Man over nature

Sam Crane, a professor at Williams College in the US who teaches Chinese politics and ancient Chinese philosophy, acknowledges that there is a certain environmental concern in The Analects and an interest in maintaining a kind of balance among various natural elements.

But the philosophy is, at its core, anthropocentrist, meaning it puts Man above nature. Human relationships remain at the center of Confucianism, he said.

"I think Tu and others are correct in arguing that a modern application of Confucianism would bring with it a certain concern for the extreme environmental degradation that rapid industrialization has brought to China and other parts of the world," said Crane in an e-mail to the Global Times. But Confucianism takes something like a "conservationist" approach to the environment, namely, it must be preserved and cared for in order to promote human development, he added.

Feng Yongfeng, an environmentalist and founder of Beijing-based NGO Green Beagle, doesn't hide his doubts about using Confucianism or Taoism to fix the environment, calling it "pure nonsense."

He said that many of the interpretations today about Confucian teachings are wishful thinking. "The relationship between Man and nature in ancient times was based upon their specific, limited conditions, namely, low productivity and limited knowledge of nature; nor did they have the ability to protect nature," said Feng.

"The awe, fear or love of nature back then is different from the respect, love and protection we are talking about today," he said.

People today often praise the classical gardens of Suzhou, saying they are the embodiment of traditional Chinese philosophy as well as ecological philosophy. "Such a line of argument is ridiculous, because the gardens try to artificially contain and confine nature in a garden, which is the polar opposite from real ecological concepts," said Feng.

Since 2004, Feng has also been combing through ancient literature to study Chinese people's attitudes towards nature. He found that while in works such as Book of Songs there were vivid descriptions of nature, this was scarce in later times.

Even though elements of nature also appear in ancient Chinese poems, most of them were not observations of nature, but rather the poets' imagination, said Feng. Elements of nature became highly abstract, symbolic and even stereotypical. For instance, the plum flower, bamboo, orchid and the Chrysanthemum were always used to refer to the Confucian concept of the gentleman.

Feng said the evidence people today find from the scriptures doesn't hold. "If Confucianism, which has dominated Chinese civilization for most of our history, is as ecologically conscious as they claim, then why hasn't it produced a single book on natural history?" said Feng.

Feng acknowledges that some mountains where Taoist temples exist are well protected, but that is not necessarily the result of Taoism. Instead, it could be a result of local people holding a sense of awe toward a somewhat mysterious religion. "Areas surrounding tombs are also usually quite green, what does that tell you?" said Feng.