Thinking Into Nature

With the intensification of the ecological crisis and gradual improvement of environmental consciousness,eco- ethics, as the ethical foundation of environmental protection, is becoming noticeable subject. Western scholars have made extensive research into eco - ethics in its less - than - one - hundred - year history. However, from a philosophical perspective, the research has not been in view of philosophy of nature and has not gone deep into the ontological and epistemological basis indispensable to eco - ethics.Based on philosophy of nature and combining ontology and epistemology perspective, this paper regards eco - ethics as an interpretation of a new paradigm of the relation between man and Nature. Through philosophical inquiry into the course of history, real causes , theoretical background and logical framework of the western eco -ethical thought,the author makes an elaboration on the possibility,necessity and certainty of it and predicates its future trend. This paper tries to answer the following two kinds of questions: 1. How did western eco - ethical thought come into being? What was its internal reasons and external conditions? 2. How should western eco -ethical thought develop? How can the present system transcend itself through internal integration and external syncretization?Western eco - ethical thought were bred up in the late eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century,when the love for Nature and the hope of returning to Nature were expessed by the Romanticism in France, England, German and America and had an influence upon later thinkers. Due to this influence, H. D. Thoreau pondered deeply about ecological philosophy and played the most important role in devel-oping idyllic morality into modern philosophy of ecology. Under R. W. Emerson and Thoreau's influence,1. Muir put forward a very important idea that Nature possesses rights. The first part of the twentieth century is its establishment stage. A. Schweizer' s idea of respecting for life , A. Leopold' s land ethic and R. Carson's exposure of chemicals' harm push eco - ethics to mount the historical stage and to attract wide attentions. Since 1960s, the two factions anthropocentrism and physicocentrism appeared in an embryonic form, then each bring in a few factions respectively. Eco -ethical thought afterwards began to seep into the ways of human economy, politics, science and technology, and life, and to bring about broad social imr&cts.The emergence and development of Western eco - ethical thought was well-grounded. Since 1960s, the whole world has been facing an ecological predicament in environment,resources,population and other aspects. Meanwhile, men in the industrialized society were quite despirited as a result of negative influence brought about by the consumptive culture. It was also closely interrelated with the ecolgical predicament, or we can say the eco - predicament and low spirits formed contemporary people's dual variation, supplementing each other and interacting as each other's cause and effect. They were the immediate causes of the emergence of eco - ethics while the Green Movement was a direct cause of its rise. The Green Movement can roughly be divided into three periods, each on the whole corresponding to pregnant stage, setting up stage and developmental stage of eco- ethical thought. This correspondence is not an accidental coincidence. The Green Movement provided from practice western eco -ethical thought with deep and direct motive force to develop further while the spreading, developing and deepening of the thought provided the Green Movement with theoretical weapons and direct it to expand in depth.If the analysis of real caues is to explicate the external conditions and real opportunities of the emergence and development of western eco - ethical thought, then the investigation of its theoretical background will aim at illustrating its internal foundation and theoretical basis. As for the scientific background, the birth of the theory of evolution and ecology are closely linked with th...