Chinese traditional culture and rationalization of the ancient language

Historically speaking, the earliest person to have a unique understanding of "harmony" and to discuss the concept of "harmony" was Shi Bo, who lived at the end of the Western Zhou Dynasty (the exact date of his birth and death is not known, but he probably lived during the period of King Yu of the Zhou Dynasty). So far, the only record of Shi Bo that we can see is the text of "Guoyu - Zheng Yu - Shi Bo Discusses the Rise and Fall of Duke Huan" (国语-郑语-史伯为桓公論兴衰). In addition, "Guoyu-Zhou yu Shang-Xi Zhou Sanchuan are all shaken by Bo Yangfu on the imminent death of the Zhou" is usually regarded as Shi Bo's remarks, but in fact Bo Yangfu and Shi Bo are not the same person, and Bo Yangfu may have lived slightly earlier than Shi Bo.

In "Guoyu - Zheng Yu - Shi Bo Discusses the Rise and Fall of Duke Huan" (国语-郑语-史伯为桓公論兴衰), Shi Bo's discussion of "harmony" mainly involves the words "and", "harmony", "and birth", and "and birth", and "and birth", and "and birth". The discussion on "harmony" by Shi Bo mainly involves such aspects as "harmony", "harmony", "harmony", etc., thus forming a systematic and rich theory on "harmony", or it can be called the philosophy of "harmony". This philosophical system of "harmony" is mainly composed of the following three aspects.

First, "and" is the ontology of this philosophical system. The original meaning of "harmony" is the mutual response of sounds. Shuowen: "Harmony is also correspondence." Around this central meaning is derived the meaning of harmony among people and the resolution of conflicts, for example, "Three said that the rites and ceremonies, in order to harmonize the state" ("Zhou Li - Heavenly Officials"). From this, we can see that in traditional Chinese thought, "harmony" was originally a very simple and commonly used concept. For the first time, Shi Bo elevated the meaning of "harmony" to a philosophical level, defining "harmony" as "leveling others with others". The so-called "other" means the elements with differences; the so-called "leveling" means harmonizing and balancing. Therefore, "harmony" means to aggregate all kinds of differences and even contradictory and opposing things and make them harmonize and unify. It can be said that "and" is the thing, the thing is "and", the reality of the existence of things is the balance between different things as the basic model.

Secondly, unlike Western philosophy, traditional Chinese thought is centered on "human affairs," and Spurgeon's talk of "harmony" is not far from this. The specific development of "harmony" at the level of social governance is "harmony", and Spurgeon argues for and against the importance of this concept. On the negative side, Shi Bo pointed out that "the king now abandons high-mindedness and obviousness and favors slanderous thoughts and obscurity; he is evil and rich in horns and rhinoceroses, but close to stubborn children and poor and stubborn people", and the result is "almost certain to be harmful". On the positive side, Shi Bo took Shang Qi's harmony with the five religions as a kind of evidence of his great merits in the world, "Shang Qi can harmonize with the five religions to protect the people". The so-called "five religions", i.e., father's righteousness, mother's kindness, brother's friendship, brother's respect, and son's filial piety, and the harmonization of the five religions would enable the people to live in peace and security. This shows that "harmony" plays an extremely important role in the real political society. Specifically, it is the "harmony" of the world that should be realized by the "harmony" of ethics and morality.

Finally, if "harmony" is to play its role in the real world, there must be an effective mechanism. Spurgeon reveals the dialectic of the generation and development of things from the height of ontology. He pointed out that, "and the actual creature, the same is not succeeded" "if the same to benefit the same, all is abandoned". Only different things together, and interact with each other, in order to continuously produce new things; if only the simple accumulation of homogeneous things, it is still the original thing. Shibe also further example, "so the first king of the earth and gold, wood, water, fire mixed, in order to become a hundred things. Is to and five flavors to adjust the mouth, just four branches to defend the body, and six rhythms to the ear, the seven body to serve the heart, leveling the eight soles to adults, build nine discipline to establish pure virtue, and ten to train the body. The product of a thousand products, with ten thousand parties, counting a hundred million things, material trillion things, the collection of the scriptures into the system, the line of business pole. It can be said that "and" constitutes the "birth" of the power mechanism.