The Wolf Myth and Chinese Environmental Sentimentalism in Wolf Totem

Abstract

Over the last three decades, China has experienced a serious environmental crisis that is unprecedented in its history. Although the rapid growth of China's economy has significantly raised their living standard, people there generally feel discontented with the environmental problems, such as air pollution, water pollution, and the extinction of some wild species. In the present Chinese society and culture, there has been wide-scale nostalgia and mourning over the damage to on the harmonious relationship between man and nature. Consequently, there are important intersections between the sentimental and environmental ethics, which lead to what I call the Chinese “environmental sentimentalism.” A conventional understanding of sentimentalism in both Chinese and Western cultures is that the sentimental as an affective orientation/tendency is often characterized by apparent emotional excess. However, from an ethical perspective, sentimentalism is also about developing moral sensibilities based on an intrinsic human nature. In Moral Sentimentalism, Michael Slote discusses the ethics of care in relation to different forms of oppression and injustice, such as those against women: The ethics of care is perhaps the most influential and interesting form of sentimentalism now extant, but the ethics of care has also taken up issues of morality and justice that specifically concern or affect women and other disadvantaged groups or classes of individuals. And though I want to focus attention mainly on feminist thought and aspirations, much of what I shall be saying carried over in substantial and interesting ways to discussions of race, ethnicity, gender orientations, and facts about oppression and previous injustice. (108)