Why "Chinese Studies" is "Style" and "Western Learning" is "Use" —— On the Orientation and Innovation of China's Philosophy under the Background of Globalization

It is obviously inappropriate to bring up the old topic of "taking middle school as the body and western learning as the application" at the moment. However, if we can get rid of preconceived ideas and calmly re-examine and think about this topic, it is not difficult to find that the academic problem of how to deal with the cultural relationship between China and the West and how to realize China's modernization put forward by the theory of "taking middle school as the body and western learning as the application" has not only failed to get a practical answer in China today, but is still the root of many deep-seated structural difficulties in the process of China's social modernization. This unavoidable historical problem is more acute under the urgent situation of the increasingly turbulent wave of globalization, and it has become an era problem that needs to be fundamentally solved.

On the historical origin and development of this issue, the academic circles have already done detailed textual research and research. However, first of all, we believe that the "style" of "western learning" is not a democratic and free political system and legal education system, but a western philosophy that determines the face and direction of western civilization; Similarly, the "style" of the "golden mean" is not Confucian orthodoxy and monarchy, but China's philosophy that has kept China's civilization and society unified for thousands of years. Here, the author tries to return to the traditional research field of vision from Yan Fu to Liang Shuming, and directly starts with the comparison of the ideological and philosophical cores of Chinese and Western learning, and then re-expounds that "middle school" must be "style" and "western learning" must be "use". Of course, this topic is really an extremely important and extensive academic topic, and it is impossible to fully explain it without a monograph of hundreds of thousands of words or more. Therefore, the author's essay is bound to be full of leaks and mistakes. Or pray that readers can be lenient and look forward to your advice. a

First, the historical process and causes of "globalization"

At present, the era of globalization characterized by "economic integration" and "social informatization" in which human beings live does not happen by accident overnight, but is the inevitable result of the development of world history. Many Chinese and foreign scholars have pointed out that the "Great Geographical Discovery" movement, which began in 1492, has opened the historical curtain of "globalization". Before this movement, due to the separation of the vast land and the vast ocean, it was impossible for the ancient human civilizations distributed on all continents to communicate directly, and they were basically in an unfamiliar and independent state. Due to the huge geographical obstacles and the limitation of scientific and technological level, there has never been continuous and comprehensive direct communication between western civilization represented by ancient Greek and Roman culture and eastern civilization represented by China culture. Arab civilization, which rose in the Middle Ages, is located at the intersection of Europe, Asia and Africa, and has built a narrow "sea bridge" for cultural exchanges between China and the West through economic and trade exchanges, opening a small window. However, the unprecedented "Mongolian Western Expedition" that took place in 12 and 13 centuries and spanned Eurasia inadvertently opened a wide "land bridge" for the exchange between the two civilizations, and the achievements of China's ancient civilization introduced into the west from this played a vital role in promoting the development of world history in the future.

Driven by the pursuit of "oriental wealth", Columbus unexpectedly "discovered" the American continent, stimulating the latecomers to finally sail around the world, marking the beginning of the era of "globalization". The discovery of the new continent, the success of sailing around the world and its fruitful results have greatly stimulated the long-hidden pragmatism and individualism nature of western thought and culture. Therefore, the "Renaissance" movement that called for the "restoration" of ancient Greek civilization came into being. On the one hand, the "Renaissance" movement based on the material of early capitalism held high the banner of humanism and strongly impacted the political system of feudal nobles, on the other hand, it greatly promoted the continuous development of western science and technology. In the period of colonial imperialism in 18 and 19 centuries, western civilization has confidently declared itself to be "the master of the world" (as Britain called it "not falling into the empire"). However, after entering the complicated and changeable twentieth century, the development of human history unexpectedly presents a chaotic and contradictory face.

On the one hand, since Hegel's death, western philosophy no longer produces world-class masters who can establish a metaphysical classic system. With Nietzsche lamenting that "God is dead", especially after the two world wars, western ideological circles suddenly found their ultimate belief completely bankrupt, so they had to retreat to the "ivory tower" of analytical philosophy and the "small shell" of existentialism to masturbate. Marxism, which also comes from the western philosophical system, is expected to become the guiding principle of human thought. Unfortunately, it is impossible to break through the innate limitations of western philosophy in metaphysics. Due to the lack of their own metaphysical theory and ideological harm, westerners themselves can't fully accept it. On the contrary, it has made unexpected achievements outside the capitalist world and has become the guiding principle of China's * * * production party. On the other hand, western science and technology is still advancing by leaps and bounds according to its own development track, pushing western industry to cross the mechanical age and the electronic age in just a hundred years and enter the information age in an all-round way. In the basic theory of science, there are many masters from western countries, from Einstein's theory of relativity to Planck's theory of quantum mechanics to the theory of elementary particles in the field of high-energy physics, all of which have achieved an overwhelming leading position in the world. At the same time, in the political and economic fields, it pushed the western society from the stage of free competition industrial capitalism to the stage of monopoly capitalism dominated by the government and consortia. After the end of the cold war, it even pushed the United States into the stage of imperial capitalism that pursued and maintained unipolar global hegemony. At this point, the so-called "globalization" has entered a climax scene.

Second, the deep reasons why western civilization can't break through the predicament of the times

In contrast, we can find that with the development of modern western thought and modern western science and technology, there is actually an interesting scene in which dwarfs and giants coexist in one room. With their "huge" scientific and technological foundation, western countries have established "formidable" economic and military strength with the intention of dominating the world; However, his "dwarf" ideological theory often fails to reconcile various contradictions around the world, and even makes him show his ugly face in front of the world again and again. At present, the United States, which has achieved global hegemony, has undoubtedly become the representative of western civilization. Therefore, she should have used her huge national strength and adhered to the principle of "equality, fraternity, democracy and freedom" to devote herself to the cause of world peace and human development planning. Not only is everything handy and admired by people all over the world, but it can also lay a solid foundation for the long-term development of the United States itself. However, the ruling class in the United States not only ignored this, but continued to adhere to the inferior jungle law with the intention of establishing absolute hegemony of "absolute security." In other words, the American-style "democracy and freedom" that the United States claims to be a universal principle and vigorously promotes around the world with its strong strength is just a political tool for its global hegemony. This kind of behavior has not even reached the basic moral principle of "don't do to others what you don't want others to do to you", let alone surpassed it. Therefore, we can find that the United States embodies the great advantages and fatal disadvantages of western civilization. Then, what is the reason why western civilization has such a distinctive feature of coexistence of advantages and disadvantages?

We believe that western civilization still cannot break through the "predicament" of development since World War II, and its deep root lies not in highly developed science and technology, nor in the "imperialist nature" of some western countries, but in the unique theoretical core of western philosophy itself. As we all know, the western classical philosophy that flourished after the Renaissance was not based on Christian theology in the Middle Ages, but on the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle in ancient Greece. Therefore, Professor Zheng Zhongying pointed out brilliantly in the book Spirituality of Chinese and Western Philosophy, "Western philosophy can be said to have the orientation of knowledge from the beginning, and the Greeks have been persistently pursuing intellectual rationality. Knowledge rationality and method consciousness are closely linked, so seeking knowledge leads to seeking methods. " "Generally speaking, the core of western philosophical methods is the construction method of' rationality'. Reason itself is divided, which is often' helpful to rational interpretation', and often knows division but not combination "(1).

In the early days of the development of ancient Greek philosophy, philosophers' interest mainly focused on the study of "the origin of the world", but after Socrates put forward the famous viewpoint of "know yourself", the development of the whole ancient Greek philosophy changed in direction. Plato further put forward "idealism", objectifying the general definition of pursuing the inner principle of mind and virtue, and establishing the idealistic worldview of western philosophy for the first time; It also puts forward dialectics that pays attention to intellectual analysis and the universe prototype theory that the perfect creator creates the world. Aristotle, a master of ancient Greek philosophy and an encyclopedic scholar, put forward the concept of "the first promoter", established "philosophy" as an independent discipline to study "entity" (that is, "the essence of the world") for the first time, and established empirical disciplines such as physics, astronomy and zoology, which branded western philosophy as "science".

It can be said that ancient Greek philosophy basically determines the development direction and ideological outlook of western philosophy, which pays attention to both intellectual rationality and idealism. Its essence is to observe and study the whole world from the perspective and position of "human". The result of paying attention to "knowledge rationality" will inevitably promote the research and application of science and technology, and also hide the deep factors that induce pragmatism and individualism; Sticking to "idealism" and personalizing "ontology (God)" will inevitably lead to the prevalence of religion and the destruction of nature (the opposition between man and nature). Therefore, from the historical development of western philosophy, Descartes (dualism of mind and matter), Kant (knowledge structure) and Hegel (spiritual essence), which can form their own systems, basically follow the development direction of ancient Greek philosophy and constitute the main contents of western classical philosophy. However, they failed to break through and surpass the innate limitations of ancient Greek philosophy in the field of metaphysics. On the contrary, they enriched and developed the theoretical system of ancient Greek philosophy and greatly strengthened the innate limitations of western philosophy, so that the successors of western philosophy today are caught in this dilemma and cannot extricate themselves.

In a word, the "style" of "western learning" has a wrong direction, while "use" has been developed correctly. It is the western science and technology that developed on the basis of the methodology of attaching importance to knowledge and rationality in western philosophy that pierced the idealistic world outlook of western philosophy and led to the bankruptcy of the ultimate belief of western thought, which is difficult to repair so far. Therefore, the structural contradiction between "body" and "use" of western civilization has caused the characteristics of the times that western science and technology are highly developed and western philosophy is "sluggish" today. At the same time, the extreme egoism prevailing in western society pushes "personality liberation" to the extreme, which is essentially an indulgence of negative factors of human nature and greatly deepens the crisis of the times that western civilization is currently experiencing.

Thirdly, the orientation of China's philosophy under the background of globalization.

Contrary to the western civilization's active pursuit of "globalization", China culture passively participates in "globalization". 600 years ago, "Zheng He's Sailing to the West" showed that the goddess of luck in history actually cared about the people of China first. Unfortunately, China's orthodox "heaven" bred from "vast territory and abundant resources" generously gave this historical opportunity to the West. "Because China's philosophy often overemphasizes the overall experience in the early days, it often falls into the disadvantages of knowing and not knowing, and ignores the mastery of the part and the analysis of order; And think that as long as we grasp the whole and remain unchanged on the basis of the whole, we can achieve a stable balance. This is obviously a biased view.

After the Opium War, western powers began to take coercive measures to completely integrate China into the western-led "economic integration" system, which led to an unprecedented crisis of survival in China society and prompted China intellectuals to strive to find a historical way out for Chinese civilization. This effort can be divided into three historical stages. First, Gong Zizhen and Lin Zexu, and then Wei Yuan wrote "A Map of the Seas and Countries", and then Feng Guifen, Wang Tao and Zheng wrote the idea of "Chinese style and western use" into the imperial edict of Emperor Guangxu, while Zhang Zhidong's "persuasion" marked the traditional thought of "Chinese style and western use". Secondly, Yan Fu, who wrote The Theory of Evolution, advocated "total westernization", pointing out that China culture must fully learn the achievements of western civilization. Later, Hu Shi, Chen Duxiu, Lu Xun, Qian and others even launched the "New Culture Movement", explicitly calling for abandoning China's traditional culture and introducing western "democracy" and "science" in an all-round way; At the same time, Gu Hongming and Liang Shuming, two "cultural strangers", turned against the road of "new culture" and thought that the "tool-only" western culture should learn from the "all-powerful" China culture. Liang Qichao's "Theory of Universal Bankruptcy of Science" in "Travels in Europe" and the later "Ten Professors' School" all accepted these theories. Thirdly, after experiencing an academic gap caused by war and political movement, in the 1980s, Li Zehou put forward the theory of "using western learning" and advocated "using western learning". Although his views and theories are still vague and vacillating, it can be regarded as providing a targeted new idea for China's modernization development.

We believe that the above ideas put forward by intellectuals in modern China are aimed at seeking a reasonable and correct development path for the survival of Chinese civilization and society. However, after a whole century of historical development and practical test, our reflection can no longer only follow these concepts or arguments themselves, but should return to the basic concepts of "Zhong", "Xi", "Ti" and "Yong", and first confirm what is the "Ti" and "Yong" of "Zhong"? What are the "style" and "use" of "western learning"?

The "style" of the traditional theory of "Chinese style and western use" obviously refers to Confucian ethics and autocratic monarchy. Zhang Zhidong's "Encouraging Learning" has a cloud, "The inner chapter is a business book, with a righteous heart; Foreign affairs are connected to open up the atmosphere. " "I don't know, there is no art of making changes; If you don't know this, you will have a heart that is not worth teaching. " Therefore, the traditional theory of "learning from China and using the West" obviously cannot adapt to the development of historical trends and meet the requirements of China's modernization. The theory of "Total Westernization" and "New Culture Movement" not only met the enlightenment needs of China society at that time, but also had a far-reaching impact on the development of China's modern ideology and culture. However, due to their inevitable limitations of the times and their strong literary function of "overcorrection", they not only failed to determine a "body" that can stand the test of history, but inadvertently led China's modernization development to a wrong historical direction. Perhaps it is intended to revise and continue the theory of "total westernization". Li Zehou's theory of "western service for China" puts "social existence, productivity and mode of production, daily life, modern science and technology, political system and concept culture" into the "mode" he advocates. In this way, through the simple analogy in the above fields, the general public certainly thinks that "Chinese" is not as good as "western", so it is logical to draw the conclusion that "western learning" must be "style" and "middle school" should be "use". The author thinks that Li Zehou's theory of "learning from China and using the West" is a more unreasonable and barbaric pseudo-academic means to promote "total westernization", especially sadly, the social development in China in recent ten years is basically the practice of this theory.

After more than half a century of historical test, we are surprised to find that those "corrupt scholars" who were once labeled as "moving against the world trend" look like "foresight" today. Gu Hongming, who is proficient in nine foreign languages, accused the British novelist Mao Mu, "If you like machine guns, you will be tried by them"; "Therefore, a gentleman (referring to westerners) should abandon the wrong worldview and adopt China's worldview"; He also translated and introduced a large number of ancient China cultural classics to western countries in fluent and understandable foreign languages, which won him a high academic reputation in European countries and was regarded as a representative of oriental culture. Liang Shuming, who studied Buddhism in his early years, plunged into Confucianism and keenly pointed out the emotional problems such as confusion, distress and loss caused by spiritual alienation caused by material life in modern western society from the perspective of cultural philosophy. In the call of domestic academic circles to overthrow tradition and embrace the West, he issued the call that "the future culture of the world is the revival of China culture" (3).

However, although Gu and Liang pointed out the fact that "middle school" is higher than "western learning", it is wrong to define Confucianism as the "body" of "middle school" because it has insurmountable limitations of the times. In short, due to the limitations of the times, intellectuals in modern China failed to correctly understand the "style" of "western learning" and to correctly explore the "style" of "middle school". So, what kind of theory is the "body" of "middle school"? We believe that the core of China culture is China's philosophy, the core of China's philosophy is the organic synthesis of Taoism, Confucianism, Mohism and Yijing, and the core category of China's philosophy is one word-"Tao"! In other words, Taoist thought is the "body" of the "middle way".

Fourthly, the innovation and construction of contemporary China philosophy.

First of all, it is stated that the establishment of Taoist thought as the "style" of "middle school" higher than "western learning" is by no means out of "narrow national feelings" and "cultural standard consciousness", but the author's conclusion through long-term study, research and comparison of Chinese and western philosophy. Secondly, regardless of ancient and modern times, any complete philosophical system takes cosmology and ontology as its ideological basis and core theory, and any philosophical building lacking metaphysics will inevitably tilt or even collapse after a period of test. In China's ancient philosophy, only Taoist philosophy has the earliest and most perfect view of the world and ontology, which has long been recognized by academic circles. In addition, regarding Taoism as the "backbone" of China's philosophy has been advocated by ancient and modern scholars, while the contemporary scholars have the strongest opinion of Mr. Chen Guying, a former professor of philosophy at National Taiwan University.

Tao, as the most important philosophical category of China's philosophy, has been studied and expounded by Chinese and foreign academic circles for a long time. Here, I just want to briefly talk about my personal experience. "Tao gives birth to one, two, three and all things", which is a classic expression of "Tao" as the universe ontology in the Tao Te Ching by Laozi. In the past, limited by the level of science and technology, human philosophical exploration of the universe and nature needed abstract thinking in addition to the most basic perceptual observation. Therefore, all the "metaphysical thoughts" about the universe itself and the existence of matter can only be attributed to the result of "different opinions", and it is impossible to carry out effective and convincing scientific empirical tests (of course, people will still choose those theories that are most accepted by the public as guiding principles according to general experience). However, in modern times, with the establishment of relativity and quantum mechanics, western science and technology have made great progress in high-energy physics and high-energy astronomy, greatly expanding human vision in the macro and micro world. Even on the basis of existing achievements, we are surprised to find that the principles followed by the most advanced and cutting-edge science and the results revealed are actually interlinked and mutually verified with the basic categories of China's philosophy!

F Capra, an American theoretical physicist and system expert, pointed out in his book The Way of Physics published in 1976 that "in the recent stage, western science finally began to overcome this concept (referring to the traditional concept opposite to eastern philosophy) and returned to the cosmology of early Greek philosophy and eastern philosophy. However, this time it depends not only on intuition, but also on highly accurate and complex experiments and strict and consistent mathematical expressions. " According to Liu Xiaogan's research, the Tao of Laozi and Zhuangzi, as the "objective reality" of the "root of the universe", is the "general root", "general basis" and "general law" that the world produces all things in the world and determines their existence and development, so it has absoluteness, eternity, transcendence, universality and indifference. Major scientific and technological achievements in modern high-energy physics and high-energy astronomy, such as wave-particle duality, Schrodinger equation, Heisenberg uncertainty theorem, Hubble red shift, big bang model theory, cosmic background rays, etc. It is proved that in many cosmological ontologies and origin theories at home and abroad, all personified gods, religious creators and idealized subjective and objective "entities" are undoubtedly just "Taoist" theories, which have already surpassed religious consciousness and human will, and are closest to the original state of the world, and can meet the empirical test of the above scientific principles and scientific and technological achievements to the greatest extent (due to the limitation of this genre, it is impossible to demonstrate this view in detail, and the author will discuss it in another article).

"Yi Zhuan" has a cloud, "The metaphysical person refers to Tao, while the metaphysical person refers to device". The achievements of current human civilization show that the highly developed western science and technology ("Qi" and "Yong") in the past century have verified and expanded the highly developed China philosophy ("Tao" and "Body") more than 2,000 years ago. We believe that it is precisely because of the metaphysical defects of western philosophy that western civilization emphasizes the research and application of science and knowledge, and promotes the development of western science and technology to today's height; However, due to the highly developed Taoism in China's philosophy, China culture emphasizes metaphysics and suppresses the research and application of methodology (Taoism and Confucianism do not advocate "wisdom"), which leads to the lack of scientific and technological support and development in China for two thousand years, so that later scholars cannot follow effective ways to understand the true meaning of Taoism and have to inherit the old theory with remarkable achievements. In a word, various schools of China's philosophy in history have been restricted by historical conditions, and they have been unable to correctly understand the true face and function of China's philosophy core theory; Today, only with the help of western scientific and technological achievements (use) can we effectively understand the original meaning of Tao (body) (a kind of Tao with absolute integrity, infinite tolerance and self-creation ability), that is, only the Tao of "harmony between man and nature" can curb and use the self-proclaimed "device" of "man can conquer nature". What needs to be pointed out in particular is that today's human society is in ideological, political, cultural and artistic fields. The author thinks that to solve these crises fundamentally, we must use the latest achievements of contemporary science and the theoretical tools of modern philosophy to establish a whole set of new world outlook and ontological thought; Looking at the whole human civilization system, the theoretical matrix that can penetrate Chinese and Western cultures and integrate philosophy and science can only be-"Tao". At this point, I believe that readers can basically understand the ins and outs of the author's proposition that "learning is the body and western learning is the use".

We believe that on the basis of Taoist cosmology, ontology and epistemology, we should vigorously carry forward Taoist outlook on life and methodology to meet the needs of the development of contemporary human society; We should also vigorously carry out the research and application of Confucian doctrine of the mean, which contains rich materialist dialectics of "unity of opposites", and raise it to the height of Confucius and Mencius; Mohism has been more than two thousand years since the end of Qin dynasty. Since Bi Yuan and Sun Yirang paid attention to it one after another in Qing Dynasty, Mohist school, which advocated universal love, mutual non-aggression, Shang Xian and Shang Tong, has gained its due position in China's ideological history, but its theoretical research and application are far from equal to its academic value. However, the situation of the philosophy of the Book of Changes is quite special. The Book of Changes was formed much earlier than Taoism, Confucianism and Mohism. Its ideological and theoretical essence is the summary of the life, experience, value and wisdom of the distant ancestors of the Chinese nation living with nature, and it is the origin of China culture. Since then, both Taoism and Confucianism have done a lot of research and application on it (because of this, the philosophy of the Book of Changes cannot be simply classified as either Taoism or Confucianism), and even developed it. Therefore, the author advocates that I ching philosophy and its theory of reproduction (Yin-Yang, Five Elements and Taoism) should be listed as independent schools of philosophy, so as to clarify the origin of China's philosophical thought.

Of course, we have established the understanding of the new theory of "Chinese style and western use", but we still can't think that we can accomplish the historical mission of realizing China's modernization. It is on the basis of learning, mastering and drawing lessons from the scientific achievements of the western industrial revolution that Marx and Engels were able to summarize the history of western classical philosophy, and on this basis, they established a theoretical system of Marxist philosophy to promote the development of human history, especially China. Therefore, we must rebuild and innovate China's philosophy and culture on the basis of "taking China as the body". In short, "the ultimate goal of analyzing and criticizing China's philosophy with western philosophy is to enable China's philosophy to analyze and criticize western philosophy;" So that China's philosophy can accept the challenge of western philosophy and reflect and respond. This transformation not only promotes the regeneration and development of China's philosophy, but also promotes the regeneration and development of human philosophical rationality, which makes all kinds of practical problems faced by mankind (whether personal, social or even the whole world; Culture or science, value or knowledge) has made new breakthroughs, while philosophy has played an active and important role in human cultural activities "(5). After such deconstruction and creation, China's philosophy and culture can have a comprehensive and extensive exchange with the thoughts and cultures of all countries and nationalities in the world with a confident and brand-new look, and on this basis, China's ideological and cultural system can be created, which can make great contributions to the global order established for the first time in human history.

Conclusion Mr. Li once said, "Take the universal law of globalization as the' body' and the characteristics of China as the' use'". We believe that only on the basis of establishing the understanding of "middle school as the body" can China truly master and control the "universal law of globalization" and serve China's early modernization. Considering China's modern historical development and current reality, modern China's philosophy was either hindered by war and political factors, or was deeply troubled by blind worship of foreign countries, and it was always difficult to carry out ideological and theoretical construction independently and objectively. Therefore, the "New Culture Movement" initiated by modern intellectuals in China has not yet been completed, and it is extremely necessary to continue it in a lasting and in-depth manner. Finally, let's conclude with a sentence from Mr. Li: "As a China person, I believe in principle that China philosophy, as the core of China culture, can open the best way to save the cultural crisis in China and the global cultural crisis."