Authenticity, Sincerity and Spontaneity: The Mutual Implication of Nature and Religion in China and the West
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2013-01-01
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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. © 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden.
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Miller, James (2013). Authenticity, Sincerity and Spontaneity: The Mutual Implication of Nature and Religion in China and the West. Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 25(3). 10.1163/15700682-12341259 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/16706.
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James Miller
James Miller is the inaugural Professor of Humanities at Duke Kunshan University and Associate Dean for Interdisciplinary Initiatives. He served as Chair of the Faculty Assembly from 2022 to 2024, and as co-director of the DKU Humanities Research Center from 2018 to 2024. Prior to his appointment at Duke Kunshan, Dr. Miller served as the director of the interdisciplinary graduate program in cultural studies, and as the director of the School of Religion, at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
Dr. Miller's research is based in the study of Chinese philosophy, theology, and religion, with an emphasis on philosophy of nature, environmental ethics, and the intersection of religion and ecology in China. He is known worldwide as a scholar of Daoism, China's indigenous religion, and especially its relation to ecology. He has published seven books including, most notably, China's Green Religion: Daoism and the Quest for a Sustainable Future (Columbia 2017).
Dr. Miller serves as the editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed journal Worldviews: Global Cultures, Religion, and Ecology, published by Brill.
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