Abstract
Paul Thompson (The agrarian vision. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, 2010) has developed a virtue-based view of agriculture, and claims that it is the key to environmental sustainability. This chapter aims to improve upon this agrarian view by exposing some of the theoretical defects inherent in it, and by showing how those defects may be overcome by incorporating some alternative ways of thinking about the man-nature relationship from the perspective of Zhuangzi’s philosophy. This agrarian, Dao-constrained, position is developed on the basis of a no-self thesis proposed in Cheng’s (Philosophy East and West 64:563–597, 2014) reading of the dream of the butterfly.
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Notes
- 1.
From the website of Directorate-General of Budge, Accounting and Statistics of Executive Yuan in Taiwan.
- 2.
The original text of the quoted paper uses the Wade-Giles spelling system. Here I adopt a more commonly used Pin-Ying system. So for example “Tao” is spelled as “Dao”, and “Te” as “De”. The same goes for “Chuang Tzu”, to be spelled as “Zhuangzi”, etc.
- 3.
The writing of Zhuangzi is classified into three categories: inner, outer, and miscellaneous chapters. The first category, which contains seven chapters, are widely believed to be written by Zhuangzi himself, while the other two categories written by his followers.
- 4.
「至人無己」:appears in Chap. 1 of the Zhuangzi.
- 5.
A more extended treatment is in my unpublished manuscript entitled “Personal Identity and Survival in the Zhuangzi”.
- 6.
天地與我並生,而萬物與我為一(齊物論)
- 7.
天地一指也,萬物一馬也(齊物論)
- 8.
指窮於為薪,火傳也,不知其盡也(養生主)
- 9.
This quoted paragraph appears in outer chapters, which are likely to be written not by Zhuangzi himself, but by his followers. So instead of saying that this paragraph expresses Zhuangzi’s idea, I describe it as stating a “Zhuangzian” view.
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Acknowledgements
The completion of this paper is made possible by the generous support of a research grant from the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan (106-2410-H-010-014-MY3). Earlier versions of this paper were presented at Kyoto University, National Taiwan University, National Tung-Hua University, where I received helpful feedback from the audiences. Special thanks go to Paul Thompson and Kirill Thompson for their encouragement and feedback.
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Cheng, KY. (2018). Zhuangzi and Agricultural Ethics. In: Thompson, P., Thompson, K. (eds) Agricultural Ethics in East Asian Perspective. The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics, vol 27. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92603-2_10
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