“天人合一”:现实抑或神话?

Chinese "Unity of Man and Nature" :Reality or Myth?

中国是面临生态威胁最为严重的地区之一。有人主张,这场生态灾难主要源于西方现代性的入侵,以及由其一并带来的工具理性的释放。为求出路,中国必须重寻往日的生态智慧。本文并不质疑西方对此应负的具体责任,而是指出,在生态问题上并不存在一种文化的二分。诚然,中国已经拥有从道家哲学生出的天人感应思想。然而,儒家经典却又时常提及,人为自然之主宰乃是一方文化必要的先决条件,这使得中国的自然环境在古代便已遭到严重破坏。以上事实表明,这场环境危机并非由某一特定文化传统所酝酿,而是整个人类文明的产物,是'独断的'人类长期以来偏常定位的结果。

China is one of the ecologically most threatened regions on earth.It has been argued that the ecological disaster is mainly due to the incursion of Western modernity with its unleashing of instrumental reason.In order to find a way out,China would have to rediscover its ecological wisdom of the past.Without calling into question the specific responsibility of the West,this article argues that in fact there is no cultural dichotomy of this kincd It is true that China has known the idea of a sympathetic relationship between man and nature,which was developed above all in Daoist philosophy.But it has also known the idea of the subjugation of nature by man as a necessary precondition of culture,which has typically been brought forward in the Confucian literature.And it has done severe damage to the natural environment already in antiquity.These facts suggest that the environmental crisis is not the product of a specific cultural tradition but of human culture in general and the long-term result of the eccentric positionality of the’thetic’,human being.