The key to building a discipline system with both Chinese characteristics and universal significance lies in strengthening cultural self-confidence

Creating a disciplinary system with Chinese characteristics and universal significance is the historical mission entrusted by the times to philosophical and social science workers.

"Chinese characteristics" and "universal significance" reflect that philosophy and social sciences have the dual personalities of "science" and "humanities"

Philosophy and social sciences take human society as the object of study. Due to historical and geographical reasons, there are obvious cultural differences between different countries and different ethnic groups, and the coexistence of diverse cultures constitutes a colorful human society. The development of philosophy and social sciences in different countries will inevitably be branded with the culture of the local region and form their own characteristics. However, the reason why philosophy and social sciences are called "science" is because their basic theories and methods must be scientific, have universal significance, and should be applicable to different countries. Here, the "universal meaning" represents the "scientific nature" of the social sciences, and the national or regional characteristics reflect the inherent "humanities" of the discipline.

It can be seen that in general, for the humanities, we often emphasize its "regional characteristics" side. For example, literature courses are divided into "Chinese literature" and "foreign literature"; history majors are divided into "Chinese history", "world history", "European history", etc.; philosophy is also divided into "Chinese philosophy" and "Western philosophy"; religion, art and other disciplines have distinct regional characteristics. Relatively speaking, we usually pay more attention to the "universal meaning" side of the various disciplines of the social sciences. Disciplines such as economics, law, sociology and so on are rarely given country or regional names, but highlight their universality as theories and methods.

"Both Chinese characteristics and universal significance" is the proper meaning of the construction of the discipline system of philosophy and social sciences in the mainland, so why does it need to be "built"? Because in the practice of teaching and research in reality, we often consciously or unconsciously oppose "scientificity" and "humanism", either one or the other, taking care of one or the other. Here, sociology has a certain representativeness. In his later years, Mr. Fei Xiaotong published an article entitled "On Expanding the Traditional Boundaries of Sociology", pointing out that "sociology is a discipline with the dual personalities of 'science' and 'humanities'". This proposition has aroused widespread and lasting attention, some people have summarized it as "Fei Xiaotong Problem" and "Fei Xiaotong Paradox", indicating that "scientific" and "humanistic" seem to be incompatible and incompatible; in recent years, the methodological debate in the sociological community around qualitative methods and quantitative methods, as well as the fierce discussion on topics such as "whether localization is pseudo-problem", also reflects the skepticism and contradiction of some scholars on whether "Chinese characteristics" can have the "universal significance" of the world.

The opposition between "Chinese characteristics" and "universal significance" reflects the deep cultural inferiority

"Scientific" and "humanistic" correspond to "universal significance" and "regional characteristics". Still taking sociology as an example, examining the history of discipline development, we can see that sociology is in continuous evolution, whether it is theory, method, or research focus, and different styles and schools have formed in Europe and the United States in different periods, which actually show obvious regional characteristics. We can't help but ask: Why does Western sociology not emphasize regional characteristics? Because sociology and even the entire social science discipline group were born in the West, we naturally regard it as "authentic", the "characteristics" of the West have become our "standards", and "Chinese characteristics" are different and "not in the flow". There is a vague hint of a Western-centrist bias.

We know that with the gradual maturity of the discipline system of natural science in modern times, the worldview, methodology and epistemology of the founding period of natural science have had a great impact on the formation of the social science system. Comte, the Frenchman who first proposed the concept of sociological disciplines in the 19th century, regarded sociology as like the natural sciences, the highest and last discipline in the "scientific sequence" in the history of human cognition. He sorted science in order of mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and sociology. In the early days, it was even simply called "social physics". The British scholar Joseph Needham put forward the century question of "why the modern scientific and technological revolution and the industrial revolution did not occur in China", which is the famous "Needham problem". The answer to this conundrum boils down to institutions, cultures, and ways of thinking. Modern science was born in the soil of Western culture, so Western culture can be called "scientific culture"; while traditional Chinese culture failed to produce natural science, and even hindered the development of science, it belongs to "non-scientific culture". "Science" means right and means advanced. The implicit proposition of the "Needham Problem" is that Western culture is superior to Chinese culture!

From this logic, it is easy to understand that we have subconsciously equated the "scientific nature" and "humanity" of Western social sciences, and agree that their "regional characteristics" must have "universal significance", so there is no need to emphasize them separately. Being ashamed to talk about "Chinese characteristics" and consciously or unconsciously denying "dual personality" shows to a certain extent that there is a lingering cultural inferiority complex in our hearts.

The key to creating a discipline system with both "Chinese characteristics" and "universal significance" lies in strengthening the self-confidence of Chinese culture

It is necessary to look at the relationship between "science" and "humanities" from a broader perspective. The broad concept of culture encompasses all human creations, and science is certainly no exception. In the thousands of years of human civilization history, the birth of science has only happened in recent centuries. Science sprouted from the human soil and developed rapidly, gradually becoming an independent element separated from the cultural system. Once the "scientific culture" is formed, the rest of the culture other than science is called the "humanistic culture". "Science" highlights the instrumental rationality of human beings to understand the world and transform the world; "humanity" always pursues the purpose and meaning of survival and development, representing the value rationality of human beings. Science "explores what is" and "humanities" answers "why." "Science" was born in the "humanities", and "science" serves the "humanities", and the two complement each other, constituting the perfect unity of the "universal meaning" and "regional (cultural) characteristics" of philosophy and social sciences.

The essence of scientific culture is the scientific spirit, and the core connotation of the scientific spirit can be summarized by the four words of "seeking truth and being pragmatic". Examining history, we can see that traditional Chinese culture is full of pragmatic spirit, and it is also obsessed with the pursuit of truth, goodness and beauty, and is not the opposite of the spirit of science. It must be admitted that the birth of modern natural science in the form of "experiment + mathematics" benefits from the rigorous formal logic and analytical way of thinking contained in Western culture. Although the traditional Chinese culture, which focuses on dialectical logic and the overall related thinking and cognition mode, has not been able to give birth to modern natural science, with the development of "classical science" entering the era of "complexity science", this holistic related thinking may better play its advantages. We need to abandon the narrow view of science and correctly understand the scientific and advanced nature of the core of traditional Chinese cultural thought.

The key to creating a philosophical and social science discipline system with both Chinese characteristics and universal significance lies in having full confidence in one's own culture. The more national, the more worldly. Chinese culture has been alive for thousands of years and still maintains its vitality, which lies in its openness and inclusiveness, continuously absorbing and integrating excellent foreign cultures on the basis of maintaining the essence of cultural traditions, and condensing advanced cultures that keep pace with the times. The task of philosophical and social science workers is to extract scientific components from Chinese culture, summarize the understanding of regularity from the process of modernization of the Chinese nation, elevate the "local knowledge" of studying Chinese issues to "universal knowledge", make Chinese contributions to the genealogy of human knowledge, and engrave Chinese imprints on the development system of world philosophy and social science.

(The author is a second-level researcher of Shaanxi Academy of Social Sciences and a chair professor of Northwest A & F University)

Editor: Liu Xing