From "Domination Of Nature" To "Liberation Of Nature"

Ecological crisis illustrates the imbalanced relationship between men and nature andreflects the strained relationships among people, which, in essence, showcases theprecarious life and mindset of people. Human, having been parading toward even greaterindustrial achievements, is being challenged by severe ecological crisis. The pendingissues critical to human beings are to face the ecological crisis squarely by dialecticallyanalyzing its symptoms and root causes for a reasonable solution.Basing on The Domination of Nature and The Limits to Satisfaction, the two masterworks of William Leiss, a left-wing Canadian scholar, this book explores his ecologicalMarxist theory through the comparative study between his works and other classic worksin the context of the domestic and foreign theoretical researches on his ecologicalMarxist ideas. The exploration, referring to the perspectives of relevant theorists andschools of thoughts, conducts the logic analysis in the context of history, takes thedialectic underlaid the “domination” and “obedience” relationship between men andnature as its logic roadmap, starts from the root cause of ecological crisis and concludeswith a solution in this regard, which goes deep into Leiss’s new perspective and choice ofvalues in his quest for the root cause and solution of ecological crisis and tries to revealthe essence of the ecological critical theory embodied in his ecological Marxist ideas, inan effort to search the new perspectives and ways to solve the ecological crisis entangledmodern China.In this paper, it is suggested that the Leiss, in practice, focuses on the relationshipbetween men and nature and approaches “domination of nature”,“obedience to nature”and then “liberation of nature” in an preset order, in such way to pinpoint the root causeof ecological crisis and look for the solution, serving as an proper roadmap of his logicand valve. Under such context, this paper, apart from its prologue and epilogue, isorganized in six sections containing four areas elaborated orderly as follows: the firstsection lays out the general interpretation of Leiss’s ecological critical theory byapproaching the considerations, historical context and logic of his theory and focusing onthe theory’s origination, academic significance and dimension of criticism. The secondand third sections concentrate on his theory regarding the root cause of ecological crisisand survey the cause of ecological crisis rooted from, as he argued, human’s mentalityand nature in the perspectives of “domination of nature” and “obedience to nature”. Thefourth and fifth sections analyze and elaborate the ideological implications and valuesembedded in his theory and explain his solutions to ecological crisis through the concepts such as “liberation of nature”,“new outlook of happiness”,“the economy of thestationary state” and “the conserver society” etc. The sixth section evaluates thetheoretical position, ideological values and practical significance and approaches the“ecological awareness”,“cultural system”,“economic mode”,“consumption policy” and“way of life” for the solution to the ecological crisis challenging the modern China.Research on Leiss’s ecological critical theory and comparison between his theory andthose of relevant scholars and schools of thoughts reveal two major values of his theory.On the one hand, his profound perspective suggests: first,“domination of nature” is, inessence,“domination of man”; second, the human’s mentality of “domination of nature”leads us to ecological crisis while the idea of “obedience to nature”, as embedded inhuman’s nature, sends us down to the same path; third,“domination of nature” should bereasonably translated into “domination of the relationship between men and nature”. Onthe other hand, Leiss’s road map of solving the ecological crisis and his idea ofstructuring future society serve as important revelations for us to build a ecologicallyfriendly country: it is needed to: first, change from “domination of nature” to “liberationof nature”; second, develop a “new outlook of happiness” for diversified realizations ofone’s satisfaction; third, develop “economy of the stationary state”; fourth, build “theconserver society”.