Anthropocentrism in Select American Dystopian Fictions through the Lens of Normative Ethics

Abstract

In the contemporary era, it is widely understood that the reason behind our planet facing extinction is the excessive exploitation that humans keep carrying out in the name of attaining the peak of technological development. The lengthy debate on an- thropocentrism creates a controversy and it clearly states that humans are the most pow- erful species in the world based on the enhanced thought process that they proclaim to possess. Nevertheless, the modern technological society has driven the humans to sub- jugate nature. According to the utility value of natural resources that takes to fulfill the inborn thirst for greed and comfort, it occupies the same level of hierarchy as that of the humans. From being one among the many species on the earth, humans consider them- selves to be the centre of all authority and keep working towards driving away all other living beings to the outskirts. Till now many environmentalists are portraying nature as an element of aestheticism or as one among the other creatures on earth known to pos- sess intrinsic values. At the same time many literary works also advocate humans as a being that are nothing more than many creatures belonging to the natural world. Hence, at times it is only environmental ethics that eventually manages to remind humans of the relationship that they share with nature. It reminds how people have directly or indirectly become a causative agent leading to the diverse environmental crisis which is affecting the present as well as keep affecting the imminent future society. Further, environmental ethics spreads its wings wide in the field of normative ethics to further enquire on what kind of role the human beings play regarding nature. Whereas, nor- mative ethics is the study of ethical actions with specific rules and regulations which is centered on what humans ought to do and decide. So, through the framework of nor- mative ethics, the duties of humans can determine whether ones actions or opinions are right or wrong. It consists of utilitarianism, virtue e