Antinaturalism, or anti-naturalism, is opposition to essentialist appeals to nature or natural order. In political and ethical contexts, the term has been used in relation to antispeciesism, anti-racism, feminism and transhumanism.
Antinaturalist arguments have been associated with parts of the French animal rights movement and materialist feminism. The term is also used in xenofeminism, whose advocates argue that social and biological conditions should not be treated as fixed simply because they are described as natural. Writers associated with antinaturalist arguments include David Olivier and Yves Bonnardel.
Views Antinaturalist writers have criticised appeals to nature in debates about abortion, birth control, body modification, sex reassignment surgery and other forms of bodily autonomy.
In animal ethics, antinaturalist arguments have been contrasted with forms of radical environmentalism that treat nature as sacred or as valuable for its own sake. Catherine-Marie Dubreuil describes antinaturalist antispeciesism as rejecting the idea that nature as a whole has inherent sacred value, while treating ecological preservation as important insofar as it affects the well-being of sentient beings.
Yves Bonnardel argues that naturalist ideology can legitimise speciesist oppression of non-human sentient beings. He has also criticised the use of natural law arguments to justify the reintroduction of predatory animals to control populations of other animals, describing this as a form of speciesism.
See also Animal welfare and rights in France
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