Journal of East China Normal University (Philosoph ›› 2016, Vol. 48 ›› Issue (3): 159-165.doi: 10.16382/ j.cnki.1000-5579.2016.03.017

• 比较视域中的儒家伦理 • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Confucian Environmental Virtue Ethics

HUANG Yong   

  • Online:2016-05-15 Published:2016-07-06
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Abstract: Environmental virtue ethics has its clear advantage over the more predominant approaches to environmental issues, deontology and utilitarianism. However, it is plagued with anthropocentrism since it has been mostly endaimonistic along the Aristotelian line, deriving its interest in environmental issues from human flourishing. By focusing on the work of Wang Yangming, this paper develops a Confucian version of environmental virtue ethics. What is central to this version of environmental virtue ethics is that a virtuous person feels to be in one body with ten thousand things. It avoids anthropocentrism since the flourishing of the virtuous person means the flourishing of everything in the universe. However, to say that a virtuous person feels to be in one body with ten thousand things does not mean that this person takes care of the ten thousand things without distinction. This is related to the Confucian idea of love with the distinction, which traditionally concerns the human relationships but Wang Yangming expands to our relationship to non-human beings as well.