The moral philosophy of nature: Spiritual Amazonian conceptualizations of the environment

It is well known the harmful effects that savage capitalism has been causing to the environment since its introduction in a sphere in which a different logic and approach to nature are the essential conditions for the maintenance of the ecosystem and its complex relations between humans and non-human organisms. The amazon rainforest is a portion of the planet in which for thousands of years its human dwellers have been interacting with nature that it is understood beyond its physical condition. Thus, to what extent Amazonian’s approaches to nature could be considered as a moral philosophy through which the way of conceptualizing nature and its non-human denizens enhances the continuity of life and the intimate relations between entities? To answer this question, I will explore the cosmological system of the Shuar of the Ecuadorian Amazon with whom I lived for 5 months between July and November 2018, and thereby elucidate the spiritual relations that this society has with the metaphysical domain of nature.

众所周知，自野蛮资本主义进入原本以尊重自然的逻辑与路径作为维持生态系统、维系人类与非人类生物间复杂关系之核心条件的领域以来，其对环境造成的危害已不言而喻。亚马逊雨林作为地球的组成部分，数千年来其原住民始终与超越物理属性的自然开展互动。那么，亚马逊原住民对自然的认知方式，在多大程度上可被视作一种道德哲学——这种哲学下对自然及其非人类住民的概念化路径，能够助力生命延续并强化实体间的亲密联结？为解答这一问题，笔者于2018年7月至11月间在厄瓜多尔亚马逊地区的舒阿尔（Shuar）社群生活了5个月，以此探究该社群的宇宙观体系，进而阐明其与自然形而上学领域的精神关联。