Heidegger Ecological Ethics

Heidegger points out that metaphysics beginning in the modern rationalism of Descartes, makes corpus and guest body, person and world distinguish and oppose clearly, which is still to replace analyzing existence itself with studying existentialist, and continue to produce forgetfulness of existence. Heidegger thinks forgetting existence also makes person homeless. Homelessness includes two kinds of meanings: One is that modern people lose the comparative system knowing themselves, i.e. they never know themselves from "existence" but understand themselves from Dasein, then lose themselves; the other one is that modern people break natural environment and make the person lose the existing material condition. The mankind want to return to their own house, modern people must have a house to return, the persons have to rule themselves in "existence" oneself. "In-existence" so-called doesn't mean to place a person in the other vaster entity, and is ruled by it, but means a person and existence combine with each other. A person only combines with existence in the existence, and he can find himself the true natural character. Just because Dasein combines with existence, the person will care about existing, and he illuminates himself in the existence, making the person become a guard for existence by all means. Because Heidegger's concept about existence is considered as "nature" in his later thoughts, we could think it contains plentiful idea of ecological ethics in his study to "existence". If we could think that a modern person's forgetfulness to existence is just to nature, we could think a person's brightening himself with existence also means a person affects with nature and is ruled by it. The combination between person and nature is the truth for a person's existence. A person is a watcher for existence also metaphors he is a guard of nature. Analyzing deeply Heidegger's idea of ecological ethics has important practical significance for studying ecological ethics deeply.