ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some educational guidelines used in two ethics education programs designed to improve the human ability to relate, both to humans and to nature, through an ontological perspective that promotes assertive relational skills and prosocial moral development. The human ability to relate is rooted in the ontological perspective that each person has about the meaning and value of life. The non-selfish-self perspective of being-person-with-the-world, values interactivity and interdependence, and provides new grounds on which to develop harmonious and sustainable interactions between humankind and nature. In the case of the Amazonian Aboriginal ecoethics, the emphasis is on non-anthropocentric interactions and interdependence between humankind and nature, upon which survival patterns and lifestyles are based. The complex process of renewing ecoethics—including conceptual and attitudinal changes in the human ability to relate—could be addressed through specific ethics education programs with a broad cultural perspective that emphasizes a non-selfish self-ontological perspective.
