The Great Virtue of Heaven and Earth Is Nurturing Life: Environmental Ethics of the Chinese

The political ethics of the ancient Chinese was a microcosm of their cosmology, and the principles and norms of state governance were constructed based on their understanding of “heaven, earth, and human beings” and their relationship. Therefore, the ethics of the Chinese people must move beyond the state, and can only be justified and completed between heaven and man. Self, family, community, and heaven and earth constitute the four dimensions or stages of Chinese ethical thinking, forming personal ethics, family ethics, community and political ethics, as well as cosmic ethics in a special sense. Their relationships are both parallel, representing the four aspects of human life, and progressive, representing the different levels of personal moral growth. In arguing that Confucianism is a system of “spiritual humanism” that is distinct from European secular humanism, Du Weiming points out, “as an inclusive and comprehensive humanism, spiritual humanism is divided into four inseparable aspects: the first is the individual, referring to the integration of the individual’s body, mind, spiritual consciousness, and divinity; the second is the healthy interaction between the individual and the other, and between the individual and the community, which includes the family, the neighborhood, the community, the city, the nation, the world, and even the universe; the third is a lasting harmony between human beings and the natural world; the last and, I think, the most crucial is the complementation of the hearts of people and the way of the heaven. Generally, when we think about humanism, we only consider the first three aspects, but in fact, the true spiritual humanism should also include the issue of the relationship between human beings and the way of the heaven”. These arguments are in line with the basic features of traditional Confucian theoretical thinking and they should also be given special attention when we explore the ethics of the Chinese people.