ABSTRACT
This chapter sketches certain historical highlights in the deconstruction of anthropocentrism from William Blake to the present. It describes scholarly landmarks that elaborated how anthropocentrism has been strongly implicated in nature’s degradation and destruction. The essay identifies the Romantic tradition as the first Western intellectual tradition to concertedly critique human-centeredness, giving birth to a subsequent rich legacy of thought from Henry Thoreau and Arne Naess to contemporary thinkers. Throughout this entry, conceptual difficulties and debates in defining the term ‘anthropocentrism’ are duly noted. The nebulous and contested meanings of anthropocentrism imply that the term may have lost its usefulness, and that alternative vocabularies perhaps hold greater critical promise.
