Ancient Greek philosophy is mainly monism, and China's traditional philosophy is also monism. Why ...

The social ideology in the pre-Qin period constituted the basic characteristics of the feudal society in China. Once this style is formed, it is difficult to change. After the formation of the basic features of China's traditional philosophy, it became the "paradigm" of China's philosophy for more than two thousand years. Pre-Qin philosophy is the spiritual home of our Chinese nation, just as the whole western philosophy came from ancient Greece. "The mention of the name Greece will naturally arouse a feeling of home in the hearts of educated Europeans, especially in the hearts of us Germans" (Hegel). Different nationalities have different ways of thinking and development, so there must be different development processes. China's traditional culture is not far from the development of human civilization. Generally speaking, the development of China's traditional culture is also developing in a more civilized and progressive direction, but it is different from the west in the way and speed of development, and there are many twists and turns or even retrogression in the process of progress. Therefore, everything is a problem in the process of development. So, how do we know our spiritual home?

Due to the fierce conflict between Chinese and western cultures in modern times, many scholars have repeatedly compared Chinese and western cultures and drawn many different conclusions. In fact, when we compare the occurrence and development of the two cultural systems completely and objectively, especially when we compare their origins together, there will be many surprising discoveries. Of course, many conclusions are unpleasant, but as contemporary China people, only by first acknowledging those things that have become facts in the history of human cultural development can we really put down the burden of history, know this and know that, and go into battle lightly; With a broad mind like the sea of the Chinese nation, we are all inclusive, full of rivers, learn from each other's strengths, lead the rise of China with the first rise of spiritual culture, and realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation!

From the basic characteristics, China traditional culture and western culture are two fundamentally different cultural systems.

The pre-Qin era is in the process of the transition of human society from barbarism to civilization. In this process, the problem of survival has not been completely solved. The survival problem is caused by natural reasons such as backward productive forces and famine, but it is mainly caused by human factors such as the continuous war in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. At that time, the living environment of the Chinese nation was extremely bad, and the people's lives were extremely miserable. Suffering calls on the wise to solve the problem of survival. Therefore, hundred schools of thought's theoretical mission in the pre-Qin period was to create a calm and stable human and social environment, so as to conform to people's general psychology in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. In hundred schools of thought's works in the pre-Qin period, finding the truth was not the highest goal. They can't see the prospect of world change, the greatness and sublimity of the world, so they can't see the prospect of "people" and the greatness and sublimity of "people".

Due to the differences between human nature and social environment (due to space reasons, this paper will not specifically discuss the comparison between China's pre-Qin era and ancient Greece's human nature and social environment, but I will discuss it in a later article), the ancient Greeks regarded the understanding of the origin of the universe (that is, the integration of all things or the world) and the search for the "starting base" as the most intelligent thing. "Philosophy" in ancient Greece means "love wisdom". The purpose of studying philosophy is to pursue truth. Philosophers in ancient Greece are all looking for the "origin" of everything and seeking an understanding of the world origin, that is, ontology-world origin theory or ontology. The original meaning of primitive is "beginning", also called "original". Aristotle said that in the eyes of early Greek philosophers, "everything is made up of one thing, which first comes from it and finally becomes it." That is the essence of all things, the source of all things. " (Selected Readings of the Original Works of Western Philosophy, Volume I, page 15, Commercial Press, 1982). It is not unreasonable for philosophy to start from ontology and category, which reflects the order of human cognition: starting from the external world-object, then returning to people themselves, studying the subject, and then exploring the unity of subject and object.

China's pre-Qin philosophy and ancient Greek philosophy have many similarities, mainly reflected in:

The category of ancient ontological philosophy has the characteristics of directness, abstraction and fuzziness. It reflects the way of thinking of the ancients: intuition, metaphor and speculation, which shows that cognition begins with perceptual intuition. The above-mentioned way of thinking determines the intuition of people's cognitive methods and the superficiality of their cognitive level at that time, and also determines the directness, abstraction and fuzziness of categories as cognitive achievements.

The so-called directness means directly establishing categories from perceptual intuition, without links, that is, without intermediaries. Even some categories still stay on specific things, using perceptual knowledge completely, such as water, fire, gas and so on. Strictly speaking, even numbers and atoms are not philosophical categories.

Abstraction means that the content of a category is empty and sparse, and it only touches on one aspect or attribute of the object, and more often it is stipulated from the negative aspects. For example, existence does not exist, change is not constant, one is not too much, and so on. In short, "multi-regulation integration" and "diversity unification" cannot be realized. Of course, as far as the development of ancient category history is concerned, it itself is from abstract to concrete, but compared with modern category, it is still in the abstract stage as a whole.

Because of directness and abstractness, it also determines the fuzziness of categories in this period-the boundaries of categories are vague. In particular, there is no clear boundary between subject and object, thinking and existence. In early philosophy, parmenides's "existence", Heraclitus's "logos" and Anaxagoras's "slave" all have the flavor of mind and matter, so Hegel said: "The reason why Greek philosophy is simple is that the opposition between thinking and existence has not been noticed, and this opposition is not the object it examines." In Greek philosophy, there is an unconscious assumption, that is, "what is thought also exists and exists as something recognized by thought;" So suppose that thinking and existence are inseparable. " (Lecture Notes on the History of Philosophy, Volume I, page 106). During this period, the definition of category is still uncertain, the boundaries are vague, and there is some confusion between entity and existence.

These characteristics of the category of ancient philosophy show that the history of thought is a process from abstract to concrete. Without the immediacy, abstraction and fuzziness in the early stage, there would be no indirectness, concreteness and certainty in later philosophy.

Judging from the development of the history of western philosophy, the category has just risen from "one and many" to "general" and "individual", while China's ancient philosophy still stays in the previous stage-the "childhood" stage of the category.

The general characteristics of ancient Greek philosophy are strikingly similar to China's pre-Qin ontological philosophy, so they are actually at the same level of thinking. The openness, diversity and clarity of ancient Greek philosophy are lacking in China's traditional philosophy.

As the originator of western philosophy, ancient Greek philosophers showed a unique style different from eastern philosophy from the beginning. Hegel once summed it up like this: "The power of the oriental scale-free entity only reached the stage of limited scale after passing through the Greek spirit. The Greek spirit is scale, clarity and goal. It is to limit all kinds of substances, that is, to turn immeasurable infinite brilliance into stipulation and individuality. " (Hegel: Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. 1, pp. 16 1, Commercial Press, 198 1 version). Indeed, ancient Greek philosophy created the characteristics of certainty and individuality in western philosophy. From the beginning, it tried to give the world a clear logical stipulation with concepts and categories, thus getting rid of the mystery and ambiguity of image thinking in primitive religion. It emphasizes scale, boundary, difference and certainty. As Hegel said, category is composed of point, line, surface and body, which creates a kingdom of category and makes thinking more concrete. From Pythagoras to Aristotle to Euclid, Archimedes and Ptolemy, the dominant tradition of formal thinking based on identity was established, which had a far-reaching impact on western philosophy and scientific thinking mode in the future.

The personality characteristics of Greek philosophy are also quite prominent. Personality is manifested in the diversity of world origin and the reproducibility of individual things. The same is true of philosophy, the most prominent of which are empedocles's "Four Roots", Anaxagoras's "Seeds", democritus's "Atoms" and Aristotle's "First Entity". This principle of sexuality has been further developed in modern philosophical systems, such as Bacon, Hobbes, Leibniz and Gassendi, and has become the philosophical basis of modern democratic social contract.

The root of China's lack of vitality in pre-Qin philosophy lies in the hybridity of its functional structure, and philosophy is the same as religion and politics. There is an unbreakable elastic structure in China's traditional philosophy, and philosophy has lost its scientific nature, and lost the premise and conditions for guiding all other sciences.

The so-called elastic structure refers to the existence of a vague, loose, mysterious and uncertain philosophical category in the philosophical system, which can digest the theoretical views of other factions opposed to it and integrate opposition with itself. The elastic structure of China's traditional philosophy is manifested in two aspects: first, it refers to the pure philosophy itself, which is a mixed side of plasticity and pluralism before the concept rises to the category; Second, it refers to the complementary structure of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism in China's traditional philosophy.

The elastic structure of any philosophy is based on the fuzziness of its concept, which is easy to be integrated with other philosophies at the same level of thinking, thus making a nation's thinking form an ultra-stable structure, such as "those who have joined the WTO" believe in Confucianism, "those who have a certain level of education" believe in Taoism and Buddhism.

China's pre-Qin philosophy is a circular structure with a closed starting point and ending point, and there is no obvious spiral structure in the history of western philosophy. "All the history of philosophy has thus become a battlefield, and the bones of the dead are everywhere. This is a kingdom of death, full not only of physically dead individuals, but also of overthrown and spiritually dead systems, in which each kills the other and buries the other. This is not "follow me". According to the meaning here, it must mean' follow yourself!' In other words, stick to your beliefs and don't change your opinion. Why should we adopt other people's opinions? "(Lecture Notes on the History of Hegel's Philosophy, Volume I, page 22. Sanlian Bookstore 1957 Edition). The energy in the philosophical system is balanced and lacks the potential energy of energy transfer, thus losing the direction of academic progress. "In individual countries, it does exist that its culture, art and science, in short, its whole intellectual activity is stagnant; For example, China people may be like this. They reached the same level in all aspects two thousand years ago. "(-Hegel's Lecture Notes on the History of Philosophy, vol./kloc-0, pp. 8-9. Sanlian Bookstore 1957 Edition). China's traditional philosophy is a comprehensive steady-state control system, in which each individual is mechanically fixed in the social, political and ideological structure. "Orientals see unity and ignore differences, while westerners see differences and forget unity; The former pushed his equal attitude towards eternal consistency to the paralysis of idiots, while the latter extended his feeling of difference and diversity to the fanaticism of infinite fantasy (Selected Works of Feuerbach, Volume 45). The Commercial Press 1984 Edition).

It can be seen that China's pre-Qin philosophy belongs to the plane static thinking structure diagram, and the rise of thinking level is relative; Ancient Greek philosophy is a pyramid-shaped three-dimensional dynamic thinking structure, and the rise of thinking level is absolute.

The overall progress of society is how to give full play to individual strength through the satisfaction of individual desires, so as to improve the overall benefits of society. In the pre-Qin era, the power to enable people to develop themselves was suppressed. The power of "people" cannot be exerted. For everyone in reality, survival is always the first, and the philosophy of survival is only the experience of survival for them. People in the whole society, regardless of their experience, live in various philosophies of experience, such as food, clothing, housing and transportation, birth, illness and death, without exception. If everyone wants to survive well, they must acquire certain survival skills-experience. Experience is like "water" and "Tianshui". Life in the world, such as walking in the water, walking in the depths, often can not see the direction of progress, in a dilemma.

Western culture attaches importance to the role of individuals in social development, and the desire for personal development has been relatively well satisfied. People's inner world is full of motivation to move forward. Under the sunshine of philosophy independent of politics and religion, people can freely pursue the truth. The light of wisdom shines on everyone like "fire" and gives "people" infinite power.

To sum up, China's pre-Qin philosophy can be clearly seen from the comparison with western philosophy:

A comparison between China's pre-Qin philosophy and ancient Greek philosophy

Characteristics of China's pre-Qin philosophy and ancient Greek philosophy

The main goal of philosophy is to solve the problem of survival and pursue truth (love wisdom)

Empirical wisdom

The trinity of philosophy, religion and politics, independent of religion and politics, is a "scientific science"

Circular structure spiral structure

Plane structure diagram pyramid-shaped three-dimensional structure diagram

Static and dynamic

Relativity and absoluteness of the rise of thinking level (in pursuit of the ultimate truth)

Attach importance to the whole (the integration of individual and whole) and emphasize the role of individual.

Form of "water" and form of "fire"