L’ESPRIT FAUSTIEN OCCIDENTAL ET LA CRISE ÉCOLOGIQUE
THE FAUSTIAN WESTERN SPIRIT AND THE ECOLOGICAL CRISIS

Summary/Abstract: The ecologic crisis is undeniably the product of the Western civilisation, particularly of the modern ameliorative task, now projected on a planetary scale. Is it, however triggered by a more profound determinism, which finds its roots in the original religious vision of Christianity? More precisely, in the biblical mandate God has given men to multiply and dominate the Earth as a king over his dominion? There are, actually, some ecologist “prosecutors” who are making exactly this point. Christianity is, on the long term, to be held as ultimate responsible for the heavy mass of this “eco-cide” civilisation. Evaluating such spiritual roots of the disaster, we discovered however, in the “epileptically” advancing Western history a fundamental differentiation between this royal status given to man in the Bible over the Earth, and the “psychosis” of modern Faustian project. Given the fact that, from a theological standpoint, such a divine mandate implied however a divine surveillance and correction, the neurotic progressivism of the Faustian principle was not completely released, until the proclamation of the Death of God. It is in this way only that man could become his own master. He was now able to freely dispose of the great cosmic reservoir without accounting in front of any instance higher than himself. It is, in conclusion, not in the least the contemplative Christianity to be hold responsible for the ecological crisis, but, indeed, the Faustian modernity.

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