Thought and Survival

Author: Chen Rui
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-03-01
Features: In the realm of thought and many human and social sciences, many fundamental concepts that are frequently used remain in disarray, such as religion, rationalism, empiricism, mysticism, historicism, dualism, individualism, and liberalism. As a philosophical work, this book places these various ideas and concepts within the evolution of natural and social history, explaining their differences and transformations through a unified model, and offering new interpretations of the progress of human civilization. At the same time, this book can also be seen as a sociological study of knowledge, as Max Scheler once said that using sociological methods to explain the history of philosophy and the history of ideas would be a highly fruitful endeavor. Based on the social nature of human existence, this book provides a unified framework for various concepts, making their understanding and differentiation possible, and unifying different ideas on this foundation. In terms of its fundamental methodology, the book combines Eastern pantheistic mysticism with Western thought, believing that all historical ideas are part of a changing whole. The transformation of ideas, like the existence of all things in the universe and the evolution of culture, is an expression of power and exhibits a cyclical rhythm—expansion and contraction, cohesion and dispersion. Between specific and limited stages in Eastern and Western thought, there exists an inevitable deductive relationship, akin to that of natural sciences, which can possess a certain predictability. They will provide an important foundation for reinterpreting many issues in human and social sciences.