Per una metafisica dell’ecologia

In the final decades of the twentieth century, the human being has come to recognize himself as the foremost consumer of time. Each of his historical actions – amplified by the enhancement of various technological prostheses – emerges, from the standpoint of evolutionary history, as a potential culminating catastrophe in the brief trajectory of human existence. Within the context of the contemporary ecological crisis, this work explores potential solutions that draw upon science, metaphysics, and theology. Despite disciplinary divergences, points of convergence remain, particularly around the ethical notion of repentance – an idea that can be scientifically interpreted through the concepts of system feedback and feedback loops. On this basis, a philosophical redefinition is attempted of ecological risk as it pertains to human action within the complex and autopoietic system of interdependencies we call nature.