Abstract
What sort of concepts do East Asian philosophical traditions offer in response to ethical issues in agriculture? Rather than sketch out general traditional East Asian views of humanity, nature, other species, etc., the present discussion considers a nest of issues faced by some American farmers, and considers how East Asian traditions would grapple with these issues. Early East Asian thinkers grapple with some parallel issues. Confucius (551–479 B.C.) diagnoses the breakdown of Zhou dynasty as owing to people losing sight of their inherent relatedness and interpersonal ties, responsibilities and interests. Mozi’s (fl. 479–438 B.C.E.) teaching of impartial regard (jianai) warns against overly prioritizing one’s own homestead and kin over and against others, urges taking one’s neighbor’s legitimate concerns and interests as seriously as one’s own, and finally working together to reap the win-win rewards. The Daoist views of Laozi (fifth cent. B.C.E.) and Zhuangzi (fl. 370–300 B.C.E.) involve earth-centered ethics by conceiving human relationality as extending beyond the family and social spheres to the natural and ontological spheres. These early East Asian philosophical positions give interesting alternative ways to conceptualize ourselves, our existence in the world, and our agrarian practices on land in ecosystems in nature and alongside other farmers, which warrant further inquiry.
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Notes
- 1.
Early Chinese thought refers to pre-Qin thought of the late Spring and Autumn period (722–481 B.C.E.) and the Warring States period (481–222 B.C.E.), which ended with the Qin unification of China.
- 2.
- 3.
Without getting into specifics, these farmers work fertile lands several miles east of Northfield, MN. The area in question forms a parallelogram of land of about 2 miles by 2 miles, leaning northeast at about 30°. See photo attached, provided by Dakota County government.
- 4.
Agrarian and neo-Agrarian American farmers would, in contrast, be sensitive to these contexts, which are integral to most schools of traditional Chinese thought.
- 5.
Indeed, people felt so closely related in rural villages that villagers were required to marry outside of the village in traditional China and Taiwan. I suspect that the same principle was followed throughout East Asia.
- 6.
Roger Ames is exploring the notion that Confucian relational ethics can be construed as a type of role ethics.
- 7.
The very expression “livestock” is unfortunate in suggesting a reduction of these animals to commodity property.
- 8.
The American government may have been concerned that, in the long run, collectivized farming as practiced in the Soviet Union, China, and even Israel, would eventually out-perform traditional American small and medium-scale family farming. Large, practically corporate scale farm operations began to appear on the great plains of the Dakotas as early as the late nineteenth century. The expansive tabletop flatlands and the gigantic new steam powered tractors and threshing machines lent themselves to such large scale operations. In the 1930s, dust bowl conditions and farm bankruptcies opened vast tracts of flatland where family farms once stood for large scale farm operations in the lower plains, notably in Kansas and Oklahoma. See the classic film The Grapes of Wrath (1940).
- 9.
For an effective dramatization of this period see the film Miles from Home (1988), starring Richard Gere and Jason Campbell.
- 10.
Besides the problem of worsening rural schools, the weak rural economy makes it impossible for many rural families to finance a college education for their children. At the same time, state colleges and universities are raising tuitions and prioritizing other categories of students, ethnic minority students, in particular, which leaves nearly no slots open for rural youth! This is scandalous and ironical not only do rural students bring a closeness to nature and other cultural insights to the table but rural families tend to be the most diligent in paying their taxes and sending their children to the armed forces in times of national emergency and war. This is the thanks they get from judicious state politicians and university administrators.
- 11.
During the senior Bush administration (1988–1992), in particular, numerous wetlands were drained for other uses. Why didn’t this Texas outdoorsman recognize the importance of wetlands in overall scheme of things?
- 12.
Upstream factory-scale livestock farmers also wanted Spring Creek to be expanded, to allow greater waste discharges from their “facilities.” They encouraged the new farm renter to proceed with his plans to tile the soil and deepen the creek bed. “Great idea, kid.” One such upstream farmer paid “a friendly visit” to the farm with the eco-preserve to suggest “doing something about that creek”: “It should be cleaned out! Get rid of those trees.” (In fact, “those trees” hold the top soil and have become “wildlife shelters,” providing homes to countless birds. This is what Zhuangzi would call “the usefulness of the useless.”)
- 13.
“GMO” is a vernacular name for crop varieties developed through genetic engineering.
- 14.
I regard “Chinese” as describing the empire, language, culture, and people of that land from the Qin dynasty in the third century B.C.E. to the present, and use “Sinitic” to describe that various tribes, cultures and languages that contributed to the formation of, and later were assimilated into, the greater “China” melting pot.
- 15.
I suspect that the landowner feels embarrassed by the negative impact the new renter’s actions have on the neighboring farms. The neighbors probably wonder what happened to him.
- 16.
See Xunzi’s essay, ch. 17, “On Nature (lit. Heaven).” Xunzi rejects all of the old traditional religico-cultural associations of nature, and stresses that humanity must harness nature’s cycles and processes in order to obtain the raw materials needed for preparing food, clothing, and shelter. His perspective is entirely pragmatic and exploitative (Watson 1967).
- 17.
The Confucian Mencius frequently draws radical distinctions between humanity and other species that tend to reflect biases against other species, which the Daoists would never countenance.
- 18.
This is a principal theme of Zhuangzi, ch. 2, “Making All Things Equal” (Watson 1967).
- 19.
In recent years, a parallel term has appeared in Buddhist studies, “interbeing,” which indicates that all phenomena, all things, all creatures, all events, are produced out of concatenations of relational conditions. As with the avocado, each of the relational conditions is itself similarly formed of relational conditions, and there is no ultimate substantial ground or first cause to be uncovered.
- 20.
Indeed, the later Confucian thinker Xunzi would agree with these critics but with the caveat that even though Confucian ideals, virtues, practices are ultimately artificial, they provide the best means for transforming originally weak and self-centered people into reliable social and ethical members of a civilized community.
- 21.
Ch. 17 is included in the “Waipian,” or outer chapters of the Zhuangzi, which are generally considered to have been written by a firsthand disciple soon after Zhuangzi passed away.
- 22.
Commonly translated as virtue, de pertains to one’s instinctive yet cultivatable capacities. De also allows for one’s sense of attunement with nature and others, as well as one’s practical efficacy and interpersonal charisma.
- 23.
For an example, see Svenson (1992), esp. pp. 60–64.
- 24.
Thompson (2016).
- 25.
There is an unexpected albeit rough-hewn aesthetic sensibility built into this sense of sensitivity and attunement. Note Holt’s appreciative accounts of recollected sights, sounds, and smells of his early farm life 40–50 years ago: “The smell of the furrow slice; the bite of a January wind; the mute roar of a big tractor engine and the feeling of power as you throttle up; the depression of a down market;... the exuberance of cattle frisking in the bedding straw; the heat and dust of the haymow; the raw power of the big animals; a mounted cultivator stuck in a mud hole;… a 20-mile unobstructed view; unobstructed windsweep; fishing in the creek;… a fresh jug of water and a few minutes in the shade; the crib driveway in summer and in winter; callouses; getting the check after the sale of a bunch of high-choice steers; straight back furrows and neat dead furrows; sitting on the porch; and many, many others….. Only the other farmers who read this will know what that was like,” (Holt 1997 213f).
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Thompson, K.O. (2018). Agricultural Ethics in Early Chinese Perspective: Some Issues. 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_5
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