Beijing Daily Client | Author Liu Shengquan
In the new journey of realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, cultural self-confidence has been deeply rooted in people’s hearts, and the spread of Chinese culture to the outside world is unique. However, what the concept of "culture" refers to is still an original problem worthy of attention. Here, we will do some popular tracing and comparison in order to seek advice from local experts.
"Culture" is an ancient word in the Chinese system. At first, "Wen" and "Hua" were separated and belonged to two independent concepts.
The original meaning of "Wen" refers to the interlaced textures and patterns of various colors, "Wen is said because of the mixed materials", "Five colors are written without chaos" and "Wen, wrong painting, like crossing the text" all refer to this meaning. On this basis, "Wen" has a number of extended meanings: first, it is a variety of symbolic symbols including language and writing, and then it is embodied as a system of cultural relics and ancient books, rituals and music. Fuxi painted eight diagrams in the preface to Shangshu, and made a book contract. "It is because of the literary record that it is born." Confucius said in The Analects of Confucius Zi Han that "the king of Wen is gone, and the text is not here." Secondly, the meanings of colored painting, decoration and artificial cultivation are derived from the ethical theory, which is symmetrical with "quality" and "reality". Therefore, the Analects of Confucius Yong Ye said that "quality is better than literature, which is wild, and literature is better than history, which is gentle and gentle, and then a gentleman"; Thirdly, on the basis of the first two meanings, the meanings of beauty, goodness and virtue are derived, which is the so-called "two advances are reduced by courtesy, and progress is the text" in The Book of Rites and Yue Ji, and Zheng Xuan notes that "the text is still beautiful and good", and the so-called "literary life is applied to the four seas, only to the emperor" in Shangshu Dayu Mo.
The original meaning of "transformation" is change, generation and nature, such as "transformation into a bird, whose name is Peng", "men and women construct essence, and all things are transformed into life", "transformation cannot be replaced, and it can not be violated" and "it can praise the education of heaven and earth". To sum up, "transformation" refers to the change of the shape or nature of things, and at the same time it extends the meaning of teaching and doing good.
The combination of "Wen" and "Hua" was earlier seen in Yi Ben Gua Xiang Zhuan edited by Confucian scholars at the end of the Warring States Period: "Rigid and flexible are intertwined, and astronomy is also. Civilization stops, so does humanity. Observe astronomy in order to observe the changes of time; Look at the humanities and turn it into the world. " After the Western Han Dynasty, "Wen" and "Hua" began to be mentioned side by side, thus forming a complete word, such as "culture does not change, and then it is punished" and "culture is internal, martial arts are external". The "culture" here is either against the nature created in heaven or against the "simplicity" and "barbarism" without education.
Therefore, in the Chinese system, the original meaning of "culture" is "cultural education", which means cultivating people’s temperament and moral character, and belongs to the spiritual category. With the passage of time, "culture" has gradually become a multidimensional concept with rich connotation and broad extension, and has become the object of exploration, interpretation and contention by many disciplines.
For a long time, when people use the concept of "culture", its connotation and extension are very different, so culture usually has broad and narrow meanings.In a broad sense, culture argues that it is the emergence of culture that changes "animal man" into "social man", thus absorbing all the contents of human social and historical life into the definition of culture. In a narrow sense, culture usually refers to the culture as an ideology, excluding the part about material creation activities and their results in the historical life of human society. In fact, culture is regarded as an entity category that is different from politics and economy, and it is also called "small culture". In 1980s, cultural studies became a trend in domestic academic circles, and the definitions of cultural concepts were diversified. In a word, we believe that culture is all the achievements of human social activities different from natural phenomena, including all the material and intangible things created by human beings. In other words, there is no culture in nature. Since the emergence of human beings, everything that has been "cultivated" by people belongs to the cultural category.
In the west, the word culture is transformed from the Latin word "culture". The original meaning refers to the cultivation, processing and improvement of the land in the process of transforming the external nature to meet the needs of food and shelter. Later, the term escaped, and Cicero, a famous orator in ancient Rome, accurately expressed the escape of culture in his famous saying "wisdom culture is philosophy". The content of wisdom culture mainly refers to the process of transforming and perfecting people’s inner world and making people have ideal citizenship. As a result, political life and social life, as well as the cultivation of citizens’ qualities and abilities necessary to participate in these activities, have gradually been incorporated into cultural concepts, and their connotations have become richer. However, in the dark Middle Ages, the meaning of cultural concepts was suppressed by theological concepts, and theorists in the Enlightenment era in the 18th century gradually liberated cultural concepts from theological systems. Since the end of 18th century, the meaning and usage of the word "culture" in western languages have changed greatly. By the end of 19th century, culture began to mean "a whole way of life in material, knowledge and spirit".
On the basis of learning from others, kroeber and Kluckhohn, famous American cultural experts, gave a comprehensive definition of culture in "Culture: A Critical Review of a Concept and Definition": culture exists in various implicit and explicit modes, which are learned and spread by the use of symbols, and constitute the special achievements of human groups. These achievements include various specific styles of goods they make, and the basic element of culture is tradition (obtained through historical derivation and selection). This definition is widely accepted by modern western scholars.
(The author is a researcher at the School of International Journalism and Communication, Beijing Foreign Studies University)
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