Confucian "harmony" Eco-ethical Thinking

So far, people have made achievements in economic and social development is to some extent at the cost of sacrificing the nature. Engels once said: we should not indulge in the victories of our human. For each of these victories, we have a natural retaliation from environment. That is true. Towards the end of 20th century, man has been forced to re-examine the relationship between self and nature, and to seek a wholly new approach to handle these urgent problems such as population exploration, environmental pollution, resources shortage and so on. Chinese traditional Confucianism has taken the thought that man is the integral part of nature as one of its main ideas, and emphasized the unity between human being and ecology. In some cases, this thought provides some useful sources for modern ethical thinking. Nevertheless, it is paid more attention by Chinese and foreign scholars. Factually, this thought to some extent can be seen as the indispensable inspiration to solve the present ecological issues. This paper will discuss the thought about harmony between nature and man from four parts.PartⅠ.In this part, it explores the creation and content of the thought (theory that man is integral part of nature).This thought is created by Zhouyi, developed by Confucius, Mencius, Xun Zi, eventually established by Dong Zhongshu and enlarged the contents by Cheng Yi, Cheng Hao, Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming. From then on, the thought is completed and stated by a plain and direct way.PartⅡ.In this part, it analyses the ethical thought from idea that nature and man is unified as one. It includes harmonious thought from San Cai theory (earth and man of harmony with God), the ecologically ethical value from theory that people are brothers, and all things are the same kinds, the disciplines development by the viewpoint of doing everything strictly according to the rules of the nature, and ethical aim of harmony between man and nature. From the perspectives of modern idea of ecology, these viewpoints inspire the sense of environmental protection, reflect the thought of ecological harmony, show the codes of appropriate conservation, and give birth to the measures of environmental conservation. Due to the limitation of historical situation, theory of harmony between nature and man also has to face the dilemma, e.g. respecting man, despising nature, caring for harmony of man and nature and turning back to collision between man and nature, deeply concerning ethical idea and closing eyes to ecological conservation, respecting experiences and despising rational thinking. These embarrassments from every side embody the differences between modern and old-time statements on harmony of man and nature. Therefore, to directly use this thought to solve contemporary ecological problem is not suitable. Actually, it has to take a reasonable transformation for this thought.PartⅢ. It explores the modern conversion for Confucius thought over harmony between man and nature here. On the one hand, modern society inherits the reasonable elements built on the thought of harmony between man and nature. Our society needs to achieve the thinking of unification, to harmonize the relation of man and nature, to absorb the benevolent emotion and to care for every creature. We should use the principles of ecological balance to protect the environment and abide by the ethics of sincerity to upgrade the function of natural sources. On the other hand, this society also should fight the dilemma of this thought so that it can re-define the modern definition of this thought, try to harmonize the reasoning of integration and conflict, and enlarge the scope of ethics in order to gain the aim of unification about the old thought with modern ecologically ethical thought. This unification will be important to re-shape the relation of man and nature.PartⅣ.This part reveals the modern value about theory of harmony between man and nature. Scientific look of this thought is beneficial to make up self-centered tendency, to warm the relationship of man and nature's relation, to stress the importance of ecological condition, to take the responsibilities of man, to restrain the man's action so that can choose sustainable development way, to consolidate the educational effect of ethics in order to improve the level of man's behaviors. As mentioned above, this thought can be used to improve natural environment, also seen as sources of environmental protection. In the premise of harmony between man and nature, man may take this theory to push the whole society forward. However, in the condition of bad natural environment, to re-examine this great thought, to reasonably re-build the relation of man and nature is the unique way to avoid the errors that have ever been made by us.