Vernadsky meets Yulgok: A non-Western dialog on sustainability

Abstract

This article starts by noting the general lack of acknowledgment of alternative traditions in the dominant western sustainability discourse in education. After critically analyzing the western human–nature relationship in the context of Enlightenment, modernity and colonial expansion, this article introduces two non-western ecological discourses from Eurasia and Asia, Noöspherism and Neo-Confucianism, which offer clear contrasts to the western sustainability framework. Using theoretical argumentations, the article goes on to examine the cosmological and ontological categories expounded by Vladimir Vernadsky of Russia and Yulgok Yi of Korea, whose philosophical foundations with unique foci on the anthropocosmic and cosmoanthropic types of human–nature relationships could well be alternatives and/or additions to the dominant western discourse. The article concludes with a twofold comparison: between Eurasian and Confucian heritages, and these two with the mainstream western ecological discourse.

Keywords:

• ecological discourses
• sustainability education
• noöspherism
• neo-Confucianism
• Vernadsky
• Yulgok

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Corrigendum

Acknowledgments

A special acknowledgment goes to Jae Park for his help with the translation of Yulgok’s works and to David Sorrell for his valuable comments. I thank the two anonymous reviewers for their very useful feedback on a script for this article, and the editors for their patience through the long process of revision.

Notes

1. Following a common practice, I use sustainability education to include the terms education for sustainable development (ESD), education for sustainability (EfS), and education for sustainable future (EFS).

2. Vernadsky viewed biosphere as a single greatest geological force on earth, an equivalent to ‘nature’ in the ordinary sense of term, a living organism that has been evolving to its final stage by means of living matter and human reasoning.

3. The term ‘planetary’ refers to the planet Earth as a living and evolving organism.

4. By ideology, NAS implies a self-evident and self-contained doctrine, which presents a set of promises that appear true and important.