Approximately since the last quarter of the 20th century, a rapidly growing interest in the Εnvironment and ecology has spread widely in both the scientific and the public discourse. In the rhetoric that concerns this burning issue, one can quickly notice two different ways of thinking (and acting), that is, the approach of the ‘‘Sustainable development’’ and the contrasting one of ‘‘Degrowth’’. Devoting the first part of this dissertation in a brief overview of them both, we further search for their origins in the history of scientific ecology and its current views, in the theological think tank and the corresponding concepts of Nature. We then trace in these two contradicting approaches the dual sense of guilt and superiority, the one by which the disposition of the Western tradition towards nature is defined over time.

This sense becomes stronger and obtains totally new elements during the period of the ‘‘transition’’ from the Middle ages to Renaissance and onwards to the 17th century, since it was then that it was re-established on the split of the category of ‘‘nature’’ from that of ‘‘culture’’: a radical separation which, along with others, consolidated in the general ethos as modernity emerged. So, the Second Part focuses on tracing and examining these raptures from various perspectives such as those of science, the body, the economy, aesthetics etc.

This is how we address the Third Part, which concerns the anatomy of an old-new conception of the world, that challenges, shifts or removes the boundaries that are inscribed in the dipoles of modernity. Thus, this view is discussed, which defines as the main stake for ecology the articulation of a new narrative of the relationship between the human and the non-human, constructing a new ontology beyond what until now seemed like the Great Split between them.