The Encyclical Laudato Si’ and the Overcoming of Humanism

Abstract

In June 2015, Pope Francis published Laudato Si’, an encyclical that, in many ways, constitutes a split. For the first time, although the magisterium of the Catholic church has, since the time of John Paul II, repeatedly expressed its views on the topic, an encyclical approached the theme of ecology and climate crisis, in the tradition of Catholic social doctrine. The break is also within ecological thought, into which Pope Francis invites himself, seeking to open another path between anthropocentrism, biocentrism, ecocentrism, and so on. The worldwide echo of its reception testifies to the novelty of the text, and also demonstrates the power of the pontifical voice in the collective imagination. In his encyclical, Francis conducts a powerful denunciation of a “techno- scientific paradigm” and its anthropocentric and Western-centric perspective. Can the pontifical voice be added to the posthumanist movement, whose horizon is inseparable from the technological changes and the environmental question? Does his criticism concern only anthropocentrism or the idea of centrality? Reading Laudato Si’ from the perspective of posthumanism debates is a way moving these debates forward.