In this blog post, we will focus on the ancient Chinese theory of calamities to examine how the heavens and human actions are connected and how this theory was used as a political tool.
The theory of calamities is a representative East Asian discussion that explains natural phenomena and human affairs in terms of cause and effect. The theory of natural disasters originated in ancient China and is based on the belief that the heavens influence human behavior, causing natural phenomena to occur accordingly. During the Han Dynasty, Dong Zhongshu systematized the theory of natural disasters by combining the theory of heavenly punishment, which states that the heavens punish rulers who have lost their virtue, with the theory of heavenly-human interaction, which states that the heavens and humans interact with each other through the yin and yang energies that they share. According to this theory, when a ruler commits misrule, heaven responds through changes in yin and yang energy, sending warnings in the form of natural disasters such as droughts, floods, solar eclipses, and lunar eclipses. These natural disasters serve as proof that the ruler’s authority comes from heaven and as a warning of the ruler’s misrule. The fundamental idea behind the theory of natural disasters is that heaven and humans are closely connected.
It is believed that changes in the energy of heaven immediately affect the human world, and conversely, human actions are reflected in heaven. This cause-and-effect relationship manifested itself in the form of warnings through natural phenomena when the ruler’s governance was not righteous. For example, droughts and floods were interpreted as signs of the ruler’s lack of virtue, and the ruler had to make efforts to correct the situation.
The dualistic nature of the theory of natural disasters provided a justification for officials to participate in political discussions, and it became a tradition for the monarch to seek frank advice when natural disasters occurred and for officials to respond accordingly. However, after Dong Jungseo, the individualistic approach of explaining natural disasters as a one-to-one correspondence between human actions as the cause and natural disasters as the result was considered far-fetched. This approach tended to lead to prophecy, creating a trend of interpreting human affairs as omens of natural disasters and natural disasters as the result of human affairs. It also became a pretext for monarchs to suppress ministers who spoke frankly, on the grounds that they were misleading the people with unrealistic words.
Subsequently, prophetic interpretations of natural disasters became the target of criticism, and the theory of heavenly retribution was also rejected. However, the theory of natural disasters did not disappear from the political arena. In the Song Dynasty, Zhu Xi accepted the tendency not to consider solar and lunar eclipses, which had become predictable with the development of astronomy, as natural disasters, and regarded natural disasters as natural phenomena that could not be explained by reason. He used astronomical knowledge to explain phenomena such as solar and lunar eclipses in a natural way, but he did not completely abandon the basic framework of the theory of natural disasters. This was because the theory of calamities was considered an important means of warning monarchs and urging them to govern properly.
However, even at that time, the abolition of the theory of calamities, which had encouraged monarchs to respond actively to calamities and provided opportunities for safe press activities, meant that the nobles would lose a useful political mechanism. For this reason, he adhered to the theory of calamities in order to find an appropriate way to warn monarchs. Instead of responding to each case of Zai individually, he proposed a general theory that if the monarch’s faults and mistakes accumulated, heaven would respond with abnormal natural phenomena, thereby extending the historical life of the Zai theory by reducing it to a matter of the monarch’s moral cultivation.
Thus, the Zai theory went beyond simply linking natural phenomena and human affairs, and was used as a tool to impose moral responsibility on the monarch and urge political stability and proper governance. As a result, it came to occupy an important position in East Asian political thought, and its influence can still be seen indirectly today. The theory of natural calamities emphasizes the close connection between nature, humans, politics, and morality, providing important insights that can be linked to today’s environmental issues.
