Working paper: Religious Environmental Humanism as Means to Promote Environmental Sustainability: Buddhist and Confucian Approaches (1)

 

Introduction

           

Some years ago, I participated in an academic conference on religion and the ecology at a university in the United States. As a contribution to the event, I delivered a paper from the Buddhist perspective while other participants presented theirs from that of other religious traditions. As part of the format, each session consisted of about three papers followed by reaction from a person designated by the conference organizer. In the session that I was scheduled, our reactor, after listening to the papers from different religious perspectives, observed that while the papers provided very profound religious and spiritual insights to address the ecological crisis, these perspectives were nonetheless very “anthropocentric”. The comment was meant to not only highlight a common thread running throughout the various religious environmentalisms but also to draw attention to what might be perceived as a shortcoming in environmentalisms rooted in religious traditions. In the field of environmental ethics, the term ‘anthropocentric’ or ‘anthropocentrism’ often conjures up unpleasant images of human manipulation and exploitation of nature to serve the whimsical needs of arrogant human beings who perceive themselves as the center of the universe endowed with the right and the power to dominate and subjugate everything around them. On a more benign level, anthropocentrism allows for some considerations of the “rights” and well-being of nature, but human beings ultimately still prioritize their own interests when all is said and done. For some environmental ethicists, unless one adopts holistic ecosophies referred to by various labels such as eco-centrism, bio-centrism or Deep Ecology, having other paradigms can easily lead to being labeled as anthropocentric, albeit ranging in different degrees from benign (weak) to tyrannical (strong). These ecosophies generally try to avoid anthropocentric tendencies by placing non-human natural entities on equal footing with human beings and calling for the recognition of their intrinsic value that must be respected. Since religions fundamentally focus on the human spiritual condition and the effort to improve it, religious environmentalisms also tend to place emphasis on the human agency in addressing environmental issues. This attention to the role of human beings, however, can be interpreted as perpetuating anthropocentric attitudes and approaches, which leaves advocates for holistic ecosophies unsatisfied. This paper proposes that religious environmentalisms are necessarily anthropocentric, but not in a negative or objectionable way. Moreover, to avoid the negative perceptions conjured by the term ‘anthropocentric’, religious environmentalisms are better characterized as ‘humanistic’. Thus, this paper proposes the use of the term ‘religious environmental humanism’ to refer to the environmental implications of religious humanism. In this paper, two religious traditions, Buddhism and Confucianism, will be discussed as examples of religious environmental humanism. As we will see, a close study of these religious traditions will reveal that religious environmentalisms should be described as ‘humanistic’ rather than ‘anthropocentric’ in order to avoid negative interpretations stemming from pejorative connotations conjured by the term ‘anthropocentric/anthropocentrism’.