Seeking A Harmonious Human-Nature Relationship: An Analysis On Thoreau's Ambivalent Natural View

"What is the relationship between humans and nature? What is the connection between civilization and natural environment?"These are some of the ancient questions that people have been asking constantly. Two polar opinions have been co-existing in the long history of human beings. One is egocentrism which emphasizes the superiority of the ego (humans) over other creatures and the other is ecocentrism which focuses on the equality among creatures within the ecosphere. Thoreau as an environmental saint, poetically lives at Walden Pond, far away from the noise of civilization. He devotes all his life to observing nature and thinking about humans'fates and called on humans to live in nature in order to suck the marrow of life and enrich their spiritual life. However, Thoreau is not free from the influence of the mainstream culture—anthropocentrism. He constantly changes his focus either on culture or on nature in Walden, which represents his ambivalent attitude toward human-nature relationship. This ambivalent human-nature relationship is based on the western thinking mode (subject\object dualism)—nature\culture, self\other dichotomy. Yet it did not really solve the tense human-nature relationship we are facing today. Instead, it is condemned to be another form of anthropocentrism and serve as the main reason of the contemporary environmental degradation.This thesis tries to explore Thoreau's ambivalent attitude toward nature, namely, the egocentric stance and the ecocentric one in order to have a glance on the western human-nature relationship and rethink on the western natural philosophy. This paper consists of five Chapters. Chapter One is about the motivation that has encouraged this thesis and literature review as well as the arrangement of my paper. Chapter Two is the egocentric reading of Walden, which takes the self as the central thematic concern, putting emphasis on the explorations of the self. Chapter Three tries the ecocentric reading of Walden, which moves away from a Transcendentalist focus on the self and toward a more ecological understanding of the natural world. A complex and comprehensive understanding of nature is the focus in the Chapter. The egocentric and ecocentric readings of Walden result in the self\other, nature\culture dichotomy, which is characteristic of Thoreau's complicated and even conflicting attitudes toward nature. Paradox, the writing technique that Thoreau employs, serves to bring together the egocentric and ecocentric sides of his psyche. Chapter Four mainly explores Thoreau's paradoxical attitude toward human-nature relationship. In Chapter Five, the author of this paper makes an evaluation on Thoreau's ambivalent natural view and rethinks on the western natural philosophy. The thesis concludes that the harmonious human-nature relationship does not lie in the debate between egocentrism and ecocentrism, rather in absorbing various natural philosophies to forge a new and practical theoretical framework to support it.