Various aspects of current cultural relativism and its critical papers

Various aspects of current cultural relativism and its review articles

Looking back on China's academic history, cultural relativism is like a ghost, looming in the difficult process of China's academic transformation from tradition to modernity. In recent years, the trend of cultural relativism has revived in China academic circles.

The cultural view of cultural relativism is a self-sufficient cultural view, and its insistence on the relativity, particularity and pluralism of culture is based on this cultural view.

As far as the starting point of its axiology is concerned, cultural relativism is a kind of value pluralism of cultural determinism. Under this determinism, people are just "gears and screws" of huge mechanical devices that operate by themselves.

Cultural relativism (1) is a theoretical proposition, which emphasizes the cognitive differences between cultures and the incomparable values between cultures. /kloc-rose in the field of western anthropology at the end of 0/9, and then quickly expanded to the fields of humanities and social sciences such as philosophy, history and sociology. Looking back at China's academic history, cultural relativism is like a ghost, looming in the difficult process of China's academic transformation from tradition to modernity. Although few critics directly use the banner of "cultural relativism", the ghost of "cultural relativism" can always be vaguely seen from the theory of "Chinese style and western use" to the theory of "standard culture" and from "quintessence school" to "new Confucianism". In recent years, the trend of cultural relativism has revived in China academic circles. In my opinion, this phenomenon may be one of the most striking cultural and academic events since the 1990s. More importantly, the ideological trend of cultural relativism shows its own components in almost all directions: from theoretical presupposition to realistic judgment, from values to application strategies-and it is in this display that the theoretical dilemma and ideological defects of cultural relativism are also exposed.

The theoretical connotation of cultural relativism itself is not complicated, but in different contemporary contexts, it is often intertwined with historical determinism, radical nationalism, cultural conservatism and other theories and value statements, and often presents various faces. Here are some of the most important ones:

First, the "incommensurable" theory. People who hold this view believe that Chinese and western cultures are self-contained cultures and self-contained cultural styles. In the era before globalization, they developed independently of each other. Therefore, the differences between them are primitive and therefore incommensurable.

Second, the theory of "East Asian value". Critics regard "East Asian values" (also known as "Asian values") as a value system corresponding to or even opposite to western European and American values and concepts, especially the values of "society first, individual second" in East Asian countries and regions influenced by Confucian culture-so it is impossible to measure modern East Asian countries and regions with western values of universal human rights.

Third, the theory of "aphasia". "Aphasia" here doesn't mean that you can't speak, but that China's modern and contemporary culture and academics don't have their own set of theories, methods and rules for expression, communication and interpretation. The reason lies in the invasion of "Western learning" which is incompatible with "Chinese studies", which leads to the rupture of China's own culture and academic tradition, which makes China fall into a serious "cultural disease" and makes China culture have no voice in the world.

Fourth, the theory of "Chinese characters". The starting point of this theory is that the "modernity" knowledge framework, as the basic discourse paradigm of China in the 20th century, has declined irreversibly in the 1990s, because the transformation of "modernity" is essentially a process of "otherization". Therefore, it is necessary to establish a kind of "China" that transcends "modernity" and take it as China's future academic paradigm. This means that "modern transformation" is no longer regarded as the unfinished mission of China's contemporary cultural construction, but "serving humanity in a way that highlights China's characteristics in the future development". Let China "become a polycentric center in a pluralistic era". .

Fifth, the theory of "localization of humanities and social sciences". "Localization" here has two meanings: one is "regression" and the other is "integration". The former means that the research of humanities and social sciences in contemporary China should return to China's unique "native" culture and academic tradition-in fact, it is the tradition of Confucian classics before the May 4th Movement. The latter should use China's own "local culture" and integrate all kinds of knowledge of humanities and social sciences from the West, so as to establish an academic discourse system that does not lose its "local characteristics" but also "integrates ancient and modern Chinese and foreign languages in one furnace".

Sixth, the theory of "China's modernity". Scholars who hold this view believe that "modernity" originates from the unique historical and cultural context in Europe and is the product of the unique western cultural tradition of "Christianity-Puritanism Ethics-Rationalism". Therefore, compared with "western modernity", there should be a kind of "China modernity"; Corresponding to the internal relationship between "western modernity" and rationalism, we "must look for the modernity identity of China's social culture outside the category of" rationalism ".

There are many similar or similar viewpoints to the above theories, but in terms of the enthusiasm of their influence and response, other viewpoints and formulations may be difficult to get the correctness of the above six theories. Of course, after careful attempt, we can find that these theories are very different in both knowledge background and ideological direction. On the other hand, they are interrelated: the ghost of cultural relativism, as a cultural cognitive model and cultural philosophy, lingers behind them. I will discuss the inherent difficulties and limitations of cultural relativism from three aspects: concept paradox, value error and lack of application.

First, the absurd concept

In my opinion, the cultural view of cultural relativism is a self-sufficient cultural view. It regards culture as an independent and self-sufficient organic whole, and its internal elements are similar to the relationship between various organs and tissues in an organism. The course of culture is also regarded as the self-sufficient course of an organism's life from occurrence to maturity to natural death. Cultural relativism adheres to the relativity, particularity and pluralism of culture on the basis of this cultural view. It can be found that several theoretical expressions we have listed are all based on such a cultural view as their logical premise and theoretical presupposition. The theory of "incommensurability" itself is an inevitable corollary of the theory of cultural self-sufficiency. Other theories presuppose a true and absolutely pure "East Asia", "China" or "Native Land" as the premise of their theoretical deduction and realistic judgment, which is just a variation of the cultural concept of self-sufficiency. For example, it is not difficult to infer an organic and self-sufficient cultural "self" behind the "otherization" repeatedly mentioned by "Chinese style" theorists.

The problem is that this self-sufficient cultural concept itself is an absurd concept, and its understanding of culture has fallen into the fallacy of essentialism and ontological thinking. On the one hand, the self-sufficient cultural view ignores the fluidity, diversity and complexity within the culture, and forcibly sets some "meta-discourses" such as "China people" and "East Asians" as the "center" or "essence" of a culture, so as to construct a "substantial" cultural identity. On the other hand, the self-sufficient cultural view sets culture as a self-sufficient cultural entity that does not depend on other things. As an entity, culture must have self-sufficient initiative, so culture is regarded as an organic life. However, modern philosophy and modern science have proved the absurdity of essentialism and ontological thinking more than once, because they both ignore the reality, richness and fluidity of existence itself for the sake of universality of discourse. Specifically, as far as the concept of culture is concerned, the thinking of essentialism and materialism separates many originally rich, complex and even contradictory cultural phenomena from their realistic context and confines them to some special traditions or theoretical frameworks. It can be said that this cultural concept is divorced from the reality of cultural existence, but it is a subjective abstraction. Second, the value error.

The so-called "misunderstanding of values" refers to the confusion of the value order of a certain theory and the loss of its set value goal, so there is a danger that the value will depreciate itself or even turn into anti-value.

Of course, first of all, we must admit that cultural relativism is partly reasonable in terms of its starting point of axiology. The original intention of cultural relativism at the level of value philosophy is to oppose the monistic values of cultural progress theory and cultural centralism, acknowledge the self-value of various cultural forms, and think that all cultures must be examined according to their own value structure. This is undoubtedly a view of value pluralism. The problem is that the value pluralism of cultural relativism is also a value pluralism of cultural determinism: since culture is a self-sufficient organic life, it means that once a cultural phenomenon is produced, it will gain its own "life", so it is independent and beyond human will; People not only can't interfere with the process of culture, but also their own value activities are completely determined by culture. People are just "gears and screws" of this huge mechanical device that operates by themselves. This view of value pluralism of cultural determinism is especially embodied in the so-called "East Asian value" theory and "China modernity" theory. In the view of "East Asian values", being an East Asian means that you must identify with East Asian (Confucian) culture and its values and be proud of it. Modernists in China believe that modernity has its specific cultural and historical origins in Europe, and the values including rationality, freedom, democracy and equality have always been branded as "Western" (Europe), so it cannot be the value ideal of modernity pursued by non-western countries.

From the perspective of value philosophy, the biggest value mistake implied by the value pluralism of cultural determinism lies in the cancellation of cultural values belonging to human nature. Culture is always human culture, and people are always cultural people. But in people and culture's value association, we must insist on the priority of people's own value. In other words, man is not only the inheritor of culture, but also the creator of primitive culture, the critic of cultural tradition and the creator of new cultural value structure. In the final analysis, the value of culture is the value of people, and the cultural essence of people is the humanity of culture. In the view of cultural determinism, people are completely passive, unable to grasp and control the future value trend of culture, let alone the possibility of accepting foreign cultures or creating new ones. The key issue here is that a culture centered on a certain value concept and its structure was originally established by selfish people in the process of self-realization. Therefore, the process of cultural construction is actually the process of realizing people's self-worth, and only in this process can people's cultural nature and cultural humanity be unified. Cultural relativism sets culture as a self-sufficient living body, from which cultural determinism is deduced, and it holds that the development process of culture is a process that has nothing to do with the ideals, wishes and efforts of individual human beings in culture. People become the medium of self-expression and the tool to realize their cultural "self-value" in the process of culture, and it is not that people build culture to build themselves, but that culture builds people and builds themselves. Obviously, people's cultural nature has been extremely strengthened, while the humanity of culture and value has been covered, forgotten or cancelled intentionally or unintentionally, which actually means that the starting point and destination of the value philosophy of "people are the goal" have been forgotten and cancelled. In this sense, cultural relativism is likely to evolve into value nihilism.

Third, there is a lack of application plaque.

The applied concept here comes from Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. Gadamer thinks that application is an indispensable factor in all understanding. Therefore, application is an indispensable inherent character of humanities and its various theories based on understanding ontology, that is, the applied character of humanities theory. In other words, the humanistic theory must have the character that can be applied to the real situation of the builders or believers of the theory.

Judging from all aspects of cultural relativism in China's academic circles, the lack of its application character is mainly manifested in the following aspects. 1. Realistic judgment of dislocation. Whether it's incommensurability theory, aphasia theory, China's modernity theory or East Asian axiology, they are similar in that their diagnosis of reality is not based on the concrete experience of reality, but based on an "illusion of cultural authenticity", with the help of an isolated tradition or an established theory, something about reality is deduced from top to bottom. 2. Pseudo-question consciousness. Misplaced realistic judgment will inevitably lead to wrong problem consciousness. For example, the view that modernity as a practical process is coming to an end advocated by the "Chinese style" theorists seems to be a problem faced by European and American countries, not China, a country that has not solved the problem of food and clothing for many people. 3. Bad application strategy. Compared with talking about real crises or problems, when talking about how to solve these crises or problems, we either go back to the old road of "retro-ism" or "mixing Chinese and Western" or talk about "transcendence" in an empty way-but no one knows how to transcend, what is the direction and goal.

The lack of this application plaque is actually a manifestation of the conceptual paradox and value error of cultural relativism in practice. On the one hand, the cultural self-sufficiency paradox of cultural relativism makes it impossible to face the cultural reality, nor can it go beyond the experience level to think deeply about the cultural reality, thus pointing out the direction for the current academic development. On the other hand, cultural relativism cancels the humanism of cultural values, which makes the undertakers of cultural criticism and academic creation-individuals and independent people in the modern sense, can only be integrated into the organic life of culture as one of various factors that constitute culture, and cannot get out of the shadow of cultural determinism or even cultural fatalism, leading to the double dilemma of aimlessness and subjectivity in cultural and academic development. In this sense, cultural relativism has become one of the main obstacles that hinder the cultural development of China and further promote the academic modernization of China.

It is worth noting that criticizing cultural relativism and its various aspects at present does not mean denying the fact of cultural differences, let alone agreeing with cultural centralism and cultural colonialism. Facing the complicated contemporary cultural phenomena and confusing academic problems, what we expect is the birth of a cultural theory and academic paradigm based on China's current practical problems. Doesn't the so-called "transformation" of culture and scholarship contain the double meanings of "farewell" and "birth"?

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