Historicizing tianrenheyi as correlative cosmology for rethinking education in modern China and beyond

Abstract

The Chinese tianrenheyi thesis bespeaks a correlative cosmology irreducible to the Western metaphysics. This article historicizes tianrenheyi for new implications to help rethink the given concepts of ‘person/thing,’ ‘environment/nature,’ and ‘relationality’ in contemporary ethical and environmental education in three steps. First, it turns to Yu Ying-Shih’s writing for a historical and ethical picture of tianrenheyi as an ‘Axial breakthrough’ in Confucius' time and with direct relevance to Confucian person-making education. Second, it moves on to Roger Ames’ unpacking of tianrenheyi as hospitalized in a ‘correlative cosmology’ and ‘Confucian relational personhood’ to help us re-understand Confucian ‘person’ as being relational. Finally, it shows how these re-invoked philosophical–ethical–cosmological theses expose a ‘foundational individualism’ which grounds and confines current educational thinking to an anthropocentric (dis)ordering. As an alternative, this article calls for a productive symbiotic conjoining between humans and their cultural–natural environs toward nurturing today’s youth into ecologically literate, responsible, and responsive co-beings.

Keywords:

• Tianrenheyi
• correlative cosmology
• foundational individualism
• anthropocentric (dis)ordering
• Confucian relational personhood

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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Weili Zhao

Dr. Weili Zhao obtained her PhD from University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR. Her research interests intersect the fields of comparative education, curriculum and instruction, and discourse studies from a historical, cross-cultural, and ontological language and body perspective. The historical and cross-cultural perspective is mobilized as a detouring strategy to better cut into the systems of reason in modern China’s education and beyond. Her research monograph entitled China's Education, Curriculum Knowledge and Cultural Inscriptions: Dancing with The Wind is published in June 2018 with New York, Routledge.