The Educational Implications of Wang Yangming’s Ecological View of ‘Benevolence as the Unity of Heaven and Earth’ — Based upon ‘Inquiry on the Great Learning’

The relationship between heaven and humanity is one of the fundamental philosophical foundations of ecological ethics in ancient Chinese Confucian thought. As a master of Confucian philosophy of mind, Wang Yangming integrated the traditional Confucian discourse on the relationship between heaven and humanity into the principles of the philosophy of mind. Building on the traditional doctrine of benevolence centered on moral concern, he further developed an ecological view of ‘benevolence as the unity of heaven and earth’. In his work Inquiry on the Great Learning, Wang Yangming systematically elaborated on this notion, emphasizing the philosophical expression of the relationship between humans and nature within an ethical framework and outlining the new implications of traditional Confucian ecological thought. This paper aims to analyze Wang Yangming’s ecological view of ‘benevolence as the unity of heaven and earth’ by examining the ecological ideas in his Inquiry on the Great Learning. On this basis, it seeks to refine the valuable achievements of traditional Chinese ecological civilization thought and strengthen the theoretical foundation of contemporary ecological ideas with Chinese characteristics.