what is at stake is the attempt to overcome the so-called anthropocentrism of Western culture, especially that of modernity. [extract]