The Way of Ecopiety: Essays in Transversal Geophilosophy

by Hwa Yol Jung

This book is a collection of essays in environmental ethics and philosophy spanning almost four decades. Faced with the ecological crisis which points to the death of humanity and the end of nature, the author's first essay was written to welcome the arrival of the First Earth Day in 1970. It is the birth of his greenprint. In this collection, the purpose of geophilosophy or ecophilosophy is to promote ecopiety with a focus on Sinism as relational ontology whose common characteristics are embedded in Confucianism, Daoism, and Zen (Chan) Buddhism across the geographical region of East Asia. Sinism helps to construct an ethico-aesthetic paradigm in geophilosophy against the anthropocentric notion that nature or earth is a pile of objects for human use, and that spirituality and rationality are in the sole possession of human faculties. To be sure, the way of ecopiety is not a Sinic or East Asian exceptionalism. lt is shared by contemporary Western environmental thinkers. ln this respect, the invention of transversality is a fitting response to the age of globalization which makes the world, it is hoped, less and less ethnocentric because it facilitates the ex/change of ideas and values across ethnic, cultural, and political boundaries toward hybridization.

329 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2009