"The Book of Songs, Daya, King Wen" has "although Zhou is an old state, its life is renewed", and this recognition was summarized by the mainland philosopher Feng Youlan as "the old state and the new life", which has become the most important mission of Chinese philosophy. And this mission is also constantly proven by Chinese history. As the only uninterrupted world civilization that has lasted for 5,000 years, China has shown its vitality again and again, thanks to the philosophical concept of "the old country has a new life".
Therefore, if you want to explore Chinese philosophy specifically, "the old state and the new life" is a topic that cannot be bypassed. Under such a proposition, we can see the overall law of China's historical development and understand the fundamental reasons why Chinese civilization has survived.
Zheng Kai, a professor and doctoral supervisor in the Department of Philosophy at Peking University, has authored a large number of related treatises on Chinese philosophy. And his "Lectures on the New Life of the Old State" contains a large collection of articles by the author with the core concept of "the new life of the old state". These articles do not belong to the author's academic research, but are the sparks of ideas presented in various forums and lectures, cultural interviews, and dialogues, so the content covers a wide range of topics. More importantly, these lectures are formed in the form of spoken language, which is very suitable for ordinary readers to read, and is very suitable for becoming a popular science book of Chinese philosophy, and it is also extremely friendly to our ordinary readers, and it is easy to get started with Chinese philosophy books.
For example, in his first lecture, "How the Old State Can Have a New Life" has the nature of an outline, which tells the complete context of the development of Chinese philosophy, and also compares the development of Chinese and Western civilizations, so that we can clearly understand the core concepts of Chinese philosophy, and also let readers shoulder the mission and ambition that Chinese philosophy should have.
The author begins with the well-known Axial Age. It was an era when the world's ideological civilization was widely blooming, and there were hundreds of schools of thought on the mainland, and ancient Greece had Socrates, Plato, and other philosophers active, India had the Upanishads, Buddha, and many important prophets appeared in the valley of the two rivers.
Although the ideas of ancient Greece are still the mainstream of Europe, they have a long Middle Ages, which is also a rupture of civilization, and the "Renaissance" acknowledges to the world that their ideas are the products of revival.
Not to mention the Indian civilization and the civilization of the two rivers, they have completely disappeared into the long river of history. Today's India, the current two river basins, is no longer a continuation of the ideas of the past civilization.
Why does Chinese civilization have tenacious vitality? We must find the answer from Chinese philosophical thought. There is harmony and tolerance in Chinese philosophy, and this is an important reason why the old state has been able to repeatedly have new lives.
Chinese culture is pluralistic, and it is possible to develop all other external factors into a part of its own system on the original basis. The clearest example of this is Buddhism. As a religion that arose in India, it has now been sinicized. It can even be said that without the sinicization of Buddhism, Buddhism could no longer be called a world religion, and it has also been interrupted in India.
In its nearly 300-year history, China has once again faced the test of civilization. But Chinese philosophy has once again pulled Chinese civilization back from the brink of danger. Today's China is still continuing the mission of "the old state and the new life", absorbing other foreign ideas and internalizing them as part of our development, adhering to the concept of China as the core, and exploring its own development path. This is the core path of Chinese philosophy of "old state and new life".
In this book, the author has a large number of other articles, and is committed to explaining the idea of "the old state and the new life" more clearly and clearly through the discussion of Chinese culture, through the specific philosophical system of China, through the development spirit of the Chinese times, etc., so that we can understand the author's insightful thinking in simple terms, and on this basis, establish a concept of thinking about the integrity of Chinese philosophy. #History##Chinese Philosophy##Philosophy#