THE ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUE AND MODERN RATIONALITY

Authors

  • Tito Marci Sapienza University of Rome

Keywords:

Modern reason; environment; sociology of concepts; ecology; semiotics; ethics of hospitality; subjectivity; interaction.

Abstract

This essay explores the complex relationship between human reason and the environment within the historical trajectory of modernity. Starting from the Renaissance notion of perspectival space as a symbolic form of rational order, the study traces how modern reason – through science, law, and politics – progressively detached humanity from the natural world, transforming it into an external, controllable environment. The work examines the consequences of this epistemological and cultural separation, from the Enlightenment project of emancipation to the technoscientific rationalization of life and production. In the face of today’s ecological crisis, the essay proposes a critical rethinking of environmental issues through relational and interactional paradigms drawn from contemporary sociology, quantum physics, and anthropology “beyond the human.” It ultimately advances an ethical perspective based on hospitality, reciprocity, and responsibility – an ethics of responsiveness that reopens the dialogue between human and non-human subjectivities, restoring to the world its original sacredness and ambivalent vitality.

Author Biography

Tito Marci, Sapienza University of Rome

Tito Marci is full Professor of Sociology at Department of Political Sciences and Dean of the Faculty
of Political Sciences, Sociology and Communication at Sapienza University of Rome. Department of
Political Sciences, Sapienza

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Published

2026-05-29

Issue

Vol. 19 No. 3 (2025): Revista Direito Mackenzie

Section

Historicism of Law and Legal Rationality and Social Systems

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Copyright (c) 2026 Tito Marci

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