Modeling Lifeworlds on the Rhythms of Nature: Perspectives on Daoism and Ecology in East Asia

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue explores East Asian ideas and practices in organizing and modeling human lifeworlds related to Daoism and the natural environment.

The twenty-fifth verse of the Daodejing describes a transitive chain in which human beings, Earth, Heaven, the Way, and That-which-is-in-and-of-itself (自然) are “modeled” (法) on one another in turn. In line with this vision, scholarly and popular understandings of Daoism have conceived of the Way as a process in which inanimate objects and living beings spontaneously emerge and develop in connection with one another. This is the Daoist framework for how human societies can accord with natural or cosmic rhythms. It assumes, however, an underlying constancy in that which is the basis of the modelling. In our present era of climate crisis and biodiversity loss, the external world to which close observers have long turned for insight is becoming increasingly erratic. How does the “modeling” of which the Daodejing speaks hold up?

A gap between the civilized, agriculturally based world and the realm outside it opened early on in the East Asian intellectual tradition. Transcendents and other mountain-dwellers in the regions now known as China, Japan, and Korea occupied these spaces and criticized the prevailing values of the dominant society. However, just as uncultivated areas provide biological resources for cultivated ones, the elements of the Daoist tradition that appear most amenable to present day environmental concerns were also embedded in societies that were the result of long-term homogenizing processes that they then perpetuated, is ways both deliberate and unconscious. The East Asian tradition provides rich resources for considering the natural world, but the world that historical writers observed was never static or free from modification by humans or other species. Daoist rituals and practices model cosmic cycles, yet in doing so they re-order the world according to human interpretations. As a product of human societies, Daoism is inevitably an anthropocentric system, but also pointed to ways of perceiving the world from the perspectives of other creatures and at spatio-temporal scales far from human experience. The articles in this Special Issue will explore which nature Daoist practices modeled and how these in turn affected both human and non-human world.

This Special Issue welcome contributions critically re-evaluating the theoretical basis or logic of ecological ideas and practices in Daoism and East Asian cultures. This subject stretches from the early notions of space-time and seasonal rhythms that are shared in East Asia and incorporated into Daoism, to the symbolic and material cultures built on the interrelationships between humans and nature, on to longevity-cultivation and medical practices.

New trans-humanistic perspectives and questions are also welcome: Is there a Daoist perspective on the management of ecological resources? To what extent did Daoist monastic organizations and rural communities tended to by Daoist priests contribute to conserving or reducing biological diversity? Are Daoist ideas about nature simply anthropocentric projections, or did they enable ways of perceiving the world that provided access to the perspectives of non-humans?

We hope that such investigations and reflections will inspire new research on society, environment and religion in East Asia and open the broad perspectives of environmental humanities in the field of Daoist studies.

Dr. Jihyun Kim
Dr. Daniel Burton-Rose
Guest Editors

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• environmental humanities
• Daoism
• East Asian science and technology
• ecology