Agency and Responsibility: Ecologically Inflected Insights from the Syriac Tradition

Agency and Responsibility: Ecologically Inflected Insights from the Syriac TraditionSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference PortalThe National Endowment for the HumanitiesThe International Balzan Prize FoundationDavid A. Michelsoncbsc_adminRecord added to Zotero bycbsc_adminSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portalhttp://syriaca.org/cbss/FPHL39NL/tei

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2024-08-15-04:00

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CREATED: This bibl record was autogenerated from a Zotero record.Christina M.GschwandtnerAgency and Responsibility: Ecologically Inflected Insights from the Syriac Traditionhttp://syriaca.org/cbss/FPHL39NLhttps://www.zotero.org/groups/a_comprehensive_bibliography_on_syriac_studies/items/FPHL39NLhttps://www.zotero.org/groups/4861694/items/FPHL39NLJamesSiemensJoshua MatthanBrownEastern Christian Approaches to PhilosophyCham, SwitzerlandPalgrave Macmillan2022199-225A significant issue vexing environmental ethicists and ecological philosophers is that many environmental problems, such as pollution and climate change, seem to transcend traditional ethical categories of individual agency and autonomy. Some thinkers have proposed extending agency to the non-human or even the material, but such attempts often make it difficult to continue insisting on human responsibility or culpability for harmful actions. This chapter shows how in Syriac hymnography all of creation—human and non-human—are portrayed as deeply enmeshed with each other and even partners in dialogue, without absolving humans of responsibility for their actions. All creatures are considered to have agency and to be responsible to and for each other. The chapter concludes by suggesting some ways in which these liturgical texts might inform environmental thinking today. Gschwandtner, Christina M. “Agency and Responsibility: Ecologically Inflected Insights from the Syriac Tradition.” In Eastern Christian Approaches to Philosophy, edited by James Siemens and Joshua Matthan Brown, 199–225. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. Christina M. Gschwandtner, Agency and Responsibility: Ecologically Inflected Insights from the Syriac Tradition, in Eastern Christian Approaches to Philosophy, ed. James Siemens and Joshua Matthan Brown (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), 199–225.EphremIV CEIV-VII CEecologyhymnographynaturepoetry