There is a complex turmoil taking place in the world in this historical moment: violence in Gaza, and war in Ukraine involved the whole world community and revealed the fragility and dysfunctional nature of the current state of affairs involving humanity and the more-than-human world. The present issue of the journal, again, presents an internation network of people and ideas that help recognize and further develop the ‘counterforce’ to the anthropocentric worldview. The ideas of natural and cultural ecology united with human sciences and the arts are able to withstand the disintegration of modern knowledge about humans, the dehumanization of culture and undermining its fundamental values, to form the platform that serves the understanding of the present and revealing the ways of moving into the future.

The failure to effectively confront major challenges facing humanity, most importantly, the global ecological crisis, it is argued, is due to the failure of those analysing the root causes of these challenges to engage with and invoke political philosophy to find a way out, and concomitantly, the failure of ethical and political philosophers to effectively engage with the deep assumptions, power structures and dynamics actually operative in the current world-order. It is claimed that this is due to a tacit acceptance of a cultural dualism manifest in the opposition between the sciences and the humanities, with the humanities having been marginalized by the sciences. To overcome this dualism and marginalization of the humanities, and to defend communitarian ethical and political philosophy in a way that both challenges mainstream thinking and engages with the world as it is, with the potential to inspire and orient people for effective action, it is shown how communitarian ethical and political philosophy can be defended and developed through ecology incorporating the notion of ecopoiesis.

For all of its numerous benefits, modernization is a double-edged sword. After wholeheartedly embracing Western-style modernization in the 20^th and 21^st centuries, China has achieved astonishing world-renowned achievements, most notably in terms of its rapid economic growth and development. However, contemporary China has had to cope with many of the bitter aftertastes of the pill of modernization, especially in regards to the serious ecological crisis faced by most developed countries. In order to avoid the fate of self-destruction of both China and the wider world, a new civilization—ecological civilization—is urgently needed. Different from industrial civilization that holds in the highest regard all things related to machines and tools, an ecological civilization is a civilization that respects nature and aims for the common good of humans and nature. It is the transcendence of modern industrialization, and thus requires a great all-round transformation. Organic-Process thinking can provide a theoretical framework for such an ecological civilization. Although China has made great efforts thus far to create such an ecological civilization, the road toward building one is long and difficult, as there is a great deal of obstacles that must be overcome to reach this goal.

An ecological civilization represents an exciting potential future of human flourishing on a regenerated Earth. It would require a transformation of our current economy, politics, and mainstream culture, leading to a fundamentally different civilization based of different values, goals, and collective behavior. An ecological civilization arises from modeling human society on nature’s wisdom—the same core principles that have kept natural ecologies healthy and resilient over millions of years. It is a vision inspired by life-affirming groups worldwide—Indigenous, political, community-based, and spiritual. While it’s visionary and seems a long way off, it may be closer than many people realize.

The article examines the influence of the Moon as a celestial body of the solar system, closely connected with the Earth, on humans. It is shown how, through creative activity in the interaction of humans with this celestial body, new meanings and forms of experience are formed and their renewal in culture takes place. In this case, the Moon acts not only as a physical object, but also as one of the natural archetypes, due to which a complex of human potentials is realized in their connection with the environment. When considering the Moon as a natural phenomenon, special attention is paid to those types of activities when it is perceived through the prism of non-pragmatic, artistic and aesthetic experience, closely related to the experience of beauty. When considering this mode of perception of the Moon, the concepts of poiesis and ecopoiesis are used.