Seven Laws of Culture Comparison
1. Introduction
The full title of this essay is “Seven Laws Governing the Patterns of Development of Eastern and Western Cultures.” It is a remarkable demonstration of how an educated Chine mind may engage in civilizational comparisons. It is reproduced here with the kind permission of Gu Zhengkun, who is Professor in the English Department at Peking University.
热门行业2. Why a Large-Scale Vision of Cultures?
Viewed from a macroscopic perspective, human cultures are monistic; from a microcosmic perspective, however, the multiplicity of human cultures suggests pluralism. Today, when human cultures are developed to a very high degree, overemphasizing their monistic elements will result in a cultural nihilism that tends to repress the multiple potentialities of human cultural development. Overemphasizing cultural pluralism, on the other hand, incurs a danger of giving ri to cultural chauvinism.
This view of cultures in general also holds true for the relationship between Western and Eastern cultures. Briefly speaking, I think there are ven laws governing the patterns of Western and Eastern cultures. The following is a brief introduction to the ven laws.
3. Seven Laws
3.1 The Law of Cultural Commonality
老人拉肚子怎么办Cultures have a common root in human desires. The fact that all cultures are created by human beings justifies the belief that cultures on earth must be of one common nature, that is, the nature of mankind. All cultures are born of an interaction between the objective world and three innate human desires: the desire for food, for x and for power. Moreover, human beings on earth have to live and develop in a pattern fashioned by the conditions that the earth has to offer.
The root (the common nature), however, can be also understood as a unity of two roots: the yin root (spiritual) stemming from the three desires and the yang root (substantial) ste
mming from the objective world. Cultures are flowers bad on this graft. That is why, on many occasions, one finds that the root of Western culture is in a way that of Eastern culture, and vice versa. And logically and naturally, one can e in certain historical phas, the spirit of Western culture somehow substantialized in some form of Eastern culture and vice versa.
3.2 The Law of Cultural Interstructuring
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酒水牌Two cultures are like two persons of different manners and values; once they discover their opposite, they intentionally or unconsciously try to influence it. Each side attempts to reform, fashion or regulate the other side. They are doing so becau they both firmly believe they are doing the right thing; becau they sincerely believe they are saving their opponents. For instance, Christianity in the West and Buddhism in the East have been doing things this way sincerely for thousands of years, as have other so-called doctrines or ideas clothed in -isms. For the past three hundred years, Eastern cultures and Western cultures have been yoked in this way.
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It is in the process of cultural interstructuring that both Eastern and Western cultures find their own unique nature, values and potentialities, as well as their particular position and significance in the great yin-yang cycle of Test-East cultures.
One of the issues of vital importance, at least for the Chine scholar, is to consider to what extent the process of interstructuring between Western and Eastern cultures can be properly developed, since the process has its limitations. The process of interstructuring usually comes to a standstill at a point where a certain degree of compromi is reached, for West-East cultures are of oppod polarity as far as their orientation towards development is concerned.
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3.3 The Law of Cultural Complementarity
The totality and perfection of global cultures is found in the complementarity of Eastern and Western cultures. It naturally follows that Eastern cultures or Western cultures, when judged alone, are imperfect becau the environments, the climate, the race, the languages, the time, the resources available and many other factors are quite different. F
ortunately, Eastern and Western cultures are so organically formed into a whole that where the Eastern culture prents as a disadvantage it is often balanced by an advantage in the Western culture, or, where the Western culture is weak, the Eastern culture is often proved to be strong. When a culture is ill, its remedy should be found in another culture. Or in other words, Western culture is a doctor for Eastern culture, and vice versa. When we refu a culture, we are refusing to be cured of our illness.
One misunderstanding that some scholars often commit is to believe that cultural advantages can be simply moved from one culture into the other, In my opinion, advantages are of a different nature and two categories; spiritual and physical. Scientific and technological advantages, for instance, are of the physical sort, while literary and artistic advantages, the spiritual sort. Physical advantages can be easily borrowed or imitated while spiritual advantages are often difficult (sometimes simply impossible) to move from one culture into another. Computer software can be imported from abroad and ud only if the physical conditions (such as computers ) and related operational commands are provided. But literary or cultural values are different, in that they call for rel
绿色痰是什么原因ated psychological conditions such as similar cultural background and aesthetic taste (habit) on the part of the ur, The physical is movable while the psychological usually is not. To cultivate a shared aesthetic tendency we must sharpen our nsibility to particular values, of a particular culture, to the plurality and complementarity of both Eastern and Western cultures.
