Daoism and environmental ethics : viewing the world through the lens of Laozi
The discussion between anthropocentrism and non-anthropocentrism is widely debated in environmental ethics. Many philosophers have come up with theories or movements to defend the non-anthropocentric view including Paul Taylor’s biocentrism and Arne Naess’s deep ecology movement. However, each view,...
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| Format: | Final Year Project |
| Language: | English |
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Nanyang Technological University
2022
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/156168 |
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| Institution: | Nanyang Technological University |
| Language: | English |
| Summary: | The discussion between anthropocentrism and non-anthropocentrism is widely debated in environmental ethics. Many philosophers have come up with theories or movements to defend the non-anthropocentric view including Paul Taylor’s biocentrism and Arne Naess’s deep ecology movement. However, each view, with its respective individualistic and holistic feature, faces a challenge. In this paper, I propose and defend an environmental ethic inspired by Laozi’s Daoism. I do this by discussing the concepts of dao, de and ziran in the Daodejing to show that the Daoist environmental ethic is non-anthropocentric and holistic. I also explore the practical implications of Daoism in terms of the actions and attitudes we can take by examining the concepts of wuwei, guan and fan. |
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