Pre-qin Confucian Ecological Thoughts And Modern Enlightenment

Nowadays, human beings are confronted with severe ecological crises,such as resource exhaustion, environmental pollution, and ecologicaldeterioration, which have been escalating the conflict between humankind andnature. As a result, it is a pressing issue that mankind have to be faced with toprotect ecological environment and alleviate the contradiction between humanbeings and nature. Pre-Qin Confucianism embraces abundant ecologicalperceptions. Among them,“treating people well and loving things”,“abolishingluxury and honoring thrifty” and “the unity of heaven and humanity” togetherembody thoughts that people should treat and protect nature properly and followthe natural law, which are beneficial to our harmonious society. Consequently,we ought to ponder ecological ethics of Pre-Qin Confucianism and digest itsessence. It will be a great help for easing the current and increasingly seriousenvironmental problems to combine the essence with the practice. In addition,ecological ideas of Pre-Qin Confucianism not only give us inspiration inestablishing right perspective in values, developments and consumption andconverting patterns of civilization, but also are substantially meaningful to buildup a society where humanity and nature coexist in harmony.This thesis is divided into three chapters. The introduction deals with thepurpose, meanings and domestic and international status quo of the researchbriefly. In addition, it introduces the research method and its innovations as well.The first chapter of this thesis simply shows some basic concept of theecological and Pre-Qin Confucianism. The first stage is the Confucianism ofPre-Qin Confucianism, and Confucius, Mencius and Xunzi as representative.Pre-Qin Confucianism has many theories. In the face of contemporaryecological problems, the Pre-Qin Confucianism supports intelligence. It isbenefit to solve the ecological contradictions. The second chapter investigatesthe major contents of the Pre-Qin Confucianism ecological ideas, including“kindheartedness”,“abolishing luxury and honoring thrifty” and “heaven andhumanity”. There are many ecological problems. The cause of the problem is that human malformations of the development, morbid consumption andunreasonable values. This chapter reveals the inspiration of researching Pre-QinConfucianism ecological ideas from three perspectives: development,consumption, and values. Only in this way, the relationship between man andnature can ease.The author thinks that the inspiration attained from the Pre-QinConfucianism ecological ideas is of great meaning to establish the society wherehuman being and nature coexist in harmony.