The New Anthropocentrism: The Problem Of Water Conservation And Water Justice

My objective with my thesis is to argue for and reinforce a type of anthropocentrism that is both environmentally conscious and consumable for an audience that is not necessarily well versed in philosophical literature. In the first chapter I go over philosophical frameworks, such as Anthropocentrism and Biocentrism, and why I believe they do not meet both of those criteria listed. After that I discuss New Anthropocentrism, coined by Clive Hamilton, and why I believe that a slightly modified version possesses qualities that I believe are needed for the crisis at hand. In chapter 2 I use that framework and use it to analyze several different major sources of water consumption and management both in the U.S and the world in general. The two I focus on the most will be desalination and pervious concrete as I believe the latter is approved by New Anthropocentrism and the former is not and I will argue why I believe this is the case. For the third chapter I decided to use Hannah Arendt's conception of the Viva Activa to further explore how we as a species got to this point of environmental destruction and how we can begin to address it from a philosophical lens. Without a change in how we perceive the problem we cannot truly fix this problem, and we cannot solve it with just technology alone. Human freedom and respect for plurality must be a part of the solution. This is done through the three categories of the Viva Activa; labor, work, and action.