中西文化差异——中西死亡观对比

Comparison of the Thanatopsis in Western Civilizationand in Chinese CivilizationLV Guang-zhaoDepartment of Translation, School of Foreign Languages, DUT IntroductionAlong the journey of life, death is a seductive topic which does arouse our curiosity and the thirst for knowledge, yet it is tabooed in many cases [1]. In the classic movie The Seven Seals, when the Death asks the Knight whether he is ready to die, he answers: “My body is ready, but I am not.” Encountering the same question, most of the people perhaps answer the same, because we have no idea on what the death is. Who am I? Where am I going? We keep considering whether there is any other world after our deaths, however, only paradoxes and puzzles can be made, rather than results.In terms of the ultimate thinking of death, Epicurus said: “Death does not concern us”; Feuerbach said: “Death is the last reflection of life”; Confucius said: “Who has never understood the meaning of life, knows nothing about death”; Chuang-Tzu said: “Life and death are two different parts of destiny”. The thanatopsis is fundamentally built on the basis of culture and civilization, with the characteristic of mystery, religions and ethics, where exists regional, historical and cultural differences. This paper is comparing the thanatopsis in Western Civilization and in Chinese Civilization.Classical Period (Before 476AD in the west and 221BC in China)Classical Period saw an era of remarkable intellectual and cultural growth throughout the entire world. In the west, Greek world, especially Athens, became the motherland of democracy as well as the holy place of debate and philosophy. After the Romans came to their prosperity, the centre of thought was transferred into Rome, until the collapse of the Roman Empire. Nevertheless, the Greco-Roman civilization did establish the basis of western philosophy. In the east, the Emperor of Zhou Dynasty failed to build a powerful central administration, and the territory was actually governed by vassals who kept fighting against each other. Yet, it is in the political chaos that philosophers began to think and come out with ruling ideologies. Hundreds- 1 -of theories were promoted, including Confucianism and Taoism, which made the Spring and Autumn Period a heyday of Chinese intellectual history. Among the whole world, Classical Period was an era of political and military isolation as well as cultural and philosophical flourish.The first western thanatopsis dates back to over 2500 years ago. Thales, the founder of Miletus, put forward a theory on the basis of “Penta-rhei”[2], which means that every element is a cycle and that “water”is the foundation of the universe. He believed that everything is animate and souls are in a circle of life and death. Therefore, facing the death we need not to be afraid. In his theory, souls are perpetual, which influences the Europe for thousands of years. Socrates, however, did not agree with Thales on the cycle. In Plato’s Apology for Socrates, the great philosopher declared that “Only Gods know which one is better between life and death”. He believed that there are two situation after death—one is vacancy and the other is entering another world. In the first situation, death means nothing to people, just like sleeping, and in the latter situation, death means a new life in a world beyond our observation, both of which should not be afraid, because “Death could be better than life”[3]. In the following decades, his disciple Plato, one of the greatest philosophers in ancient Greece, further developed his ideas. He believed that “Death is a collapse of natural body”[4], which inherited the idea of Pythagoras. “Death is the soul of the immortal, which is released and enter the world of Ideas by leaving the restraint of natural body.[5]”According to Plato, Ideas are the perpetual yet invisible, and everything tangible in the world is the reflection of Ideas, which is named with “Theory of Ideas” [6]. In ancient European world, death was not a horrible or tabooed topic. Instead, highly-educated people to some extent looked forward to it, because it was commonly believed that people’s souls were immortal and perpetual. After the death, souls, which belong to the “world of Ideas”, would enter another world, which could be even better and brighter.Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, China was also seeing its heyday of thoughts. Confucianism, which is known as the Philosophy of Reasonableness, is the most influential one, and certain thanatopsis was shown in The Analects of Confucius. “Who has never understood the meaning of life, knows nothing about death”. Confucius believed that both life and death depend on the kismet. In The Book of Changes, Confucianism put forward a theory of Three Powers—the destiny, the ground and the spirit, and only the spirit can be controlled by people themselves. Therefore, death and what would happen after death are not such important, and what really matters is the attitude towards life, because death is something beyond people’scontrol. These theories were summarized and developed by Mencius with the concept of “transcendentalism” and “immanency”[7]. A certain demonstration was shown in The Book of Mencius: “One should not concentrate on the length of life, but on self-cultivation.” In Confucianism, the length of life is doomed and everyone is supposed to pursue the biggest value in the limited life, while Taoism avoided this paradox. According to Lao-Tzu, who established the school of Taoism, “All things take shape and become active, but I see them return to their source, like vegetation that grows and flourishes, b ut returns to the root from which it springs”, which reflected the essence of Taoist thanatopsis—falling leaves to their roots. In Lao-Tzu’s thanatopsis, the end and also the start point of everything in the world is “Tao”, which existed beyond the universe [8]. It is kind of similar with the cycle of Thales, but not exactly. Thales believed the universe consists of several basic elements, but in Taoism, “Tao”itself is everything, including the body and the soul. Thus, “Tao” can be regarded as the ultimate principle of both life and death. In ancient China, both Confucianism and Taoism did not give a clear answer about what would happen after death but only focused on what people should do in their lives. But for common people, most of them were eager to develop a picture after the death. As the consequence, this vacancy was easily filled by Buddhism later in a totally different way.Generally speaking, Classical Period is an era when philosophy was initially developed, and several essential paradoxes were still left to be solved. What does the “world after death”look like? Is it similar with ours? How did the “Tao”firstly emerge? Although there were still problems on the to-do list, philosophers in that age did lay the foundation and premise of the mental development both in western civilization and Chinese civilization.Medieval Period (476-1453AD in the west and 221BC-1840AD in China)During the Medieval times in Europe, there was no central government to keep the order. The only organization that seemed to unite Europe was Christian Church, which took the lead of in politics, law, art, and learning for hundreds of years [9]. In this period, the development of philosophy was highly controlled and guided by religions and, hence, the paradox of thanatopsis was mostly pondered by theologians. Similarly, in Chinese civilization, Medieval Period was also a period of changing. Since the Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty rejected all theoretical schools in the “Spring and Autumn Period”but Confucianism, the theory of Confucius and Mencius gradually became the dominated governing principle which, however, was quite different with the original one. Confucianism did not develop separately whose- 3 -evolution was remarkably influenced by Taoism and Buddhism, and therefore, this process was named with “The Unification of Three Religions”. In general, by the end of 4th Century, the period of voice and opinion came to an end, replaced by the period of tyranny and religion.A high-profile representative of that age was Augustine the Bishop. Believing devotedly in the God, he promoted that “the God takes the burden of our death, and people are supposed to seek immortality in the paradise”. Since one’s death is loaded by the God, the only thing people ought to do is responding the God’s calling and returning to his side. There are no pains or suffering, only immortality [10]. Based on Augustine’s thanatopsis, from the collapse of the West Roman Empire to the mid-13th century, the western thanatopsis was a “yearning for death”[11]. However, this kind of “yearning”did not mean that people want to die, but that they want to resurrect, which referred to a Christian doctrine—“Rose from the dead together with Jesus Christ”. However, due to the declining of the Byzantine Empire and the continuous fatal plague erupted in late-13th century, the foundation of Christianity, the God, was not convinced enough, because people could not feel the his mercy. People began to doubt, which really threatened the Christian Church. At the high time to prove the God, St. Tomas Aquinas appeared. In his Summa Theologica, he put forward the famous “quinquae viae”to demonstrate the existence of God, which included the Motivation, the Causation, the Necessity, the Perfectness, and the End. From the standpoint of eternal souls, Aquinas strongly preached “the happiness in the next world”[12]. Of course, people have to consider the trifles and happiness in the present world, but they should take more effort pursuing the happiness in the next world, because only the latter world is the ultimate pursuit of human beings. In the medieval period, the mainstream thanatopsis was mostly about the love of God and the coming world based on a theory of immortal souls, which related to religious to a large extent.While the western civilization was occupied by Christianity, Chinese civilization was also seeing the rise of a significant eastern religion—Buddhism. As it emerged in the ancient India, Buddhism was introduced into China in 2nd century BC, but was highly developed in Tang Dynasty. In the “spring and autumn period”, the essence of Taoism could be expressed with “Man models himself after Earth; Earth models itself after Heaven; Heaven models itself after Tao; Tao models itself after its Nature”, which put “Man” in a basic status. Hence, people perceived death in a calm way because “Man is the master of his destiny”[13]. However, in the ideology of Buddhism, every individual is just one of all living creatures. People began to be sick of their bodies which were believed to be the origin of jealousy, cheating, and lust for life. There arealso coming worlds in the Buddhism, but the thought of karma connected death with life tightly, which asks people to suffer a lot to get a better world after their death. Otherwise, if people are not qualified to receive the Nirvana, they would be ghosts lingering in the world and haunting living people [14]. To some degree, it was this time when death actually became a thrilled and tabooed event. However, the theory of karma was denied by a pivotal philosopher in Song Dynasty—Chu Hsi. He believed that the thanatopsis of Buddhism is actually the “fear of death”. In the book Zhu Zi Yu Lei, he said “being satisfied with death and living without regret”, which is a placid statement but showed that the horror of death would fade if people are able to understand what deaths really are[15]. In general, this era was a period of “the unification of three theories” when Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism were fused with each other, and the modern thanatopsis of Chinese people was basically settled.In the medieval period, both Western and Chinese civilization were influenced remarkably by religions—Christianity in west and Buddhism in east. Also in this period, death became much more threatened and horrible than what it used to be in the Classical Period. People began to connect deaths with their lives, believing that only in a suffering way can they gain the immortality and go to the paradise. Even controlled and centralized, the thanatopsis in the medieval period was still an indispensible part of the world’s philosophical system.Renaissance and Modern Period (After 1453 in the west and 1840 in China)It was the greatest innovation that human had never experienced. It was an age when great thinkers were needed and did appear to change the world. Beginning in Italy in the late Medieval Period, Renaissance deeply influenced the whole Europe as well as the rest of the world in following centuries which were called the “Modern Period”. The hegemony of Christian Church was considerably weakened, and the God was no longer the start point of philosophy. People started to think on the base of reason and logic, and promoted several new philosophical methods, such as Rationalism and Empiricism[16]. The thought of men became the center. In China, the self-isolated policy of the late Qing Dynasty was ended by the colonial expansion of the west. Westernized Movement and the Wuxu Reforms helped Chinese people to recognize that the world was quite different with the one in their mind. After the Great Geographical Discovery and Religious Reformation, the world was becoming smaller and smaller in both political and philosophical fields.Heine once said that in terms of the philosophical heritance, no one can be named in- 5 -the same way with Hegel who was regarded as the bridge between the philosophy before and after the Renaissance. The most special part of Hegel’s thanatopsis is the Dialectics, which regards “Denying”as the basic method and “Aufhebung”as the fundamental procedure [17]. The feature of death is actually the spirit of self-denial, and it means not only negation but also part of affirmation. According to Hegel, life is the natural affirmation of consciousness, while death, on the contrary, is the negation of consciousness [18]. In The Phenomenology of Mind, he promoted that there are two opposite ideology—the consciousness of master and of slave. The former can be also regarded as the awareness of individual, which means that people dare to be the master of themselves, and the second ideology is the awareness of dependency, whose essence is living for the God. Actually, Hegel did not totally get rid of the influence of the idealism in the Medieval Period, but his student Feuerbach did. The great German philosopher abandoned his teacher’s theory and established his own humanistic philosophy, restoring the rightfulness of materialism. Via The Essence of Christianity, Feuerbach criticized the doctrines of immortality and the coming world，and asserted that these doctrines are only illusions. Christianity assumed that death was equal to a life and a world which were totally different with ours, and these assumptions were based on a doctrine that “lives in the present world are short, pompous and meaningless” [19]. Feuerbach believed people should not sacrifice their present happiness just to pursue an illusion. “Death is nothing else but the last revealing of life.”Hence, Feuerbach continuously appealed to abandoning Christianity and pursuing a way of life belonging to men. In this period, the status of religion was lowered and the reorganization of the self was remarkably enlightened.Since the Enlightenment in the west, traditional Chinese thanatopsis was changed considerably by western philosophies and values. Affected by the May 4th Movement, Chinese scholars added utilitarianism and idealism into the coordinates of values [20]. And in this westernized process, Hu Shih, the former principal of Peking National University, promoted a kind of new individualism. People should firstly be sure about the value of their characters, and then fulfill their potential, of which the main significance is revolting to the social oppression. In terms of thanatopsis, he believed that men as individuals are doomed to die, but human beings as whole are undead and immortal. Denying the existence of deities and ghosts is another basic point. In his an outline of Philosophic History of China, Hu demonstrated that it was better to rely on ourselves than on our kismet. People should not imagine being an undead celestial, but just being an individual who is able to think and speak as he saw fit. To some extent, Hu Shih made a great contribution in developing the atheism of modern Chinese philosophy. By contrary, the emergence of neo-Confucianism was theresponse to anti-traditional philosophers headed by Hu. Liang Shu-ming, as the protector of Chinese traditional culture, he combined Confucianism with Bergson’s idealism. From Liang’s perspective, the essence of the cosmos was “life”, and the “life”was actually the mind and the spirit [21]. For the entire nation, the most important point is righteousness and goodness, rather than individual’s life, which was the basic view of “sacrificing life for righteousness”. Another philosopher in the same period, Feng You-lan, developed a more completed theory. He emphasized that the meaning of people’s life is cognizing and understanding the universe they are living as well as their destiny. Also, he classified the realm of people’s lives into four degrees—natural, utilitarian, moral and potentially fulfilled, which was kind of similar with the later Maslow’s Theory of Needs. The early 20th century is an age of upheaval. China was entering a new period in terms of both politics and philosophy. Western thanatopsis was keeping affecting and penetrating into Chinese civilization, while traditional Chinese thanatopsis was keeping self-evolving, which indicates a tendency of philosophical globalization.ConclusionAlmost in every culture, death is equal to suffering, pain and terror, however, in many cases, what people really fear for is not death itself, but the nostalgia for their beloved lovers, families and friends. Philosophers, from Socrates to Feng You-lan, put forward countless theories trying to find a right attitude to encounter death. In the Classical Antiquity, ancient Greek philosophers assumed that there would be a better world after death where existed no harm and darkness, and ancient Chinese thinkers believed that people’s lives could be sacrificed for the righteousness. In the Medieval Period dominated by religions, Christianity required its believers to “rose from the dead together with Jesus Christ” which enlightened the significance of revival, while Buddhism was introduced into China with the principle of Karma. After the Renaissance and Enlightenment, thinkers began to understand the principle of Me. The power of super-nature was weakened, while the importance of causation and people themselves was highlighted than ever before. Yet, it is still hard to say that philosophers have succeeded, because the more they think, the more they are confused. Hence, how should we face the death? Actually, we have just understood a very small part of our lives. Therefore, do not be disappointed facing the elapsing life, because before the end, nothing is impossible. Mistakes can be corrected; misunderstandings can be explained; even everything can be restarted. 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