AustLit

 In approaching J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians, critics have tended to focus on torture and its rich political and ethical connotations, with insufficient attention paid to its environmental concerns. In fact, in the novel, Coetzee not only describes the harsh environment and climate, but also explores the conflicts between human beings and the environment through the imperial army’s strange defeat in the war against its imaginary "barbarian" enemy. Waiting for the Barbarians is therefore an environmental warning for the Anthropocene. One feasible way out of this predicament is the Confucian ecological philosophy, which aims at realizing the harmony between man and nature, emphasizes the solidarity between them, and advocates that human beings, as subjects of virtue, should consciously improve their moral cultivation, respect nature and treat all forms of life with benevolence. (Source: publisher's abstract).