Dialectics Of "Determinism Of Geographical Environment"

Since modern times, the rapid and violent development of industrial civilization not only brings great material wealth to human society, but also makes the human into the environmental crisis, which keeps human far away from their wonderful aspiration of "Poetic Dwelling". Therefore, how to solve current environmental crisis, construct ecological civilization and achieve harmonious development of human, nature and society, becomes an urgent problem to be resolved for people. However, it has great enlightenment significance for conflict resolve between human and nature and ecological civilization construction to re-recognize "determinism of geographical environment" and re-evaluate this determinism from the perspective of environmental philosophical ideas by Marx and Engels.Montesquieu, the eighteenth century philosopher, was the representative of the theory of "geographic environmental determinism", which derived its origin from the times of ancient Greece. He held the notion that geographical environment(soil and climate, etc) determined the character, mentality of a nation, laws and political institutions of society. Non-anthropocentrism in the environment ethics is highly consistent with geographic environmental determinism. On the one hand, they both emphasize the harmonious relationship between men and the nature; on the other hand, what they emphasize is the sheer restraints on men from the objective nature but totally ignore men’s transformation on the nature. It is no exaggeration to say that Non-anthropocentrism is the modern "geographic environmental determinism".Marx and Engels had dialectically investigated and analyzed our geographic environment by the consolidated method of history and logic. They believed that the effects posed by geographical environment on human society varied in different periods of history, and human beings may have counteractive effects on the nature also. Hence, rationalities and limitations coexist in the theory of "geographic environmental determinism". Following are the rationalities. Firstly, geographical environment, functioning as the object of human practice, is the material premise of human practice. So we can safely say that the differences in human practice in different historical periods and in different areas are determined by geographical environment; secondly, geographical environment is the participator as well as the creator of value, which shifts from "thing-in-itself" to "thing-for-us" through human practice and achieves its own value; thirdly, geographical environment influences the development of human society through the immediate impacts on social productivity. The limitations of "Geographic environmental determinism" mainly lie in two aspects. On the one hand, it ignores subjectivity and initiative of human beings, and fails to understand sensibility as perceptual activity; on the other hand, it exaggerates the decisive role of geographical environment, falling to the idealism view of history.Therefore,if people from the dimension of the materialist dialectics "geographic environmental determinism", that not only helps overcome the two metaphysical "extremes" concluded by the academic world, but also makes the harmonious development between human and nature theoretically possible in realistic society and facilitates the smooth implementation of ecological civilization construction and the ultimate realization of harmonious socialist society.