How is "philosophy" defined in Chinese and Western traditions?

The word "philosophy" means "love wisdom" in ancient Greek, but it has been widely interpreted by western academic circles as "a kind of knowledge that systematically thinks about the concepts of truth, existence, reality, causality and freedom." In the Encyclopedia of China Philosophy Volume, the definition of "philosophy" is: "Philosophy is the theoretical form of world outlook, and it is the knowledge about the most general laws of nature, society and human thinking and its development." Generally speaking, there is no difference between these two definitions in principle. However, when we talk about the origin of their formation, we can see some basic characteristics of them more clearly. What are the characteristics of philosophy? Socrates, an ancient Greek philosopher, first thought about philosophy from the perspective of life value. He said, "I despise a mediocre life. No one else in the world yearns for it, but I am not interested in collecting wealth and treasure, settling down and buying a house, being prominent in civil and military positions or other fashionable activities here, such as political promotion, forming gangs and cronies. If I really set foot in these businesses, it is difficult to live my self-reflection of strict self-discipline, and the observation of others is the thickest place for me. Therefore, a life without such reflective thinking is an illusory life. " In Socrates' view, philosophy should transcend all secular life and take knowledge as the highest purpose. This kind of activity, which regards seeking knowledge as the whole meaning of life, is "loving wisdom". However, the knowledge embodied in the Greek's "love for wisdom" is not what we call classified knowledge now, but actually the kind of knowledge called "transcendental knowledge" or "transcendental knowledge", which is somewhat similar to what Buddhists call transcendental knowledge. Therefore, when concretizing this transcendental knowledge, philosophers have to turn: from the ontology of wisdom to the epistemology of wisdom. This forms the tradition of western philosophy-epistemology and ideological logic of historical source; This is also the main feature of western philosophy or culture. Therefore, Socrates, as the main originator of western philosophy, expressed the meaning of "loving wisdom" in the definition of philosophy as an epistemological proposition, that is, "I only know one thing, that is, I know nothing". This is an expression of "wisdom" by philosophy from the perspective of epistemology. It has the same effect as Confucius, a classical philosopher, educator and founder of Confucianism in China, on knowledge: "Know what you know! Knowing is knowing, not knowing is not knowing, but knowing. " Socrates and Confucius both taught students with this attitude and expounded their philosophical knowledge, that is, "wisdom." They don't take knowledge based on existing experience as their pursuit purpose, but take the process of exploring knowledge and a spirit of "endless learning" as their life sustenance. As far as secular life and some local life experiences are concerned, most of their lives are poverty and vagrancy, which is far from "success" or "happiness". Socrates died with the beauty of philosophy, just as Sima Qian said that Confucius was confined to Kuang, Zheng and Chen Cai, all of which expressed a transcendental value: "All kings in the world have sages, but they are honored at that time. Without sages, they have lost their wisdom." Confucius is a civilian, and by more than ten generations, people who study have respected him. From the son of heaven to the prince, China compromised on his master. Awesome! Westerners probably use the same standard to praise Socrates: "Socrates gave philosophy to mankind." "According to Aristotle, he still quietly sacrificed his life for philosophy. In the life activities of Socrates and Confucius, it is irrelevant for philosophers to think about specific problems, gain knowledge on this basis, and make achievements in some fields of experience or secular life. At best, they only belong to a stage of rational pursuit rather than an endless pursuit process, which can't satisfy people's thirst for infinite knowledge; At best, it is "some kind of professional knowledge", not "wisdom beyond knowledge", so it is impossible to maximize people's spiritual realm. Socrates does not regard worldly achievements as the value of life, which is the same as Confucius' saying that "a gentleman is not a tool", that is, philosophy is an idea or a reflective idea with the idea itself as the object. In the thought regarded as the object of philosophical thought, both empirical knowledge and secular achievements can be the ideological objects of this object, but this empirical and concrete object is only the object of philosophical thought after all, and the object that directly carries philosophical thoughts is almost only the concept of ideological empirical knowledge and secular achievements. In this sense, philosophy is naturally understood as a "game of concepts", and it is in this "game of concepts" that philosophers seek the pleasure of life. Socrates's "reflective life" and Confucius's "Happy Life in know life" are also the fundamental characteristics of philosophy-transcendental personal experience. Their examples are just a wonderful combination of epistemology and life theory that embodies the main idea of philosophy. How to rise from the value of the empirical world to the pursuit of transcendence and infinite value is actually a transformation from the secular empirical world to the eternal conceptual world, which is of course a symbol of philosophical existence-it can also be called ontology in philosophy. Plato, a student of Socrates, defined this symbol as "the world of ideas" or "the world of ideas". Plato believes that only "reason" or "form" in the "concept world" is the eternal and absolute existence, the highest beauty and the greatest goodness, while everything in the experience world, including natural phenomena such as animals and plants and social phenomena such as official fame and fortune, is temporary and imperfect, which is a poor imitation of "concept". Plato described philosophy in a more orderly way along the train of thought of his teacher Socrates, and turned the philosopher's pursuit of eternal value into a reflection on "* * *", which was interpreted by modern philosopher Bertrand Russell as one of Plato's most important contributions to philosophy, that is, Plato's theory of ideas initiated the tradition of * * * phase problems that western philosophy never solved. * * * stage is the highest abstraction of all phenomena in the empirical world and all phenomena that may become the empirical world. Because "all possible phenomena in the empirical world" do not actually exist, the * * * stage can only be a logical setting, that is, an idea. But it clearly illustrates the essential characteristics of philosophy. From Socrates' The Significance of Life Reflection and Ignorant Knowledge to Plato's Theory of Ideas or * * *, they have established the mainstream development direction for western philosophy or philosophy from the aspects of epistemology and ontology. Therefore, Whitehead, a contemporary philosopher, said that the philosophy since Plato is a footnote for Plato, that is, whether you agree with or oppose Plato, it is ultimately a matter of idealism or * * *. In this sense, even if you are against Plato, you are still a Platonist. On the basis of Socrates' reflection on the "ignorance" epistemology of life and Plato's ontology of "managing the world", Bertrand Russell further expounded the characteristics of philosophy: "Once the exact knowledge about any problem becomes possible, it is no longer a philosophical problem, but a science. ..... In fact, the value of philosophy lies in exploring uncertainty ... Although philosophy can't provide exact answers to our questions, it can give us a lot of enlightenment about possibility, thus broadening our minds and avoiding the pain of arbitrary habits formed by experience. Therefore, weakening our confidence in empirical knowledge can greatly enhance our understanding of possibilities. " In other words, philosophy should have a vision beyond experience and knowledge to discover the possibility of bringing us infinitely rich knowledge. This kind of thinking naturally embodies philosophical wisdom. In China's Confucian tradition, Feng Youlan, a contemporary neo-Confucian town with a concentrated background of western philosophy, also gave a very general description of the essence and value of philosophy: "The philosophy I am talking about is the idea of systematic reflection on life. ..... According to the tradition of China's philosophy, its function is not to increase positive knowledge (positive knowledge, I mean information about reality), but to improve the realm of the mind-to reach the realm beyond the secular world and obtain value higher than moral value. " Comparing with the tradition of western philosophy, we can see that philosophers at all times and all over the world have the same understanding of the essence of philosophy. But its characteristics tend to be the combination of epistemology and life theory, just as the characteristics of western philosophers tend to be the combination of epistemology and ontology. In Feng Youlan's definition, the wisdom pursued by philosophy is interpreted as the exploration of all knowledge. The so-called "all knowledge" should include knowledge that has become the object of various specific disciplines and the value of human society (experience world part), as well as all kinds of knowledge that is infinitely close but not exhausted by human beings and knowledge with higher value beyond human society (possibility world part). The former is the task of experts in various disciplines, while the latter is the wisdom pursued by philosophers. Therefore, we can say that the different characteristics of human knowledge and wisdom in modern society are that experts know more and more about less and less things, while philosophers know less and less about more and more things. Judging from the knowledge of the concrete experience world, the knowledge possessed by philosophers is insignificant, even superficial, but the pursuit of all knowledge by philosophers, including thinking about their own ideological activities of pursuing all knowledge, is of ultimate significance in thinking methodology, life values or life theory.