Jerarquías especistas en el pensamiento occidental

espanolSi bien se han sondeado diversas fuentes a traves de las cuales la tradicion judeo­cristiana ha legitimado el especismo, seria injustamente parcial sostener que Occidente debe unicamente a su religion mas popular e influyente el trato lesivo y discriminatorio hacia las demas especies. En diversas variantes, a partir de todo tipo de argumentos y supuestos, las jerarquias discriminatorias de especies no han constituido la excepcion, sino mas bien la regla. Esta tendencia, que esta presente en diferentes cosmovisiones occidentales —y aun entre teorias como las de Darwin, que dejan sin sustento teorico los fundamentos religiosos y metafisicos que suelen avalar tales practicas especistas—, pone de manifiesto su relacion sustancial con el problema de la destruccion en cuanto el ser humano ha explotado y hecho sistematicamente desaparecer un sinfin de especies sobre la faz de la Tierra. EnglishA wide range of sources is available to support the notion that the Judeo-Christian tradition has been instrumental in legitimizing speciesism. Nonetheless, it would be unfair to claim that the West’s harmful and discriminatory attitude to other species proceeds solely from its historically dominant religious tradition. The construction of discriminatory species hierarchies has been the rule rather than the exception, procee­ding from a variety of arguments and suppositions. This discriminatory tendency can be found in diverse Western cosmovisions; even in Darwinian theories which reject the theological and metaphysical underpinnings previously used to shore up speciesist practices. This pervasiveness suggests that the speciesist tendency is intimately bound up with the problem of destruction, understood here as the process by which human beings have exploited innumerable species, to the point of systematically rendering them extinct.