How to understand the relationship between Chinese characters and traditional culture?

The relationship between Chinese characters and Chinese culture can be analyzed from both the macro and micro perspectives. In the macroscopic sense, the relationship between Chinese characters and other cultural items can be explored by taking Chinese characters as the central cultural item. Because Chinese characters are created by society and are a symbolic system with social conventions, they are closely related to other cultural items. In the micro sense, it is important to explore the relationship between the Chinese character as a cultural carrier and its cultural content. This relationship mainly depends on the aspects in which Chinese characters and their systems reflect the information of cultural contents. The main ones are the cultural information contained in the image of Chinese characters, the cultural information reflected in the development of Chinese characters, the cultural information reflected in the differentiation of Chinese characters, and the cultural information reflected in the clustering of Chinese characters. The relationship between Chinese characters and culture is certainly close, but it is necessary to prevent misunderstanding: firstly, we should correctly recognize the objectivity brought about by the social and systematic analysis of Chinese characters' configuration; secondly, we should correctly recognize the limited nature of micro Chinese characters' interpretation of history and culture; thirdly, we should correctly recognize the dialectical relationship between Chinese characters and the Chinese language, and pay attention to the distinction between the creation of meaning of the characters and the actual meaning of the words.

If the early stage of Yangshao culture in the Neolithic Age is set as the upper limit of the origin of Chinese characters, then Chinese characters have already had a development history of 6,000 years. Even counting from the Yinshang oracle bones, Chinese characters have developed uninterruptedly for more than 3,500 years. It has written the history of the Chinese nation and carried the glorious Chinese culture; it has the energy to transcend dialectal differences and has long undertaken the task of communicating thoughts in written language for hundreds of millions of people; it has given birth to the world's first-rate arts, such as seal-carving and calligraphy; and in the contemporary era, it has solved the problem of modern information processing in many ways and entered the computer to meet the challenges of high technology. Chinese characters are the cornerstone of Chinese culture.

Chinese characters are the only ideographic writing system in the world that has survived to this day without interruption. It can be said that in every layer of Chinese characters, including the oracle bone inscriptions, the *** time plane, has accumulated a very deep history of the Chinese characters ontology, as well as the social and cultural history that is the background of the existence of Chinese characters. The relationship between Chinese characters and Chinese culture is one of mutual corroboration, mutual explanation, and mutual dependence -- the proposition of "Chinese characters and Chinese culture" is to be established through the examination of this relationship.

01

The two-fold significance of the relationship between Chinese characters and Chinese culture

The issue of culture involves the entirety of human existence, and the angle of attention to this phenomenon has varied in different eras and in different fields, so that there are many interpretations of the original meaning of culture in the West, and the definitions are extremely inconsistent. According to some statistics, there are more than 100 definitions of "culture" in different disciplines, for different purposes and from different angles. The earlier definitions of culture are all broad definitions, which originate from the field of human culture and philosophy of culture, and are based on the distinction between human beings and non-human beings. German jurist S. Pufendorf was the first to use culture as a formal term for "culture" in the 17th century, defining it in his book Natural Law and the Law of Nations: "Culture is the sum total of the things created by the activities of social beings and the things that exist in dependence on human and social life. It is the sum total of what is created by the activities of social beings and what depends on human and social life. It is the unity of the material and spiritual elements of social life, which are constantly evolving and perfecting the human being". According to this definition, "culture" in the West refers to all civilizations created by human beings, including material and spiritual civilizations. In Chinese canonical texts, "culture" and "culture" have been synthesized since a long time ago - "Saying Yuan - refers to the martial arts": "The rise of the martial arts, for the disobedience; culture does not change, and then add punishment". Then the punishment will be increased. When we synthesize the connotations of the meanings of "culture" and "culture", we can see the early meaning of "culture". The classical Chinese term "culture" refers to the cultivation and spiritual and material creation of human beings. Cultivation belongs to the category of transforming the subjective world, and creation belongs to the category of transforming the objective world. Based on the traditional interpretation of the concept of "culture" in Chinese, academics often translate it with culture in English. In fact, the traditional Chinese concept of "culture", which is not translated by culture, is more suitable for today's cultural connotations because of its concept of evolution and humanism. Whether it is culture in the West or "culture" in ancient China, it is culture in a broad sense, and there are three points in this broad concept: (1) culture in a broad sense is connected with human beings and their creative activities, and it is a human-centered concept; (2) culture in a broad sense is a historical concept, which covers the whole process of human history and is a concept of inheritance and development; (3) culture in a broad sense is a historical concept, which covers the whole process of human history, and is a concept of inheritance and development. the whole process, is a comprehensive concept of inheritance and development; (3) the extension of broad culture covers the whole of material creation and spiritual creation.

Culture in the narrow sense refers exclusively to the spiritual creation of human beings, and it focuses on the part of human mind. In fact, it is difficult for human culture to separate material creation from spiritual creation. All creations that exist in material form are cohesive with the creator's conception, wisdom, and will, which belong to the spirit. The purpose of setting up the concept of culture in the narrow sense is to exclude the purely materialistic natural world and to focus our eyes on the human-centered world to observe human beings themselves. Culture in the narrow sense, also known as humanistic culture, is the overall system of the ****humanistic spirit and its embodiment in creations that have naturally coalesced through inheritance and accumulation in the long-term historical development of a social collective (nation or class). This narrow concept also has three main points: (1) narrow culture is not only centered on human beings, but also on their spiritual activities, even if the observation of the physical world, but also the humanistic spirit as the kernel; (2) narrow culture is not concerned with the spiritual activities of individual people, but the accumulated and cohesive through the accumulation of historical inheritance of the **** have a system of humanistic spirit; (3) narrow culture is concerned with the general **** nature of not only the whole of humanity, but also the humanistic spirit and its embodiment in the overall system. (3) Culture in the narrow sense is not only concerned with the universal ****ness of all mankind, but also pays more attention to the characteristics of the humanistic spirit of different nations, classes and groups. Therefore, the definition of culture in the narrow sense applies to the more specific scope of study of human culture, national culture, country culture and so on.

Based on the previous definition, the proposition of "Chinese characters and Chinese culture" should be interpreted from two levels:

Firstly, according to the definition of culture in the broad sense, Chinese characters themselves are a kind of cultural matter. Therefore, the proposition "Chinese characters and Chinese culture" actually belongs to the interrelationship between cultural items, specifically, it refers to the relationship between the cultural item of Chinese characters and other cultural items. The relationship between cultural items is mutual and in the form of a three-dimensional network, and in studying their interrelationships, a core item should be identified, and the other cultural items with which the relationship occurs should be regarded as the environment of the core item; that is to say, the core item should be placed at the center of the giant system composed of other cultures, in order to explore the relationship of its survival in this giant system. In other words, the proposition of "Chinese characters and culture" is to take Chinese characters as a cultural item as the center item, and to explore its relationship with other cultural items. The relationship between the central item and other cultural items is both near and far. As a symbol system invented by human beings to record language, Chinese characters have the closest relationship with politics and education, and the relationship with other cultural items varies from near to far, directly and indirectly, which is a problem that needs special attention in the relationship between Chinese characters and culture in the broad sense.

The second aspect is that Chinese characters, as an ideographic writing system for recording the Chinese language, have to transform the meanings of the Chinese vocabulary into visual symbols when constructing individual characters and creating a character system. Due to the inseparability of linguistic meaning and history and culture, Chinese characters, while recording the meaning of the Chinese language, are inevitably loaded with the relevant contents of Chinese history and culture, express all kinds of cultural phenomena, and become the carriers of culture; in this sense, revealing the relationship between Chinese characters and culture means exploring the relationship between Chinese characters, as the carriers of culture, and the contents of culture.

We will first talk about the second aspect here, that is, the relationship between Chinese characters and culture in the narrower sense, which, according to the principle of reflection theory, mainly depends on the aspects in which the Chinese character symbols and their systems reflect the information of cultural contents. Among the cultural contents, there are some that are world***common and others that are nationally specific. In order to explore the relationship between Chinese characters and culture, the part of national specificity should be more valuable than the part of world *** generality. The reason is that cultures with national specificity are always influenced by special natural and social environments, national life and habits, and national psychology, and are gradually formed in the course of long-term historical development. It is a very novel perspective to observe Chinese culture from Chinese characters. To understand Chinese culture through canonical records and archaeological discoveries, we often see the big issues of political economy and conceptual system, while the cultural information stored in the form and structure of Chinese characters often goes into some trivial and specific details, which are the corroboration and supplementation of the macro issues of history and culture. Therefore, we can say that canonical books and archaeology are a bridge leading to ancient history and culture, while Chinese characters are a small boat leading to history and culture. In many remote and tiny areas, it is more convenient to take a boat than to cross a bridge.