On Ecological Freedom

Freedom is the essential pursue of man, and it is the state that people’s survival should be. Freedom is not only people’s cognitive ability, but also people’s practice ability. Because of the intrinsic relationship between freedom and nature, nature is the foundation of freedom, and it is also the stage that freedom shows on, which determines the dimension to study freedom should include the dimension of the relationship between man and nature, except the dimension of the relationship between man and man, man and society. What’s more, the development of freedom should be the sustainable development including nature, and people free and let things free. However, the present study about freedom is only the dimension of the relationship between man and man or man and society. In another version, it is just to study the freedom being in front of the society only, and ignore the dimension of the natural relationship between man and nature. However, it is how people can be free in front of the nature to decide the success or failure that people transform the nature, and to decide whether the ecological crisis can be eliminated. The people’s real freedom in front of the nature is not the ancient freedom which was to obey nature, or the modern freedom which is to conquer nature. In front of the nature, the ancient did nothing but only obey and listen to the nature, which made the subject’s free will shield. On the other hand, depending on advanced science and technology, the modern make full use of nature and transform nature, which demonstrates people’s subjectivity greatly and people get the great liberation in front of the nature. But the modern freedom is to conquer nature, which based on the infinite natural resources and infinite natural space. Adopting mechanical and atomic way, the modern freedom takes the nature as one object to dismember, to control, to command and to conquer. That means the modern freedom has huge tension to destroy the nature potentially. So if let the modern freedom development without any restriction, it will lead to the outbreak of ecological crisis, the sharp opposition of the relationship between man and nature, the fracture of natural unity between man and nature, the alienation of labor, the alienation of science and technology. At last, people will fall into being controlled and lose their freedom.It is necessary from the freedom of conquering nature to the ecological freedom that human and nature are harmonious. When human and nature are in the relationship that is mutual influence, mutual interaction and mutual restriction, and human and the whole nature can achieve the harmony and keep the dynamic equilibrium, and then can generate the ecological freedom. The reason that the unity of man and nature can generate ecological freedom is because the nature itself is a living organic whole at ease, and when human realize the unity with the organic whole, he can overcome the opposition fundamentally with nature itself and eliminate the opposition between man and nature from the whole sense. The essence of ecological freedom is people free and let things free, that is to say, it is not only people get their freedom in front of the nature, but also let all things get their freedom. The freedom of the things means the things can exist according to their own nature and can carry out their own activities independently. The ecological freedom is man can recognize the whole nature with holistic, organic and ecological way of thinking, and grasp the ecological necessity and relationship of essential unity between man and nature. The ecological freedom is the unity between the ontology freedom and epistemology freedom. Ecological freedom has philosophical and practical foundation, which are the law of opposite and unity, material transformation between human and nature, and ecological labor. The ecological freedom can guide people to produce and live ecological, and realize the unity between using and transforming nature, raising and protecting nature. After all ecological freedom can lay the new philosophical foundation for the ecological ethics. Passing from the freedom by conquering nature to the ecological freedom is the rout to construct the ecological civilization, and it is also the bridge by which we can fly from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom.