The development track of Chinese civilization

Characteristics and development track of Chinese civilization

I. The concept of culture

Culture is a human phenomenon, which distinguishes people from animals.

In the pre-Qin literature, "Heaven" refers to the natural law of heaven, and "Man" refers to the order of human relations. Turning "humanity" into the world and the natural world into the humanistic world is the connotation given to "culture" by ancient philosophers in China. It attaches importance to distant education and ethical education, and opposes military conquest and barbarism.

Today's universal culture is translated from Spanish, which means that human beings cultivate soil to meet their survival needs and emphasize the process of human conquest and transformation of nature. For example, Kant said, "rational entities create their own abilities for a certain purpose."

Culture is divided into two parts: technical system (material) and value system (spirit). The former shows the use of culture, while the latter shows the concept of culture, that is, the value orientation, aesthetic taste and way of thinking cultivated by human beings in social practice and consciousness activities are condensed into the spiritual core of culture. Between them are the institutional level of culture and the behavioral level of culture. The former refers to various social norms and laws constructed by human beings in social practice, while the latter refers to the established habits formed by human beings in social communication, such as customs, folk customs and etiquette. Therefore, use, system, behavior and concept constitute four levels of cultural connotation.

Civilization is the product of cultural development to a specific stage. The invention of writing, the use of metal tools and the establishment of cities are all symbols of civilization. The connotation of civilization is greater than culture, and the extension is less than culture. Behaviors with cultural imprint are not necessarily civilized behaviors, such as rudeness, ugliness and crime in society, which can be regarded as specific cultural phenomena, but they are opposite to "civilization".

Second, the characteristics of Chinese civilization

The evolution trend of human social organizations is from blood politics to geopolitics. Greece is a typical example of this transformation. However, China's patriarchal clan system and its relics maintained by blood have been preserved for a long time. This is related to the fact that the main body of China people is engaged in social farming life.

Patriarchal system originated from the blood relationship among members of patriarchal commune. It was conceived in Shang Dynasty and shaped in Western Zhou Dynasty. According to the patriarchal clan system, the supreme ruler of society, the "Son of Heaven", is the eldest son of the Emperor of Heaven. He carries goods in the sky and manages land and subjects on earth. In the relationship between politics and metallurgy, it is the master of the world; In the patriarchal clan system, it is the largest in the world. The influence of patriarchal clan system extends to later generations, which is embodied as follows:

First, the inheritance of political metallurgical power and economic property rights generally follows the principle of paternal descent, excluding the status of female members to ensure that power and wealth do not flow into other ethnic groups. Secondly, the patriarchal clan system, which is maintained by blood, has become an inseparable social cell outside the replacement of dynasties. The continuation of this family incense often depends on the tenacious existence of three elements: ancestral temple, genealogy and clan field. Thirdly, the combination of clan power and political power is consistent with the goal of state power to promote strict Ming religion, etiquette and maintain patriarchal autocratic order; The state power also controls its subjects with the spirit of family, "isomorphism of family and country" and "unity of monarch and father".

The essential characteristics of Chinese civilization can be summarized as follows:

1. humanistic tradition. Pay attention to life and join the WTO. Man and heaven and earth are regarded as equal, and "heaven and earth are teachers" offer sacrifices at the same time. Under the trend of practical rationality, there is no distinction between man and god, and there is no distinction between this life and the afterlife. In addition to coping with and using, there is a lack of transcendental respect and heartfelt enthusiasm for God. However, "attaching importance to people" does not respect individual values and individual free development, but integrates individuals into human groups and emphasizes people's obligations to clans and countries, which constitutes a patriarchal collectivism.

2. Ethics Center. The patriarchal clan tradition left over from the clan society has made China always attach great importance to ethical norms and moral education, thus forming an ethical culture with the aim of "being kind" and a scientific culture with the goal of "seeking truth" in Greece. Scientific culture studies cosmology, epistemology and moralism vertically, and ontology and epistemology are fully developed; However, China's ethical culture does not talk about the wisdom without ethics. Family, country and the world are all based on "self-cultivation", and ethics has become the starting point and the end result. Therefore, China literature emphasizes the function of "education", historiography takes "containing praise and belittling, distinguishing good from evil" as its purpose, education takes moral education as its restraint, and life pursuit takes "low profit and high righteousness" as its value orientation.

3. Respect the monarch and value the people. In an extremely decentralized agricultural society, the power of personalized integration comes from autocratic kings. Therefore, the tradition of respecting the monarch is the inevitable product of the agricultural patriarchal society. However, the normal operation of the agricultural patriarchal society depends on the people with farmers as the main body to live and work in peace and contentment. Therefore, the people-oriented tradition of "people are the foundation of the country" is also the inevitable product of the agricultural patriarchal society.

4. The golden mean. Advocating the golden mean is a crowd mentality cultivated by agricultural natural economy and patriarchal society, aiming at living in a stable and peaceful place. This is also a feature of China's wisdom. Applied to politics and metallurgy, it is to plant and suppress the strong and level the land property rights; When it is applied to culture, it is to seek common ground in differences when many cultures meet. If it is applied to customs, it is impartial and does not blame you, giving consideration to both inside and outside; Pursuing the ideal personality of the golden mean is a gentle and modest gentleman. This is a spirit of following the natural rhythm, that is, the spirit of affirming change and identifying with Tao. This is the enlightenment of the farming people from the repeated phenomenon of agricultural production from sowing, growth to harvest. The closed cycle sequence described by the theory of the five elements interacting with each other is a summary of this way of thinking

5. Tensile toughness. The agricultural patriarchal society provides tenacious traditional strength, and the ethical paradigm creates tenacious habits, forming the spirit of "self-improvement" and "respecting morality". China has a strong sense of cultural identity and adaptability. Egyptian culture was destroyed by Persian Empire, then Hellenized by Alexander's occupation, romanized by Caesar's occupation, and Islamized by Arab immigrants, and there were many cultural interruptions and qualitative changes. Babylonian culture also went to ruin after many interruptions. Halaba in India was suddenly destroyed by the attack of Aryans in Central Asia in the18th century BC. In the second century BC, Greek culture was incorporated into Roman territory. Not only did this not happen in China, but due to geographical, ethnic and cultural reasons, an "East Asian Cultural Circle" centered on China was formed in East Asia, which was composed of Chinese characters, Confucianism, legal system and Buddhism.

Third, the influence of Chinese civilization on the world.

China's culture once spread to the west. /kloc-Before the 6th century, China's material civilization laid a material foundation for the Renaissance and modernization of Europe. Without gunpowder, Europeans would have to shed more blood to break the feudal castles in the Middle Ages. Without the compass and tailbone rudder invented by China, Columbus's trip to the New World would have to be postponed; Without China's papermaking and printing, it would be difficult for the Renaissance in Europe to spread and expand rapidly. China culture also had a great influence on the Enlightenment in Europe. French enlightenment thinkers, such as Voltaire, have all been exposed to China's cultural classics. They idealized China's atheism and materialism, the thoughts of "benevolent government" and "benevolent monarch", the educational principle of "teaching without discrimination" and the people-oriented theory of political metallurgy, which served as ideological weapons against theological obscurantism and autocratic monarchy and helped to become the French Revolution. Rationalism since the Song Dynasty had a direct impact on the German philosophical revolution. The fairness, openness and mobility of China's civil service examination and selection system and imperial examination system, which are "learning to be an official", have been used for reference by European examination system and civil service system after the French Revolution. In the era of industrial and post-industrial civilization, with the increasingly tense relationship between people, people and society, and people and nature, the humanistic ideal, harmonious spirit, the study of mind and self-debate in China culture will certainly provide enlightenment to the future society.

Fourthly, the development track of China culture.

Archaeological sites in China show that the Stone Age culture in China developed on the basis of relative unit ethnology. China is one of the centers of agricultural origin in the world. It laid the foundation stone of farming culture different from nomadic way. The number and wide distribution of prehistoric cultural sites in China indicate the pluralistic occurrence of Chinese civilization. However, its main bodies are concentrated in the Yellow River basin and the Yangtze River basin and their areas not far from the north and south, which are roughly consistent with the literature legends, such as Huaxia (Heluo), Dongyi (Haidai) and Miaoman (Jianghan).

In 2000 BC, scripts, bronzes, palaces and altars appeared widely in China, and China culture began to enter the stage of civilization.

China's bronzes are preferentially used as ritual vessels, symbolizing sovereignty and hierarchical order. Secondly, it is used as a weapon to maintain political power in war, not as a production tool in other civilizations.

The three major sacrifices of heaven, earth and man are well developed, especially ancestor worship, which is mutually causal with patriarchal clan system and concept, giving birth to a series of characteristics of China culture, such as being cautious in pursuing the future, emphasizing history, expressing meaning and so on.

Poetry, calligraphy, ceremony, Yi, Chunqiu, Analects of Confucius, Mozi, Zhuangzi, Laozi and Mencius formed in this period systematically displayed the core ideas of China culture. Humanistic spirit, cosmology of harmony between man and nature, sense of hardship, Yin and Yang, Tao, being and being, and sense of qi were publicized in hundred schools of thought's contention, which set an example for the later generations of China culture and built the spiritual home of China people.

The end of the unified imperial culture should be traced back to the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. The establishment of the unified empire in Qin and Han dynasties completed the unification and integration of multiculturalism in the pre-Qin period.

Many basic features of China culture were fixed in the Qin and Han Dynasties. For example, the unification of weights and measures, the determination of figures, the educational model, household registration control, the way of selecting officials, and the pattern of Confucian classics and historical system have all formed China's unique characteristics. Han people, China people, Chinese characters and Han people are basically frozen at this time.

After more than 100 years of exploration, adjustment and running-in, centralization of authority, a unified empire, has found an ideology suitable for it, which is the Confucian culture that originated in the Yuan Dynasty and absorbed the thoughts of Taoism and Legalism. In the atmosphere of "respecting others", Confucian culture has been studied by scholars and officials, which regulates the audio-visual words and deeds of the whole people. However, in the actual operation of the ruling group, Confucianism and law are adopted at the same time, while Wang Ba is mixed; The philosophy of life in which Confucianism and Taoism complement each other is popular among the literati, and the lower class people supplement it with various folk religions.

The basic pattern of imperial power replacement and dynasty cycle in ancient China was formed and fixed at this stage. In other words, within a dynasty, the emperor was transferred according to the strict patriarchal system; However, when a dynasty is decadent and unsustainable, a strong one takes its place. It is precisely because the emperor's heredity is not absolutely reliable that the rulers pay more attention to the deification and sanctification of kingship. However, the change of dynasties has not caused cultural isolation, and subsequent dynasties always consciously identify with the previous generation and realize cultural relay.

The conflict and integration between farming culture and nomadic culture is a major theme of Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties culture. The oppression of nomadic people in the north once caused "five chaos in China" and the split between the north and the south; However, nomadic culture has revived and strengthened China culture.

Another theme in the past 600 years is the interaction between Buddhist culture from the South Asian subcontinent and China native culture. At the beginning of Buddhism's introduction, although it clashed with Confucianism, Taoism and other cultural systems, it finally compromised and merged with China's ethical norms, practical rationality, worship mode and political needs. Buddhism has experienced the process of expelling Buddha, destroying Buddha, killing Buddha and helping Buddha, and gradually realized its localization in China, which has deeply influenced all levels of China culture.

From the mid-Tang Dynasty, the landlord manor economy went bankrupt economically, and the landlord yeoman economy was stereotyped; In terms of tax system, the imperial court established a direct economic relationship with the common people. Politically, after the implementation of the imperial examination system, nobles faded out of politics, and officials were directly selected from landlords and yeomen, which had certain openness and mobility.

Due to the decline of the real economy and the massive circulation of money, the city has evolved from a simple political center and military fortress to an economic and cultural distribution center. With the rise of the citizen class, street culture tends to be active, and novels and operas reflecting citizens' life and interests have created new styles in form and content. If Han Fu, Parallel Prose of Six Dynasties, Tang Poetry, Song Ci, Yuan Qu and novels of Ming and Qing Dynasties constitute the mainstream of China literature, then after the middle Tang Dynasty, a pulse of its vulgarity (such as drama and novels) will gradually emerge.

The expanded Neo-Confucianism in the Song and Ming Dynasties, in a sense, is the return of Confucian humanistic rationality, especially Yangming's theory of mind has begun to show the connotation of moral individualism; The skeptical spirit of Song studies in Qing Dynasty and the empirical textual research spirit of Park studies also touched the foundation of empirical science. In addition, literati, bureaucrats, landlords or businessmen are integrated to form a literati class, whose aesthetic taste, personality ideal and moral concept dominate the value norms of the whole society.

After the Tang dynasty, under the pattern of increasing centralization of monarchy, bureaucracy and metallurgy implemented the policy of separating civil and military affairs, and the right text suppressed the military. Although it prevented the independence and usurpation of power by the soldiers, it led to the disadvantage of national defense, and the temperament of national culture changed from the heroic expansion of Han and Tang Dynasties to the exquisite and restrained of Song and Ming Dynasties. At the same time, the ethnic groups around China are rising day by day and heading for the road of being stubborn with the local culture of China. Although they all inherited the farming culture of the Central Plains in the end, the destruction caused by repeated military conquest also hindered the possibility of modern transformation of China culture.

After the middle of the Ming Dynasty, a group of advanced scholars respected "the masses" and advocated "people-oriented" on the ideological level, which opened a precedent for modern enlightenment. The entry of western missionaries opened the prelude to the spread of western learning to the east, which was another great intersection of China local culture and foreign culture after the spread of Buddhism to the east. In the middle and early Qing Dynasty, the cultural path of Song and Ming Dynasties was basically followed, but the spirit of empirical textual research on Pu Xue was unprecedentedly developed, which played a "deconstruction" role in the sanctity of Confucian classics since the Han Dynasty.

The transformation in the late Qing Dynasty was the result of the interaction of internal and external forces. Facing the national peril and the impact of modern western culture, China culture profoundly embodies the spiritual traditions such as the sense of hardship, the concept of change, the dispute between China and foreign countries and the people-oriented thought since the Yuan Dynasty. After modern interpretation, it gained a new life and transformed into modern consciousness of saving the nation, ideological trend of "reform-self-improvement", revolutionary thought, modern nationalism and democracy.

Since the modern western culture landed from the southeast coast, Guangdong, Guangxi, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces have become the frontiers of the collision between Chinese and western cultures for more than a century. The two lakes region has become the intersection of ancient and present, and China and the West, all of which constitute the unique cultural landscape of modern China.

The break between the old and the new in the May 4th New Culture Movement can be regarded as a clarification of China's cultural tradition. Since then, China has experienced the study, selection and sublation of the European and American models and the Soviet-Russian model. The transformation from agricultural civilization to industrial civilization is the basic content of social transformation in contemporary China. The transformation from a state-controlled planned economy to a socialist market economy is the "China characteristic" of modern transformation; Faith crisis, ecological crisis, energy depletion and civilization conflict caused by the transformation from industrial civilization to post-industrial civilization have impacted and challenged traditional culture and provided unprecedented opportunities.