Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun a term used in ecological political philosophy to denote a nature-centred, as opposed to human-centred, system of values.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

a combination of eco- and centrism. The ecocentric ethic was conceived by Aldo Leopold.

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Examples

  • A poetry that articulated the person as environment would not invert anthropocentrism into "ecocentrism," it would thoroughly undo the notion of a center.

    'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' as an Ambient Poem; a Study of a Dialectical Image; with Some Remarks on Coleridge and Wordsworth 2001

  • The central challenge that Berry poses -- the "Great Work" remaining for us to do -- is to move from anthropocentrism to ecocentrism.

    Debra Shore: The Audacity of Slope, or How The River Gets Its Groove Back 2009

  • The spectrum of environmental ethics encompasses a wide variety that includes various forms of anthropocentrism (where humans are placed at the center of the moral universe), biocentrism (where all forms of life have moral standing), and ecocentrism (where the highest moral standing is imparted on ecosystems rather than individual organisms or species).

    Environmental ethics and the Gaia theory 2008

  • Marx's critique of ecocentrism reflects a practical-minded conviction that environmentalism must be anthropocentric (i.e. respectful of human interests) in order to be workable.

    An Exchange on Thoreau Buell, Lawrence 1999

  • Should Thoreau be reckoned a prophet of contemporary ecocentrism?

    An Exchange on Thoreau Buell, Lawrence 1999

  • Anthropocentrism and ecocentrism are also solid, stable categories: for purposes of this essay, anyhow, E.O. Wilson is equivalent to L. Buell.

    An Exchange on Thoreau Buell, Lawrence 1999

  • Does ecocentrism as an ethic and/or politics have substance and value?

    An Exchange on Thoreau Buell, Lawrence 1999

  • The ecocentrism - in simple language, the love of place, the humility, the sense of belonging, the feelings - was absent from most of the "environmentalist" talk I heard around me.

    openDemocracy Paul Kingsnorth 2010

  • Now it seemed that environmentalism was not about wildness or ecocentrism or the other-than-human world and our relationship to it.

    openDemocracy Paul Kingsnorth 2010

  • Most exciting to me were the implications of a new word I stumbled across: ecocentrism.

    openDemocracy Paul Kingsnorth 2010

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