 |
|||||
 |
|||||
Confucianism is often stereotyped as the dull and boring step-child of East Asian religious traditions. This collection of essays that looks at the interaction of Confucian thought and practice with ecology easily proves how misleading and just plain wrong stereotypes are. Informative, accessible, and a delight to read, "Confucianism and Ecology: The Interrelation of Heaven, Earth, and Humans" belongs on the secondary teacher's bookshelf as an added resource in history, religion, and ethics courses. While it is most likely that this volume in its entirety will not find its way into the high school classroom, many of the essays would make for valuable sources of information, handouts, and exciting classroom discussion. For those who teach courses related in any way to the interaction of religion and ecology I want to highly recommend the series forward written by editors Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim. I can think of no better introduction for students to the whole issue of religion and ecology. This short essay succinctly articulates the current environmental crisis, connects this crisis to the notion of worldview, and then looks at the relationship between religion and worldview. From there the essay moves on to discuss the problems and promise of religions in terms of the environmental crisis, the resources that religions have for dealing with this crisis, and the responses of religions to the crisis. All of these themes form the basic parameters of the study of religion and ecology and set the stage for students to move into a deeper study. Thankfully, this essay will be printed in each of the volumes in the series. The essays in this volume are divided into five categories: "The Nature of the Critique," "The Context for Response," "Conceptual Resources from China, Korea, and Japan," "Philosophical Reflections," and "From Principle to Practice." While impractical to comment on each essay in the collection, there are several I would like to highlight. Both essays in the "Nature of the Critique"section, Tu Weiming's "Beyond the Enlightenment Mentality," and Wm. Theodore de Bary's "Think Globally, Act Locally, and the Contested Ground Between," are important and useful essays for the secondary classroom. Tu Weiming quickly summarizes the problems of our modern, "enlightenment mentality," and then moves to look at the resources available to us to solve or correct these problems. He thinks that we need to "explore the spiritual resources that may help us to broaden the scope of the Enlightenment project, deepen its moral sensitivity, and, if necessary, transform creatively its genetic constraints in order to realize fully its potential as a worldview for the human condition as a whole (pg 5)." These resources, not without their problems as well, are (1) the ethico-religious traditions of the modern West, (2) non-western axial age civilizations, (3) primal traditions, (4) and new sense of global community that ultimately arises from the Enlightenment project itself. Responding to Tu Weiming as his point of entry into this discussion, Wm. Theodore de Bary makes the point that need for localization and rootedness are essential first steps in our acting locally and thinking globally. Drawing on the classical resources of Neo-Confucianism, and interestingly enough, American Wendell Berry, de Bary suggests that it is only from the foundations of home, family, and place that we can cultivate the qualities of self transformation, self-discipline, and character formation that are required of us to act well in our even larger connections to community, state, and world. One of several gems in the "Context for Response" section is Philip J. Ivanhoe's essay "Early Confucianism and Environmentalism." Starting from a position that Confucianism can serve as a resource for ecological thinking, Mr. Ivanhoe gives brief descriptions of four modern attitudes (Gaia hypothesis, deep ecology, land ethic, social ecology) towards environmental ethics. He then discusses various uses of the words "oneness" and "anthropocentrism." With this grid in mind he turns his attention to the environmental teachings of three early Confucian thinkers: Confucius, Mencius, Hsun-Tzu. The rest of the article is then taken up examining how the thinking of these philosophers can be related to the four modern theories and the two concepts. The next section, "Conceptual Resources from China, Korea, and Japan," takes an individual concept or thinker and looks at how these ideas can be harnessed in the service of re-conceptualizing our relationship to the earth. Mention should be made of Young-chan Ro's "Ecological Implications of Yi Yulgok's Cosmology,"and Mary Evelyn Tucker's "The Philosophy of Ch'i as an Ecological Cosmology." Young-chan Ro begins the article by declaring that "one of the most fruitful ways to develop an ecology is to discover an ecological dimension to cosmology (pg 170)." From there we move to an investigation of the Korean Neo-Confucian philosopher Yi Yulgok and a vision of unity between human beings and the cosmos. This "cosmoanthropic" view identifies the universe not as an object, but as a subject. A subject that needs to be understood as a "living, dynamic, and changing reality" that humans are in relationship with. Mary Evelyn Tucker takes the core concept of Ch'i (material force) and shows that especially in the Neo-Confucian era, Ch'i was understood as the interconnection of spirit and matter. This understanding has important implications for ethics as well. "Ethically, the idea of ch'i provides a basis for a this-worldly spirituality which revers humans and nature as part of a single continuum of ch'i (pg.188)." This cosmological vision becomes helpful as we struggle to understand the "inherent unity of matter and energy (pg.204)." Finally, I would draw reader's attention to John Berthong's "Motifs for a New Confucian Ecological Vision." Mr. Berthong takes eight central Confucian concepts and relates them directly to the new Confucian discourse on ecology. This movement from past to present illustrates nicely how philosophical concepts and ways of visioning reality can be put to use in re-visioning the human relationship to earth. Thoughtful and helpful to readers "Confucianism and Ecology" is an important contribution to understanding how the world's religions construct the natural world and our relationship to it. Most importantly, this volume asks how central Confucian concepts can be used to help us make that relationship to the natural world more life enhancing for us all. review ©2000 by Tom Collins and RSiSS Seabury Hall return to Religion and Ecology resources |
