从文化生态主义来看儒家生命精神与性命合一的境界

Abstract

The essay pays attention to an argument of cultural ecologism concerning the Neo-Confucian life-spirit and its sustainable horizon of unifying human nature and mandate, especially focusing upon Zhang-zai's model of qi doctrine. The keyword is “cultural ecologism” in which the principle of life and the value of morality are integrated in the grand stream of the life spirit of universe. Stemming from a reciprocal unity of ecology and culture, it can be characteristic of a conceptual framework as the organic structure of culture circumstances. For Neo-Confucianists, the reality of world is in the steam of myriad things under heaven and on earth. It is a coherent whole with a certain origin and unitary processes in the ecological circle of Nature. The process of maintaining the sustainability of culture within this world view can be approached from the holistic unity of “one force and its multiple manifestations.” It works implicitly as the basis for positing a unified total system to share a common way of thinking within the Neo-Confucian culture. Zhang-zai presents the doctrine of qi ontology as “one vital force and its many manifestations” to identically unify the Heavenly and the Humane. All the things of the world naturally form types with each other according to their apportionment of one yin and one yang. In their concrete manifestations, according to the thinking way of bentilun, things may have multiple distinctions and perform many different roles, but the principle remains unitary in that their differences are reciprocally related within a unifying system. This world view is closely associated with the process of sustainably cultivating the human virtue in operations of Confucian cultural ecologism. He incessantly seeks to institutionalize the moral canon of classical Confucianism on the triple line, namely, an identification of yiwuliangti, a succession of minbaowuyu, and an extension of xingmingheyi, which make a unity of coherence, interconnectedness and wholeness. As cultural beings with beliefs and values, human beings live their lives in complicated social networks. Consequently, the ecologismic concept of culture preserves as an open horizon of coexistence and cooperation for newly emergent order within an integral relationship of person and community.