METHOD & THEORY in the STUDY OF RELIGION Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 25 (2013) 283-307 brill.com/mtsr Authenticity, Sincerity and Spontaneity: The Mutual Implication of Nature and Religion in China and the West James Miller School of Religion, Queen’s University, Canada K7L3N6
[email protected] Abstract Fundamental approaches to ethics and morality in both China and the West are bound up not only with conceptions of religion and ultimate truth, but also with conceptions of nature. One dominant theme in the West is to see nature in terms of an original goodness that precedes human manipulation. This theme is bound up with Biblical views of divine creation by a divine lawmaker. In contrast to this view, Chinese conceptions of sincerity (cheng) and spontaneity (ziran) mitigate against such an abstract conception of the original goodness or authenticity of nature. Keywords nature, religion, authenticity, daoism, confucianism, ethics A story reported in the Western news media in the context of China’s bid for the Olympic games was that the Beijing authorities had used a chemical spray to paint the otherwise dried-out brown grass of Beijing a sparkling emerald green. Evidence of the popularity of this story, and the potential harm it did to China’s image, can be found in the fact that the People’s Daily had to publish a counter-story “Greening Liquid Does No Harm” pointing out that the chemical spray was developed by a US company and complied with all the relevant envi- ronmental and health standards. What this counter-story failed to appreciate, however, was why the story had been so popular in the first place: namely, that it had traded on a fundamental difference in conceptions of nature between China and the West.