
Contents
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Why Non-Western Political Theory and Confucianism Now? Why Non-Western Political Theory and Confucianism Now?
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Confucius’s Time (551–479 BCE) and Society Confucius’s Time (551–479 BCE) and Society
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Neo-Confucian Cosmology and Its Environmental Significance Neo-Confucian Cosmology and Its Environmental Significance
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Conclusion Conclusion
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Notes Notes
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15 Confucius: How Non-Western Political Theory Contributes to Understanding the Environmental Crisis
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Published:January 2015
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Abstract
Focusing on the writings of Confucius and the Confucian tradition, Joel Jay Kassiola argues that looking beyond the Western political thought makes obvious sense in an era of globalization and planetary environmental crisis; moreover, such a move enables us to escape the narrow perspectives that have contributed to our ecological predicament. Confucius and Confucianism provide a particularly valuable understanding of our times: Confucius wrote in response to a society that, like our own, was confused and bewildered by a transformative moment in history and widespread sense of perceived crisis; Confucius valued past teachings and thus offered an intergenerational perspective; and the later Confucian tradition advanced a cosmology attuned to an ecological perspective. While Western religious cosmology envisions a discrete moment of creation by a divine creator, a view that fosters a dualism of humanity and nature, Neo-Confucian thought sees nature as always existing in an endless, ongoing process of creation. Furthermore, the Confucian tradition is non-anthropocentric, as it posits a fundamental continuity and unity among humanity, Heaven, and Earth, a view that, in turn, entails respect and care for nonhuman nature.
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