Dalla sostanza alla relazione. Un’idea di natura nell’orizzonte interculturale

The early 21st century has seen an increased focus on ecological issues in the philosophical and theological discourse. Addressing environmental ethics in the face of ecological risks, climate change, and biodiversity loss requires a fundamental reevaluation of current historical and economic paradigms. There is a growing need to engage different traditions in dialogue, combining various thought resources and practices. Millennial spiritual and religious expressions such as Buddhism and Taoism can contribute to pluralizing mindsets, offering an alternative to the mono-dimensionality of modern technological thinking. These traditions not only provide new categories for conceptualizing humanity’s place in the world but can also reactivate underdeveloped ideas within Western cultural history. In fact, the urgent themes related to nature, ecological thought, and climate change demonstrate that a single model of thinking is insufficient. Global problems of the third millennium must be described and elaborated using multiple notions, drawing from different resources to hope for resolution. The paper proposes a shift from the centrality of “substance” to that of “relation”, aligning with contemporary physics findings and Asian philosophical insights. It advocates for a radically non-dualistic worldview based on universal interconnection, valid both in the immanence of the creatural dimension and in relation to transcendence. This perspective opens new possibilities for the encounter between nature and the sacred, not through a re-sacralization of nature or a naturalization of the sacred, but through mutual fertilization. This approach aims to move beyond rigid dualism between matter and spirit, allowing for integral contact with the “fabric” of the world.