Ecological Thinking with Zen Master Dōgen and Friedrich Nietzsche

Japanese Philosophy Workshop @edinburghphilosophy
Speaker: Professor Graham Parkes (@univienna)

A major factor behind the current #ecological crisis is our dysfunctional relationship with the things we deal with in our everyday lives. This pathology derives mainly from our our utilitarian perspective, through which we see things as mere means to our ends, and more broadly from a sense that things configurations of ‘inanimate’ matter. But this worldview is remarkably recent and quite parochial, as we realise when we consider the East-Asian philosophical tradition with its idea of the world as a field of qi energies. Over the course of fifteen centuries, #Confucian, #Daoist, #Buddhist and Neo-Confucian thinkers developed a sophisticated account of the ways in which humans and things share a common nature, culminating in the ideas and practice of #zen Master #Dōgen. A comparison with corresponding ideas in Nietzsche (representing a significant side-current in Western thinking) suggests a more general validity. The adoption of different ways of thinking about and interacting with things can enrich our experience—and reduce damage to the natural world on which we depend for our existence.

Book: "How to Think about the Climate Crisis: A Philosophical Guide to Saner Ways of Living"
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/how-to-...