Marguerite Yourcenar’s Care for the World

For Marguerite Yourcenar, the human species is the cause of a new mass extinction caused by the transformation of the ecosphere to the anthroposphere. Not only does her concern for the earth castigate a still segregated conception of ecology – humanity on the one side, everything else on the other – she also attacks the source of this evil anthropocentrism: the belief in human exceptionalism, whose intention is to justify philosophically and biologically the superiority of the human species. Faced with predatory behaviour and moral pandemics, Yourcenar criticizes the fallacious presuppositions of such an exalted view of humanity.