William Leiss’s Critique And Transcendence Of The Unreasonable Control

The harmony between man and nature is an eternal topic in the development of human society.Human’s vision of a better life in the future requires a harmonious ecological environment.However,after the Industrial Revolution,with the rapid development of science and technology,human beings increasingly strengthened their control over nature.The developed industrial society created a large amount of material wealth by utilizing rich resources,but also caused a serious ecological crisis,which made the natural environment show a trend of continuous deterioration and gradually put human beings in a state of living without happiness.The vision of harmony between human and nature was broken.It has become an urgent problem for mankind to find the root cause of ecological crisis and to solve it quickly.In addition,the ecological problems of developed industrial society have emerged in a new situation,that is,from the production field to the consumption field,and the traditional ecological theory can not put forward effective suggestions and measures.Therefore,William Leiss,the representative of ecological Marxism,explored the "original sin" of ecological problems,namely the unreasonable control of modern industrial society,from a critical perspective.This paper aims to find out the new ideas and measures to solve the ecological crisis from Leiss’ s exploration of the root and solution of ecological crisis.Combining with the research results of Leiss’ s ecological Marxism at home and abroad,this paper systematically analyzes Leiss’ s control thoughts by means of literature research and systematic analysis.This thought takes the criticism and transcendence of the unreasonable control as the main line,and takes the immediate intention,improper means,destructive consequences and the new meaning of control as the logical structure,and evaluates this thought from the perspective of dialectical analysis.The main content of this paper is divided into five parts about Leiss’ s criticism and transcendence of the unreasonable control.The first part is about the immediate intention of unreasonable control.Leiss believes that the real intention of human control is to avoid being controlled by nature and others to compete for the initiative,and to satisfy the endless expansion of human needs.However,these intentions are not reasonable,because human beings only aim at short-term interests and practice the grabbing of nature and the exploitation of others.The second part is about the improper means of the unreasonable control.The realization of irrational control intention is supported by corresponding means,that is,instrumental rationality and ideology compatible with capital logic.Science and technology manifested as instrumental rationality drive out value rationality,while Christian doctrine,bourgeois philosophy and consumerism ideology safeguard the ruling interests of the bourgeoisie and manipulate individual thoughts.The third part deals with the destructive consequences of the unreasonable control.The intention and means of the unreasonable control have caused a series of destructive consequences.First,it exacerbates the collapse of natural ecosystems,including the increasing scarcity of energy and minerals,the persistence of biological poverty and the decreasing absorptive capacity of the natural environment;Secondly,the intensification of social contradictions has led to endless confrontation and struggle among people,resulting in constant internal conflicts and frequent international wars.Finally,the loss of man himself leads to the alienation of man’s essence,the loss of freedom and the distance of happiness.The fourth part is the transcendence of unreasonable control.Leiss’ s’ s criticism of unreasonable control does not negate control completely,but discard its negative factors,absorb its positive factors,carry out reasonable control,and achieve the new connotation,new path and new goal of control.Firstly,from the three dimensions of ethics,legal norms and ecological rationality,the control is endowed with new connotation.Secondly,the construction of science and technology ethics to discard the anti-ecological nature of science and technology,to rebuild the concept of diversified demand to eliminate the concept of single demand and to realize the steady-state economy to replace the high-intensity market structure as a new control path.Finally,the new goal of control is to construct a harmonious future society which is easy to live and to realize the liberation of nature and human.The fifth part is to evaluate this thought of Leiss.Leiss’ s exploration of the origin and solution of ecological crisis enriched the content of Marxist ecological criticism,and promoted ecological criticism of ecological Marxism to the capitalist society,which has a guiding significance for the construction of a sustainable development society.However,this idea of Leiss also reflects the limitations of emphasizing ecology over economy and the unfeasibility of constructing a society that is easy to survive,which has a certain utopian color and greatly reduces its revolutionary significance.