EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the “Introduction” to the author’s book on philosophy and social theories published in 2013. The book is part of the results of the author’s decades-long exploration in the realm of ideology and is rich in ideas both old and new at the same time – new expositions in modern terminology of traditional Chinese thought as applied to social issues and ideologies of the world today. Any comment and criticism and any offer to help with the translation of the whole book into English will be welcome and appreciated. For a list of contents, see:

Where is the Mankind Heading for: Contests and realignments between ideologies in the new century: List of content

THE TEXT

      With the breakout of the general crisis of the Western capitalist globalized system, a fear of the end of the planet is being spread, wittingly or unwittingly, all over the world, as if human history is really approaching its “end”. Meanwhile, more and more people are turning their eyes once again to the East with the hope of finding inspiration and wisdom from traditional Chinese thought for an effective prescription that will help cure the contemporary human malady. This little piece of work just represents one stream in the above trend of thought.

      This book will cover both metaphysical and physical levels: Theoretical discussions with a deep and persistant concern about current social issues make up its substance while the unfolding of a new ontological vision constitutes the metaphysical background, with the latter commanding and penetrating the whole of theoretical discourse and the two levels being mutually complementary and inseparable. As far as the long process of ideological exploration on the part of the author is concerned, it has been one of repeated shuttling and gradual linkup between the two levels based on mutually consistent new visions. But as a written record of the results of exploration, it has to begin with the all-embracing metaphysical.

      It has been thousands of years since humans began to think about the essential nature of existence and about social issues, resulting in a rich accumulation of valuable thoughts. Of all these results, the most representative and influential to human history are the following two thought systems: One represented by the Chinese civilization, which has been rooted in the East Asian landmass and the other by Euro-American tradition, which started around the Mediterranean area. With respective strengths and weaknesses, the two cultures are remarkably different and even contradictory in many fundamental aspects on both metaphysical and physical levels of thought. Therefore, this book will be centered round the contrast between the Chinese and the Western systems of thought. Although neither is monolithic but divided in each of them between the mainstream and side streams and there is also overlapping and interpenetration between the two major thought systems, they will be referred to generally as Eastern/Chinese vs. Western/Euro-American for the sake of conciseness.

      In contemperary times, when comparing and evaluating the two systems, many people would say without a second thought that the highest achievement of human wisdom is of course represented by Western civilization as evidenced in its highly developed sicence and technology. Though there is no denying that high-tech has made possible some conveniences and enjoyments in human material life, this, however, is not the whole of culture, nor the only criterion, still less the most fundamental one, for accessing the degree of happiness of human life. Anybody who would not refuse to face up to reality and is not prejudiced would see that, everywhere in this West-dominated world, people are suffering from poverty, hunger, and all kinds of human-induced disasters and threats of danger, from endless strain and stress, physical and mental fatigue, worries about lack of safety and security, and a deep sense of emptiness, and that the world under big capital hegemony is confronted with a general crisis involving the global ecosystem, macro human relations and people’s spiritual world. However piously people are placing hopes on the ever-updating high-tech achievements, wishing that they can rescue the world from an economic and ecological breakdown, so far no one can see the way ahead that can lead people out of the beaten track onto a bright future. One cannot help asking: Has the ever-advancing scientific knowledge been bringing people closer to, or rather further away from, a truthful vision in their understanding of the cosmos, the human society and human life? Does such knowledge really stand for the highest form of human wisdom?

      To answer the above question, it is necessary first of all to make clear if knowledge and wisdom refer to the very same thing, and if not, how they should be distinguished and how they are related to each other. On the philosophical level, it might be said that “knowledge” refers to what humans know about existence in its parts in the forms of nature, human society and human life, while the word “wisdom”, if not used for a rhetorical purpose, should only stand for an overall grasp, or a consistant understanding, of existence as a whole; and the latter should govern the former.

      While traditional China led the world in both knowledge and wisdom in the long past, Western thinkers, even the greatest philosophers, theologicians and scientists, have not been able so far to present an all-embracing big picture of existence that both matches human daily experience and demonstrates self-consistancy of thought. As a primary example, the de facto equation “God + His creation = the whole existence” has failed to answer the ultimate question: “Who/What created God?” Hence, Western thought is characterized by an infinite series of binary divisions starting from the rigid opposition between mind/God and matter/His creation, a tendency in either/or judgments without shades of  grey between the two extremes of black and white, fragmentalization of all objects of thought and a patchwork of knowledge without effective integration or synthesization with the belief that piecing together of parts makes the whole (see the above instance about “creation”), linear or flattened way of thinking without an awareness of more dimensions in complex systems, and an outwardly confrontational (ultimately so at least) approach in almost all its ideological schools of thought, not excluding alternative revolutionary ones; all of which constitutes the epistomological root cause for all the current crises confronting the West and Westernized world of today.

      In contrast, traditional Chinese thought links up Heaven (nature), Earth (human society), and men (human individuals), integrates the inside  (mind) and outside (matter) of human consciousness, synthesizes all expediently presumed divisions and oppositions, and aims at achieving peace and harmony inside one’s own indivudual self and inside the groups one belongs to, such as family, community, nation, etc., so as to adapt oneself and one’s own groups to an overall balanced Supreme order of all existence (Dao, or Tao) including inter-human and human-nature relations. It was under the illumination of such highly-developed wisdom that China once led the world for thousands of years in humanities, social theories and natural science and has created, among all the ancient civilizations, the only one that has been continual and surviving till today. As to the setback she suffered in modern times, it was only a minor whirlpool in the long, long river of history, which will not drown the unique brilliancy of its great culture.

      The Chinese world view of unity between men and nature and between mind and matter has been the underlying ideological basis for all ancient sages in their pursuit for a harmonious society and a free human life, whereas the relationship between the subject and the object, between spirit and substance, between consciousness and existence, in a word, between mind and matter, has been the most puzzling and thorny issue and a perennial subject of argument among Western thinkers. They either believe in an almighty soul that is separate from all existence (named “God”, or “Idea”, or “Geist, or absolute spirit”), or mistake the human-perceived world (which actually makes its appearance through the “distorting mirror” of human cognitive structure) as “objective existence” independent of human consciousness (or as the outward appearance of such an “objective existence” behind it.) None of those scholars who have been influenced by such Western way of thinking can get themselves out of the binary trap of “materialism”-vs.-“idealism” opposition. Not until last century, when physicists discovered the wave-particle duality of photons and verified through experiments the impact of the observer’s observing act or of observing instruments (as extentions of human cognitive structure) on the results of observation, was the validity of subject-vs.-object dualist thinking pattern falsified for the first time by way of scientific demonstration. However, no Western philosopher is seen so far to have raised this physical discovery to the metaphysical level and drawn any conclusion of a revolutionay nature about mind-matter relationship. Only some more open-minded scholars, such as Fritjof Capra, have related this discovery to traditional Eastern philosophy (The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism). However, as Western-style “reason” can hardly understand the profound wisdom in Eastern thought, the latter, though there is nothing mystic in it at all, was still dubbed “mysticism”.