So, first we must study the word "culture," and only by understanding the fundamental meaning of the word culture can we really understand what traditional Chinese culture is. Culture in the broad sense refers to the sum of all the material and spiritual products created by human beings. Culture in a narrow sense refers to language, literature, art and all spiritual products including ideology. The word "culture" refers to both words, articles, and literacy, as well as rituals, music systems, and laws. The ancient word "wen" means texture and pattern. Later developed to include beautiful words, thoughts, behavior, treating people, dealing with the world outside the table are called "Wen". The word "civilization" is a continuation of "wen". The word "civilization" is a continuation of the word "wen." The word "hua" means "to educate" and "to teach". Zhou Li - Zha Shi: "If you want it to be transformed." Guoyu - Jin Yu (国语-晋语)："Winning or losing is like transforming." The Book of Rites - The Book of Music: "Harmony is the reason why all things are transformed." Mengzi - Gongsun Chou: "And the one who is more than a chemist does not make the earth pro-skin." Xunzi - The Righteous Name: "The state of being and the fact that there is no difference between them is called chemistry." Yi - Zhi Ru Chuan: "Know the way of change." Saying Wen: "Dagger, change." Xu Hao said: "Daggerization of ancient and modern words." It is used in the sense of change, alteration.
From the point of view of social governance, "culture" refers to educating the people with a system of rituals and music. In the Han Dynasty, Liu Xiang said in "Saying Yuan": "Where the rise of the martial arts, said not to serve, culture does not change, and then added to the punishment". The word "culture" here is the opposite of "martial arts", containing the meaning of indoctrination. Southern Qi Wang Rong in the "Qu Shui Poetry Preface" said: "set up the divine reason to landscape the common people, laying culture to soften the distance". The word "culture" is also used in the sense of civilization and indoctrination. The word "culture" in the West comes from the Latin word cultura, which originally means farming and cultivation of plants. Since the 15th century, it has been gradually used to refer to the cultivation of human character and ability as culture. The term "culture" is derived from both Chinese and Western sources, and is used today to refer to the spiritual phenomena of human society, or in general to the sum of all the material and immaterial products created by human beings. History, anthropology and sociology usually use the concept of culture in a broad sense.
In modern times, the first to give a clear definition of the term culture was the British anthropologist E.B. Taylor. He published his book Primitive Culture in 1871, in which he stated, "Culture or civilization, according to ethnography, is a complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, arts, ethics, morals, laws, customs, and any other faculties and habits acquired through learning by man as a member of a society."
British anthropologist B.K. Malinowski developed Taylor's definition of culture and in the 1930s wrote a book called "A Theory of Culture," which argued that "culture refers to that group of traditional artifacts, objects, techniques, ideas, habits, and values which embraces and regulates all the social sciences. We shall also see that social organization cannot be understood unless it is regarded as part of culture." He further divides culture into two main components, the material and the spiritual, the so-called "transformed environment and the changed human organism".
The study of culture from a structural-functional point of view is a tradition in British anthropology. According to the British anthropologist A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, culture is the way a certain social group or social class learns to think, feel, and move in contact with others. Culture is the process by which people acquire knowledge, skills, experiences, perceptions, beliefs and sentiments through their interactions with each other. He emphasized that culture is only apparent when the social structure functions and that culture cannot be observed if the social structural system is left alone. For example, the relationship between father and son, buyer and seller, and ruler and ruled can show a certain culture only when they interact. The French anthropologist C. Levi-Strauss defined culture in terms of norms and patterns of behavior. He proposed: "Culture is a set of behavioral patterns that are prevalent among a group of people at a certain period of time,...... and are easily distinguishable from the behavioral patterns of the rest of the population and show clear discontinuities". British anthropologist R. Firth believes that culture is society. What society is, culture is. In his 1951 book, Elements of Social Organization, he states that if society is considered to be a group of people with a particular way of life, then culture is the way of life. American cultural anthropologists A.L. Kroeber and K. Colakhorn analyzed and examined more than 100 definitions of culture in their 1952 book Culture: An Examination of a Conceptual Definition, and then they came up with a comprehensive definition of culture: "Culture exists in a variety of implicit and explicit modes, is learned and transmitted by means of symbols and constitutes the special achievements of a human groups' particular accomplishments, which include the various specific patterns of the objects they make, and that the basic elements of culture are traditional (derived through history and by choice) ideologies and values, of which values in particular are the most important." Kroeber and Colakhorn's definition of culture is accepted by many modern Western scholars.
In summary, we learn that there are several elements of culture, mainly including: 1) the spiritual element, i.e. spiritual culture. It mainly refers to philosophy and other specific sciences, religion, art, ethics and morality, and values, etc., of which especially values are the most important and are the core of spiritual culture. Spiritual culture is the most dynamic part of cultural elements and the driving force of human creative activities. Without spiritual culture, human beings cannot be distinguished from animals. Values are the criteria by which the members of a society evaluate behaviors and things and choose agreeable goals from among various possible ones. This criterion exists within people and is expressed through attitudes and behaviors. It determines what people appreciate, what they pursue, and what goals and ways of life they choose. At the same time values are also reflected in all the material and non-material products created by human beings. The types, uses and styles of products all reflect the values of the creators.
② Language and symbols. Both have the same nature of expression, in human interaction activities, both play a role in communication. Language and symbols are also a means of cultural accumulation and storage. Humans can only communicate with the help of language and symbols, and only communication and interaction can create culture. Only through language and symbols can all aspects of culture be reflected and taught. The ability to use language and symbols to engage in production and social activities and create a rich and colorful culture is a unique attribute of human beings.
③ Normative system. Social norms of behavior are the norms of people's behavior, there are conventions such as customs and so on, but also expressly provided for such as legal provisions, rules and regulations of group organizations. Various norms are interconnected, mutual penetration, complement each other, *** with the adjustment of people's various social relations. Social behavioral norms stipulate the direction, method and style of people's activities, and the object and method of using language and symbols. Norms are established or naturally formed by human beings to meet their needs, and they are the materialization of values. The normative system is epiphenomenal, and understanding the culture of a society or a group often begins with recognizing the norms of social behavior.
4 Social relations and social organization. Social relations are the basis for the emergence of each of the above elements of culture. The relations of production are the basis of all kinds of social relations. On the basis of the relations of production, a variety of social relations occur. These social relations are both part of culture and the basis for its creation. Social relations are defined by organizations. Social organizations are the entities that realize social relations. A society has to establish many social organizations to ensure the realization and operation of various social relations. Families, factories, companies, schools, churches, governments, armies, etc. are all entities that ensure the operation of various social relationships. Social organization includes goals, regulations, a certain number of members and corresponding material equipment, and includes both material and spiritual factors. Social relations and social organizations are closely interrelated and become an important part of culture. Culture is epochal, regional, national and class-oriented. Since the formation of nations, culture has often taken the form of a nation. A nation uses the same language, observes the same customs and habits, and develops the same mental qualities and character, which is the manifestation of national culture. In a society divided into classes, cultural differences between classes arise because of the different material living conditions and social status of the classes, and therefore their different values, beliefs, habits and lifestyles.
⑤ Material products. The natural environment that has been transformed by human beings and all the objects created by human beings, such as tools, utensils, costumes, buildings, dams, parks, etc., are the tangible part of culture. On them coalesce human ideas, needs and abilities. Each generation is born into a certain cultural environment and naturally inherits traditional culture from the previous generation. At the same time, each generation transforms the traditional culture according to its own experience and needs, injecting new contents into the traditional culture and discarding those parts that are outdated and out of place.
⑤ Culture is national and class-specific. General culture is spoken of in an abstract sense, and there are only specific cultures in the real society, such as ancient Greek culture, Roman culture, ancient Chinese culture, modern Chinese culture and so on.
So what exactly is traditional Chinese culture? That is, it is the pre-Qin period to Confucianism as the representative of the knowledge of people, society, and the pursuit of social behavioral norms,---- that is, "benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and faith." Confucian scholars emphasized "propriety", the pursuit of "propriety", that is, to establish a human society **** the same values, used to adjust and restrain people's social behavior, because "law" Because the "law" is only used to punish serious violations of the social norms of behavior of the specific provisions, and can not play a role in indoctrination. If you can abide by the social behavioral norms, with integrity and wisdom to choose the best way of behavior, you can make people do not break the law, do not break the law. Laws compel people to behave socially, while norms of behavior are merely a form of indoctrination and restraint. There are various kinds of social behavioral norms; rulers have social behavioral norms for rulers, commoners have social behavioral norms for commoners, and all regions and ethnic groups, even down to individual families, have their own social behavioral norms. Behavioral norms do not require that the social behavior of the nobles and the common people be exactly the same, but they do require that people must be good at choosing the best way to behave in order to achieve their goals. The best way to behave is to comply with certain social norms of behavior before it is the best way to behave. If you do not choose the best way to behave, the rulers will fall, the rich will lose their money, and the common people will break the law, thus failing to achieve their own goals. Therefore, choosing the best way to behave requires wisdom, and wisdom comes from learning, from values formed by environmental influences during adolescence, i.e., learning the social norms of behavior in the family, in the clan, and in the surrounding neighborhood at an early age, and then learning more social norms of behavior and the system of interpreting social axioms as one grows older in order to be able to choose the best way of behaving among the various social norms of behavior. This is the essence of traditional Chinese culture and true quality education.
Because of the "cultural gap", most modern people do not understand or pay attention to the social behavioral norms, or just think that the social behavioral norms are only about not spitting, not urinating and defecating, and being polite and ethical, and so on, which are abstract moral concepts that do not persuade the modern young people, but only make them Instead, it only makes them intensify their self-expression and individuality, not hesitating to sacrifice the interests of others for their own personal desires, and not hesitating to destroy certain social norms of behavior in order to satisfy their own desires. Because they do not know how to choose the best way to behave, modern people's behavior often leave behind consequences, thus plunging themselves into pain again. People, since they have to live and work, they have to do something; and each and every time people do something, they have to face the problem of choice. Choose what kind of behavior, is a lot of people feel confused and painful things, a lot of people can not decide to choose when, then haphazard behavior, the results make a mess of things, and regret afterwards.
The "cultural fault line" marks the collapse of the axiomatic explanatory system of human society, so that man - every living creature of the earth - is reduced to the worship of "gods" (mysterious phenomena in the uncharted realm) (religion), and the worship of "spirits" (mysterious phenomena in the uncharted realm). (the mysterious phenomenon in the unknown field) of worship (religious reasoning system), will only use the limited explanation first to close themselves up, create a "fortress" of the mind, and then use the limited knowledge and narrow worldview, life view of other people, other things, unknown things, to the whole world, to the huge and complex human society to carry out all kinds of Self-conjecture and interpretation. Faced with a series of life and death issues such as good luck, bad luck and misfortune in real life, people naturally form a variety of interpretive laws based on villages, regions, customs and specific cultural atmosphere. In the independent production unit of one family, in the limited school education, the common people "enjoy themselves" according to the natural society and natural economic model, and construct their own narrow self-centered system of reasoning and way of life on their own narrow self-centered base, as well as dreaming of a better future.
Since the Han Dynasty, from Tang poetry to Song lyrics, from Yuanqu music to Ming opera, and then to the hodgepodge of the Manchurian Qing Dynasty, it is the literature and art that has occupied the position of culture, so much so that when people mention culture, they will think of it as Tang poetry and Song lyrics, Yuanqu music and Ming opera, and when they mention culture, they will think of it as the culture of cigarettes, wine and tea, and the real culture has been forgotten by the people to be clean and dry. Isn't it sad?
We have been proud of our 5,000 years of civilization since we were young, and we have also been saddened by the backwardness of the present situation. Culture is a collection of civilization and ignorance. Our body, with five thousand years of civilized history of the essence, but also set the dregs of long-term stagnation. To save the essence and remove the dross to create a new civilization is the historical responsibility of our present generation, and it is also the inevitable law for the forward development of human beings. History has given us knowledge and power, but it has also given us pain and confusion. Either for various purposes or out of the limitations of their ability, many people have "solemnly" distorted history and misinterpreted civilization. As future generations, we have been fooled, and at the same time, we have unwittingly fooled others. The cost of all this is too heavy, and it is time to end it! Without the giants of culture, there is no strong nation; without the giant wheel of civilization, there is no prosperous country. Unfortunately, many generations have not been able to understand and apply all this well, causing great twists and turns in the development of history. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to inherit and carry forward the true traditional Chinese culture, and may we **** move forward hand in hand!
April 3, 2005
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wenhua gongneng
cultural function
cultural function
The role that culture plays on different levels of the individual (personal), the group (community) and society. Sometimes called cultural values. In the case of individuals, culture serves the function of shaping personalities and socialization; in the case of groups, culture serves the function of integrating goals, norms, opinions and behaviors; and in the case of society as a whole, culture serves the function of social integration and social orientation. The functions of the above 3 levels are interrelated.
Social integration functions include: ① Value integration. This is the most basic and important function of integration. Only when values are consistent can there be coordination of structure and behavior, and only then can there be ****same social life. People in any society may differ in their values, but through the inculcation of a unified culture, they are bound to form a broadly consistent conception of the basic aspects of social life. For example, the things and behaviors that are affirmed by a society's culture must be pursued by the vast majority of members of the society; the things and behaviors that are denied by the society's culture are despised by the majority of people. ② Norm Integration. Norms are created by value needs, and systematized and harmonized by cultural integration. The integration function makes the norms internalized into the individual's code of conduct, and then the behavior of the members of the society into a certain track and mode, in order to maintain a certain social order. ③ Structural integration. Society is a system of multiple structures. The more heterogeneous the society, the higher the degree of differentiation; the more complex the pluralistic structure, the more important the role of functional integration. A complex pluralistic society is composed of many parts and units that are separated from each other but linked to each other, and each part and unit has its own function, but the performance of this function must be linked to the function of other parts in order to realize the function of the whole society, that is, the so-called functional complementarity. As a result of the unifying culture, the social structure becomes a coordinated functional system.
The function of cultural integration is the basis of national unity and social order. The functional school of sociology and structural functionalism both emphasize the integrative function of culture. A society that lacks integration will be torn apart. A nation, because of *** enjoying a culture, whether or not they live together, or whether or not they live in the same social system, will have a sense of national identity and in the psychological and behavioral consistency of the characteristics. For example, the culture of the Chinese nation sustains hundreds of millions of Yanhuang children around the world.
Orientation function The integration function maintains social order, while the orientation function promotes social progress. Every society has its own guidance system, such as education system, scientific research system, decision-making system, planning system, management system and health care system. The functions of culture in social orientation are: ① Providing knowledge. Social orientation should be driven by new knowledge, which includes new theories, science, technology, etc. depending on cultural inventions and discoveries. ② To coordinate the management of social engineering. The planned promotion of social progress is a huge social system engineering, which includes the stages of decision-making, planning, and organization and implementation. Within the overall systems engineering, many subsystems are included. The coordination of the various stages and subsystems depends on cultural adaptation. The first is the adaptation of goals, so that all members of society recognize the overall goal and sub-stage goals of social orientation, and make individual and group goals consistent with the overall goal of social orientation. The second is the adaptation of institutions and systems. In order to achieve the goal of social orientation, it is necessary to establish effective institutions and systems, and to adjust and reform the old institutions and systems. Again, it is behavioral adaptation. It makes the members of the society harmonize in their behavior and determine **** the same social orientation goal. (iii) Consolidation of the results of social orientation. Culture is a gradually accumulated social heritage. The results achieved by every social reform and social progress depend on the consolidation of the new system. Culture plays a coordinating and integrating role in the process of building a new system as well as after its completion in order to maintain the order and stability of the new system.
Negative Functions Culture has not only positive functions, but also negative functions. According to American sociologist R.K. Merton, society is not always in a state of integration, and non-integration exists from time to time. Individuals or groups do not always obey social norms, and violations of norms occur from time to time. This state of non-integration and violation is not accidental, but is a manifestation of cultural functions. For example, the opportunity structure of a society is a cultural arrangement that enables some people to pursue their goals through legitimate means and others to pursue their goals through illegitimate means. The former is a manifestation of the positive integrative function of culture, while the latter is a manifestation of the negative non-integrative function. The positive function maintains the equilibrium of the social system; the negative function destroys that equilibrium.
The negative function of culture occurs in two situations: one is cultural lag and the other is negative culture. In the process of cultural change, the rate of change is not the same for all parts. Under normal circumstances, intangible culture lags behind the development of material culture, which results in the phenomenon of cultural lag. When this occurs, the lagging parts of culture function as a non-integrative negative function for the whole. Ideologies, social systems, etc. often become lagging parts. In addition, there are many subcultures within the cultural whole, some of which are negative, such as criminal gangs. The functions performed by these negative cultures are also counter-directional and non-integrative for the culture as a whole.
----Excerpted from the Encyclopedia of China
The Spread and Influence of Traditional Chinese Culture Abroad
(Australia) Overseas Chinese Network (2006-05-31)
After the Han and Tang dynasties, traditional Chinese culture, including Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, as well as writing, painting, architecture, sculpture, and so on, spread to Japan, such as the spreading of the Cheng-Zhu school of reasoning and the Lu-Wang school of psychology in Japan. The spread of Lu Wang Xinxue in Japan, the formation of Japan's Zhu Zi, Yang Ming; Tang Jianzhen East, Chinese Buddhist culture and sculpture and so on to Japan, a large number of Japanese envoys, such as Jibei Zhenbei, the monk Kukai, Abe Zhongmaleu and so on to China to study the Chinese culture. As a result, Japanese writing and architecture were y influenced by Chinese culture. The Cross Pavilion, which is now hard to find in China, is still well preserved in Japan. In South Korea, the greatest influence is the Chinese culture, especially Confucianism and the Ming and Qing dynasties after the idea of realism, if people do not know Li Xuexi, Cao Nanmei, Li Li Yugu, Hong Dairong, Ding Ruoyong, etc. is the Korean philosophers, only to look at their writings is difficult to judge the nationality of the author. And the ritual content of Chinese culture, in China has long been lost, in South Korea is still preserved quite intact, therefore, South Korea is called by the West is a living fossil of Confucianism country.
Chinese culture not only on Korea, Japan, Southeast Asia, South Asia, some countries such as the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam and other countries and regions have had a far-reaching impact, Zheng He seven to the West is to deepen this impact. The resulting formation of the world-recognized Chinese culture as the core of the East Asian cultural circle, especially in which the economic takeoff and rise of the four little dragons of Asia has attracted the attention of the world and thinking, focusing on the relationship between them and Chinese culture.
Traditional Chinese culture was also spread to some European countries during the Ming and Qing Dynasties through the Jesuits in the West and through the East Learning and West Progression. China's four great inventions (gunpowder, compass, printing and papermaking) played an important role in promoting the formation and development of Western capitalist society after they were successively introduced to the West. Traditional Chinese culture had the greatest impact on France, which became the center of Chinese cultural fever in Europe at that time. From the 17th century onwards, some Chinese Confucian classics such as The Analects of Confucius and The Great Learning were spread to other European countries through France. There were few French Enlightenment thinkers of the 18th century who were not influenced by Chinese culture. Such as Descartes, Rousseau, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Diderot, and Holbach, they held Chinese culture in such high esteem that we are now shocked. Voltaire, for one, enshrined a portrait of Confucius in his chapel and held him up as a model of human morality. German philosophers such as Leibniz, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel up to Feuerbach as well as the great writer Goethe have all studied Chinese philosophy and have been influenced by Chinese culture to varying degrees. Leibniz, for example, argued that it was the discovery of China that awakened Europeans from their religious confusion. This influence either directly or indirectly influenced the French Enlightenment and the German dialectical thought.
So what is the relationship between the influence of Chinese culture on the French Enlightenment of the 18th century and Western modernization? From the second half of the 20th century, Western academics have conducted a relatively comprehensive reflection on modern Western culture, in which they have gained such a *** knowledge that modernization, as a way of life and a way of thinking, began neither in the 16th century scientific revolution nor in the 17th century industrial revolution, but in the 18th century Enlightenment; because Enlightenment thought concentrated on the expression of the basic characteristics of modern culture, and thus, it was concluded that the Chinese cultural influence on the 18th century Enlightenment in France has a relationship with the modernization of the West. Because Enlightenment thought is the central expression of the basic characteristics of modern culture, two basic propositions and conclusions are drawn: the first is that Chinese culture had an important influence on European Enlightenment thought; the second is that "Enlightenment thought is a necessary condition in the process of modernization of Western societies". The second proposition is that "Enlightenment thought is a necessary condition in the modernization process of Western societies".
As China's national power grows stronger, and as China's international status improves, some countries around the world, including those in Asia and Europe, have given high recognition and importance to Chinese culture.
As we know, as one of the four little dragons in Asia, Korea has a high degree of modernization, but Korea's modernization is not a modernization based on the denial and abandonment of traditional culture, but a modernization based on the respect, inheritance and development of traditional culture. Those who have been to Korea are y touched by the patriotic spirit of Koreans and their pride in national culture. For example, Sungkyunkwan University, currently the most famous university in Korea, is still practicing Confucianism with benevolence, righteousness, propriety and wisdom as its motto. In February and August every year, Koreans still go to the Temple of Literature to worship Confucius in the traditional way, and there are also colleges that teach in full accordance with the traditional Confucian teaching methods, and the main courses taught are the Confucian classics, the Four Books and Five Classics. The traditional county schools and academies, which have almost disappeared in China, still have more than 300 in Korea. The world's first Confucius Institute was also inaugurated in the South Korean capital at the end of 2004. Korea has also widely publicized the spirit of Confucian culture to the whole society through movies, television and various media. It can be said that Korea is a successful example of building a nation and nurturing its people with Confucian culture, and has been called by many Western scholars as a "living fossil of a Confucian country" and a "typical Confucian country". Instead of abandoning and denying traditional culture, Korea has organically integrated traditional culture into modern society and modern life.
Singapore, on the other hand, has been promoting a "cultural regeneration" campaign centered on traditional Chinese Confucianism since the 1980s. In the Chinese New Year of 1982, Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew called on the Singaporean people to maintain and promote traditional Chinese Confucian morality and to make loyalty, filial piety, benevolence, love, propriety, righteousness, honesty and shame the core values of the Chinese nation. In October 1988, First Deputy Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong proposed to elevate the Confucian values of the East to the status of national consciousness and to make them a guide to action for every citizen. White Paper on ****same Values, which is imbued with the spirit of Confucian ethics. The book puts forward five major ****same values as: (1) country first, society first; (2) family as the root, society as the foundation; (3) caring and supportive, in the same boat ****help; (4) seeking common ground while reserving differences, consultative ****sense; (5) racial harmony, religious tolerance.
South Korea, Singapore and other countries and regions to pay attention to traditional culture tells us:
First, the reason why all these countries pay attention to Chinese traditional culture, because a part of the Confucian traditional culture of values, ethics has been deposited into their national moral norms and national psychology. For example, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew said in his National Day speech in 1978, "Perhaps my English is better than Chinese because I learned English at an early age; but even after a thousand generations, I will not become an Englishman. It is not the Western value system that I hold in my heart, but the Eastern value system."
Second. South Korea's experience tells us that modernization need not be achieved at the expense of traditional culture; traditional culture and modernization are not contradictory to each other, but can complement each other and go hand in hand.
Wang Jie / Article Source: Study Times