Daoism and Environmental Philosophy explores ethics and the philosophy
of nature in the Daodejing, the Zhuangzi, and related texts to
elucidate their potential significance in our contemporary environmental
crisis.
This book traces early Daoist depictions of practices of embodied
emptying and forgetting and communicative strategies of undoing the
fixations of words, things, and the embodied self. These are aspects of
an ethics of embracing plainness and simplicity, nourishing the
asymmetrically differentiated yet shared elemental body of life of the
myriad things, and being responsively attuned in encountering and
responding to things. These critical and transformative dimensions of
early Daoism provide exemplary models and insights for cultivating a
more expansive ecological ethos, environmental culture of nature, and
progressive political ecology.
This work will be of interest to students and scholars interested in
philosophy, environmental ethics and philosophy, religious studies, and
intellectual history.