Eric Sean Nelson (Department of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts Lowell)
REVIEW OF N.J. Girardot, James Miller, Liu Xiaogan, Daoism and Ecology: Ways within a Cosmic Landscape (Harvard University Press, 2001). 478 Pages.
DAO: A JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY
Volume II • Number 2 • Summer 2003 • ISSN: 1540-3009. Pages 342-345
This
excellent collection is part of a series of volumes on the ecological
significance of the world religions which, like its predecessors, is based on a
conference sponsored by the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard
University. This anthology is of particular interest because it gathers essays
both for and against the ecological significance of Daoism. In addition, a
number of the essays challenge beloved motifs of comparative philosophy by
undermining the distinction between philosophical and religious Daoism and
throwing into question the “romantic” ecological reading of classical Daoist
texts.
The
distinction between philosophy and religion is especially ambiguous and
problematic in the case of Daoism, since there are many Daoisms even if there is
only one Dao. Daoism can be interpreted as a philosophy of wise sages, an
aesthetic of poetic literati, a libertarian or libertine politics, and/or as a
contradictory set of popular religious practices and institutions. Even if we
consider Daoism as a popular religion, it blends into the practices and beliefs
of Chinese folk-religion—as shown by the papers in section four. Insofar as
Daoism can be distinguished from its milieu, religious Daoism includes and flows
into a great wealth and variety of practices and goals—from the focus on
techniques of spiritual self-discovery and transformation (inner alchemy), to
the promotion of bodily longevity and the martial arts, to practices such as
astrology and geomancy, to rites dedicated to various gods and immortals, and to
forms of alchemy, magic and sorcery.
This
diversity can already be seen in the first section. It is a prolegomena to the
questions driving the volume as a whole, since these papers closely examine
Western ecological accounts of Daoism. Jordan Paper’s article criticizes both
the faddish uses and basic misinterpretations of Daoist texts in ecological
thinking, and suggests that we need to reject “romantic fantasies” about
Daoism in favor of a more informed perspective which interprets Daoism in
relation to its Chinese context. He concludes that we can learn more
ecologically from Chinese rituals based on the pragmatic character of Chinese
traditions as a whole and the rujia
tradition in particular. In a similar vein, E.N. Anderson argues for the
superiority of a Confucian/Levinasian approach to nature. Although morality
might be arguably more important than mysticism for ecological thinking, this
argument is strange given that Levinas’s thought is also religious and it only
recognizes the ethical significance of the alterity or transcendence of God and
the inter-human. Daoism, however, calls for a yielding responsiveness to all
things in their immanence, human as well as inhuman.
Joanne
Birdwhistell continues the skeptical tone toward deep ecology, arguing from an
ecofeminist perspective that deep ecology remains tied to male structures of
domination and oppression. She suggests that although classical Daoism offers
some useful insights, its structural similarities to deep ecology, and
dismissive treatment of women, show that it is equally problematic for
contemporary thought. Although these criticisms should be taken seriously, she
too easily conflates universalism and holism. She sees no difference between the
Enlightenment rationalism that asserts the priority of universal governing laws
which subsume all particulars, and the holism that suggests the singularity in
contextuality or the dynamic interconnectedness of particulars. Daoism does not,
in this sense, seem to demand a governing principle or archē. As other
papers in this volume indicate, a number of Daoist texts ultimately affirm that
which is beyond duality—yin and yang, heaven and earth, male and
female—rather than culminating in the affirmation of the dominant term like
the primacy of heaven. Daoism often proceeds beyond duality via the affirmation
of the supposedly “lesser” term. If a male Daoist has to become more like a
woman in order to become more like the Dao, this does presuppose the lower
status of women in this society which many Daoists no doubt affirmed. But, in a
different reading than Birdwhistell’s, a woman is perhaps in a better position
to overcome duality in already being closer to the Dao instead of being left
without options. Otherwise we will be in danger of missing and dismissing the
practices of Daoist women, who did find live options for themselves in Daoism.
Michael
LaFargue deepens the rejection of deep ecology in favor of a “confrontational
hermeneutics” that exposes the otherness of the text. He argues that the only
way to make sense of the Daoist attitude toward nature is to realize that Daoism
does not oppose nature and culture as mutually exclusive terms. In Daoism,
becoming like nature also means assisting and promoting nature. Nature is
understood as a part of human culture that needs to be cultivated rather than as
a “wilderness” isolated from human activity. It is important to note,
however, that the Daoist ideal involves human accommodation to nature as well as
the human cultivation of nature. Daoism calls for a fundamental responsiveness
to nature. This insight might be lost given the strong emphasis that the papers
in section one place on social, linguistic, and cultural “construction.” As
Derrida has shown with respect to justice, not everything is or should be de/constructable.
Perhaps it is the endless “constructions” of nature—whether intended for
well or ill—that need to be questioned if we are to become ecologically
responsive to nature as something other and more than the human. Terry
Kleeman’s article also discusses Daoism as an art of resource management, but
through its religious rituals. The celestial hierarchy of gods and their
servants embodies an ordered bureaucracy that demands the wisdom, service, and
respect of the priest.
One
recent tragedy is the ecological degradation seen in cultures that are
supposedly more ecologically insightful than the West. The skeptics in this
volume thus always point to the ecological crisis in East Asia as an indication
that Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism are ecologically helpless in the face of
modernization. Whether it is communist China and North Korea or capitalist South
Korea and Taiwan, there has been more ecological devastation in the last century
than in the entire history of East Asian civilizations, which are famous for
transforming nature through irrigation and the expansion of agricultural lands
since antiquity. Yet it should give these critics pause that this has occurred
under the loss of traditional environmental practices—in which respect for
nature was enforced with religious sanctions—and the dominance of Western
ideologies and patterns of competition. On the opposite interpretive extreme,
one should also be wary of the appropriation of Non-Western religions and
philosophies as raw material for raiding expeditions that mine texts and
traditions for “resources,” which are torn out of their context and adopted
to other agendas without any respect for their otherness or their own
independent character. Creative interpretation is necessary, since this is how
traditions are transmitted across cultures, but so is a responsive hermeneutics
in intercultural understanding.
The
papers in section two and three establish that there is an ecological core and
depth to the Daoist religious tradition as well as traditional Chinese folk
practices. Western philosophers have unfortunately tended to neglect classic
Daoist religious texts, but some of these provide the most ecologically
sensitive accounts of the theoretical and practical relationship between humans
and nature. Kristofer Schipper’s excellent paper discusses the environmental
rules and policies of early Daoist communities as articulated in texts such as
the One Hundred and Eighty Precepts.
These practical precepts for non-sages embody the Daoist ideal of recognition
of, respect for, and responsiveness to the independent course of nature and all
things (whether human or inhuman). The articles by Chi-tim Lai, Zhang Jiyu and
Li Yuanguo, and Robert Campany provide insightful accounts of the ecological
implications of Medieval Daoist thought and practices concerning nature in texts
such as the Scripture of Great Peace
(an account of human responsibility and guilt for the maladies of nature and
destruction of peace), the Scripture of
Unconscious Unification (an account of the stealing and potential harmony
between the three powers or qi:
heaven, earth, and the myriad or ten-thousand things), and the alchemical
writings of Ge Hong. These papers focus on the Daoist insight that we need to
respect and be responsive to the spontaneity and independence of all things—to
their own intrinsic nature or self-so-ness (ziran).
This can stimulate an active intervention in nature for the sake of nature as
the last paper and the papers of section three emphasize in their discussion of
Daoist alchemy and exploration of nature as well as popular folk-practices like Fengshui
and gardening.
Whereas
the fifth section provides a provocative discussion of practical ecological
concerns in contemporary Daoism, and includes an important declaration on the
environment by the Chinese Daoist Association and a concluding roundtable
discussion, the contributions of section four attempt to evaluate the
significance of Daoism for environmental philosophy. The papers by David Hall
and Roger Ames continue to develop their provocative project of articulating the
eco-philosophical import of Daoism by beginning with the Daoist experience of
language and nature and showing how it provides an alternative basis for
ecological sensibilities. Hall’s paper indicates how the Daoist
“aesthetic,” as he perhaps inappropriately calls it, involves the natural
parity of all (the myriad or ten thousand) things, the rejection of
anthropocentric and objectivistic portrayals of the world, and the
non-referential use of language. Daoist language aims at deference toward nature
rather than at objectivating reference to objects. Daoist action and
understanding occur through unprincipled or anarchic knowing (wuzhi),
nonassertive action (wuwei), and
objectless desire (wuyu). Ames
develops the following features of Daoism: the priority of process and change
over form and stasis, a focus on situation instead of agency, an understanding
of the body as located in nature rather than separated from it, the mutuality
and interdependence of things in their particularity or oneness without the one,
the priority of the poetic and the way over the analytic and the truth, an
emphasis on a contingent and negotiated harmony rather than teleology, an
attention to the indeterminacy and uniqueness of particulars that leaves open
the novel and site-specific, and the Dao as a dynamic interconnecting whole of
particularities that is without boundaries.
Russell
Kirkland introduces a more skeptical note by unfolding all the ways in which the
classical Daoist philosophers were not environmentalists, humanists, or
do-gooders. Daoism aims at spiritual enlightenment and indifference toward the
suffering that is part of nature rather than at the humanitarian and heroic
intervention demanded by environmental activists. He thus argues that wuwei (non-activity) calls for passivity and worldly indifference.
Although there is much that is right in Kirkland’s article, his argument is
powerfully answered by the following two papers. Whereas Lisa Raphals shows how wuwei
implies indirect and humble activity through self-cultivation, Liu Xiaogan
articulates how wuwei is itself a
balance or mean between minimal activity and maximum results such that one
avoids the (often unintentional) destructive consequences of one’s own
actions. They establish the ecological significance of wuwei
by developing its proper meaning as a non-assertive rather than in-active and
in-different activity. If our ecological plight is due to human independence
from and mastery of nature, including the continuing dominance of this paradigm
in environmentalist activism, then Daoist doubts about human arrogance and
separateness might be salutary.
© 2003 Eric Sean Nelson