First of all, we have to ask what is culture?
Generally speaking, people who talk about culture think that culture is life, but this so-called "life" does not refer to our personal life, but to the "group" life. Life is multi-faceted. A society, even a nation and a large group of people have many aspects of life, which is called life, that is, culture.
The word "culture" is translated from English. In the west, with a new concept, a new term will be created. Before this noun, it can be proved that they have no such idea.
The word "culture" translated by us is "Civilization" in English. This word is changed from Greek, which means that it is close to city life and can spread to each other, so its meaning is inevitably biased towards "material". For example, electric lights do not exist all over the world at the same time. They must start in one place and then spread to another. This is Civilization.
Britain is the country with the earliest material civilization in modern times. There are ships, trains and textile machines, one new thing after another, which affects the life of human beings in the world. They are extremely proud of creating this new term.
But at that time, the Germans were not satisfied with this word, because the modern material life in Germany was relatively new, and most of them came from the outside. The Germans were not satisfied with this word, so they coined a new word called Culture. This word is also changed from Greek, and it refers to farming close to the field, which has its own life and growth like all plants. This means that all people’s life and culture, mainly from the outside, grow from their own inside and have their own lives.
These two words spread to China, and we translated the word Civilization into "civilization" and the word Culture into "culture". These two words can also be used universally. Sometimes it is said that Civilization is Culture culture, and there is no need to subdivide it. But if broken down, it is more meaningful.
The words "civilization" and "culture" that we use to translate have their own sources in China’s ancient classics. The Yi Jing Ben Gua’s haiku says:
Rigid and flexible, astronomy also. Civilization stops, so does humanity. Look at astronomy to observe the changes of time, and look at humanity to turn into the world.
"Little Dai Li Yue Ji Pian" also says:
Deep and civilized.
It can be seen that the three words "culture", "civilization" and "humanity" originated from China’s ancient classics, but they are just in line with the translation of new ideas in modern western countries.
Now let’s talk about how China people talk about "humanity". Shuowen said:
Articles with mixed descriptions of phases.
The word "Wen" is just like the modern vernacular saying "pattern". There are different patterns in life. If there are men and women, this is a big trick for heaven and earth to make people. Another example is the elderly and young people, which is another trick in life. Heaven and earth gave birth to people, only one person was born, but people turned into a world from all kinds of tricks.
"The world" is the biggest group in life. Life groups are not born, but are transformed by people themselves. Such as "family" and "country" and "world", which are all formed by human culture. It is natural to be born with men and women. But from men and women to husband and wife, this is humanity and culture.
Heaven and earth only gave birth to men and women, not to couples. Animals and plants are male and female, there are men and women, but there are no couples. Men are rigid and women are flexible, so they say, "rigidity and softness are intertwined, and astronomy is also." This is a natural pattern, a natural pattern. According to this natural pattern, human beings have turned into couples, from couples to families, and then expanded into countries and the world. These are not nature, but humanity.
But humanistic studies perform from nature. Without men and women, how can there be a couple? I think the ancients in China created the word "humanity" and "culture" with a set of profound ideas.
As for the word "civilization", as the ancients in China said, it means that those tricks should make it obvious. If the difference between men and women is obvious and can stop at that obvious pattern, nothing is better than creating a marriage system, which is civilization. Therefore, civilization is humanity.
"Little Dai Li" said: "Love is deep and civilized", which means that the relationship between men and women is more obvious. In a savage, dark and uncivilized society, there can be no couple, but the relationship between husband and wife is not obvious, and they can’t stop in their relationship just because they don’t love each other deeply. These are the ideas of ancient people in China, which have been around for more than two thousand years.
We can say that the west has westerners’ ideas, that is, their ideas and opinions. China has the ideas, thoughts and opinions of China people. From these concepts, the differences in ideas and views gradually formed into the differences between eastern and western cultures.
The concept of "Culture" mentioned just now is a new concept in the modern west, because the word culture is a new word in the modern west. It can also be said that in the past, Westerners only knew politics, economy, military affairs, diplomacy, law, religion, art, literature, philosophy and so on, but there was no all-encompassing term for the life of large groups of human beings, such as "culture", that is, there was no such concept. Only in modern times did western talents begin to have the concept of culture.
In the last hundred years, almost everyone likes to speak the word culture. However, in ancient China, the concept of this culture had existed for a long time, that is, it was beyond politics, economy, military affairs, diplomacy, law, religion, art, literature and philosophy, and had an all-encompassing concept for the life of large groups of human beings.
Selected from Twelve Lectures on Chinese Culture, by Mr. Qian Mu, Kyushu Publishing House.