2019 ICHSEA Talk Studies of Nature

Bulletin of The School of Oriental and African Studies-university of London, 1989

COMPARATIVE AND CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY, 2018

Many great minds, throughout the history of mankind, have wondered upon the relationship between nature and person. In the " Anthropocene " —the era where human activities have a significant and unprecedented influence on earth—the relationship between nature and person is no longer a mere philosophical topic for the curious minds to entertain, but a practical and pressing issue for many, including philosophers, to address. Philosophers have set onto the journey of seeking an alternative metaphysical view to anthropocentrism, which problematically places humans at the center of nature. Brasovan offers such an effort: He innovatively brings together the Neo-Confucian Wang Fuzhi's account with ecological humanism, aiming to contribute a view of human and nature that consist of continuous, dynamic and complex systems. Through critically engage with Brasovan's account, I discuss some of the most notable contributions of Wang Fuzhi's philosophy to our understanding of the relationship between nature and human, such as Wang's anti-anthropocentric metaphysics, his qi monism, and the spiritual side of his philosophy. I then criticize Brasovan's project on two accounts: his categorization of Wang's qi monism as materialism [with provisos] and his lack of discussion of human-centric concepts in Wang's philosophy. Lastly, I draw the reader's attention to the rich resources presented by Wang, who witnesses and partakes in the interaction amongst the Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist traditions; I also emphasize the significance and promises brought by Brasovan's approach of engaging Neo-Confucian thinkers with modern philosophical concerns such as the demand of ecological humanism.

Hermeneutics, moral philosophy and natural philosophy were sometimes intimately related in classical Confucian thought. This article challenges two related arguments concerning early Chinese scholarship: that the Chinese were averse to categorizing things according to their individual attributes, and that as a result there was little interest in nature as an object of study. By looking at how literary scholars in the Old School tradition of poetic commentary wrote about plants and animals in early commentaries on the Shi Jing or Book of Odes, it is demonstrated that moral philosophy during the period of classical Confucianism was intimately related to natural philosophy and the “classification of things.” An examination of some of the major reference works cited by the Old School commentators, including the writings of Lu Ji, shows that Shi Jing scholarship provoked research on plants and animals that was useful both for moral inquiry and for scientific inquiry beyond the realms of moral philosophy and literary studies. Finally, the very question of the Chinese discovery of "nature" is challenged, and an alternative approach is suggested.

Environmental writers have been turning to Chinese traditions for a harmonious relation between humans and nature. However, treating environmental crises as a metaphysical meditation on how humanity as a whole stands over against nature ignores the critical examination of power relations in the equal relation of production, social hierarchy and political oppression. As Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno declared, humanity’s domination of nature stems from the domination by some human over others as well as human nature. Environmental injustice is social injustice. From this immanent critique, Kang Youwei’s recapture of Confucian cosmology proves to be a critical resource. An influential thinker and reformer in the transition from the empire to a modern nation, Kang Youwei (1858-1927) wrote The Great World Community (Datong shu) and proposed to abolish all boundaries of nation-state, class, hierarchy, gender and race, in hopes of bringing diverse peoples and nations into a cosmopolitan community. Ecological motifs could be recovered Kang’s critique of the oppressive social, political, and gender relations. Upholding Confucian cosmologies not as metaphysics but as critique, he probes into how humanity’s institutions fall short of and violate the ecologically sound relations between Heaven, humans and Earth. Delving into the widening abyss between value and history, utopian ideals and a human civilization headed for disaster, Kang is acting as a true Confucian critic, wielding a weapon used by Confucius when the sage was criticizing the corrupt kingdoms by appealing to the past golden age.

STUDIA ORIENTALIA SLOVACA, 2022

This paper describes Japanese Zen monk Sesson Yūbai's (1290-1347) long poem Minzanka written in Chinese, especially focusing on the way its formal properties influence the way in which natural phenomena are described in it. Afterwards, these stylistic features are contrasted with Japanese language poetry of the period, including waka, renga, and wakan renku forms, and also with Tsurezuregusa, a prosaic Medieval Japanese text. The full working translation of Minzanka is included in the paper.

Landscapes and Communities on the Pacific Rim. …, 2000

In the search for a sustainable relationship between human beings and their natural environment, the problem of predictability, design or planning looms large. Some works of Asianists Roger Ames and Angus Graham are examined from a post-structuralist perspective and found useful in this regard. When compared with developments in Western science, especially complexity theory, the author discerns a "double convergence": of Eastern with Western thought, and of Western arts with science. This convergence arises because of similarities between post-structuralism and complexity theory, and because of similarities between these developments in the West and traditional Eastern, Taoist notions that concern aesthetics. In particular the Taoist aesthetic criterion of wu-wei and the related notion of self-generated potency, or te, are found to be potentially useful to the continuing search for sustainability in the development of human-nature relationships. But, the author concludes, since Western thought is already moving in an appropriate direction, there is no need to follow those critics who would have us abandon Western in favor of Eastern approaches to "nature."

Comparative Philosophy, 2014

This paper develops an interpretation of nature in classical Chinese culture through dialogue with the work of François Jullien. I understand nature negatively as

East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine, 2004

Nature, Environment and Culture in East Asia, 2013

China is one of the ecologically most threatened regions on earth. it has been argued that the ecological disaster is mainly due to the incursion of Western modernity with its unleashing of instrumental reason. in order to find a way out, China would have to rediscover its ecological wisdom of the past. Without calling into question the specific responsibility of the West, this article argues that in fact there is no cultural dichotomy of this kind. it is true that China has known the idea of a sympathetic relationship between man and nature, which was developed above all in daoist philosophy. But it has also known the idea of the subjugation of nature by man as a necessary precondition of culture, which has typically been brought forward in the Confucian literature. and it has done severe damage to the natural environment already in antiquity. these facts suggest that the envi- ronmental crisis is not the product of a specific cultural tradition but of human culture in general and the long-term result of the eccentric positionality of the ‘thetic’ human being.