International Social Science Journal (Chinese Edition)

No.2, 2020

The transition to the ecological civilisation is a great and all-round transformation: a perspective from Whitehead’s organic philosophy

(Abstract)

Meijun Fan

The article argues that there are few people aware that the transition from the present industrial civilisation to the ecological one is a fundamental transformation, and even fewer ones aware that it is a thorough change, a paradigm shift between civilisations. The shortage is becoming a huge obstacle to the construction of the ecological civilisation. In academia, as the article first describes, it is widely believed that an ecological catastrophe has been taking place and irreversible, and the differences between postmodern ecological and modern industrial civilisations are listed. Then the author argues that modern substantive philosophy is the deep roots of the ecological crisis, and Whitehead’s organic philosophy offers a vision of “ecological civilisation.” Because the philosophy is sharply different from the one on which modern industrial civilisation has been based, the vision of the civilisation based on the philosophy would be really different. It shows clearly that the ecological civilisation is a negation to and transcendence over the modern industrial one.