The moral philosophy of nature: Spiritual Amazonian conceptualizations of the environment

Luis Gregorio Abad Espinoza (1)

1 UNIMIB - Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca = University of Milano-Bicocca

It is well known the harmful effects that savage capitalism has been causing to the environment since its introduction in a sphere in which a different logic and approach to nature are the essential conditions for the maintenance of the ecosystem and its complex relations between humans and non-human organisms. The amazon rainforest is a portion of the planet in which for thousands of years its human dwellers have been interacting with nature that it is understood beyond its physical condition. Thus, to what extent Amazonian’s approaches to nature could be considered as a moral philosophy through which the way of conceptualizing nature and its non-human denizens enhances the continuity of life and the intimate relations between entities? To answer this question, I will explore the cosmological system of the Shuar of the Ecuadorian Amazon with whom I lived for 5 months between July and November 2018, and thereby elucidate the spiritual relations that this society has with the metaphysical domain of nature.

Keywords: Shuar; Ecuador; Amazonia; Human-Non-Human Relations; Nature-Culture Dichotomy; Cosmology; Waterfalls.

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences; Social Anthropology and ethnology; Religions; Philosophy

Luis Gregorio Abad Espinoza. The moral philosophy of nature: Spiritual Amazonian conceptualizations of the environment. Open Journal of Humanities, 2019, 1 (1), pp.149-190. ⟨10.17605/OSF.IO/68YNV⟩. ⟨hprints-02425343⟩