哲学简史读后感--A Short History of Chinese Philosophy

<<A Short History of Chinese Philosophy>><<A Short History of Chinese Philosophy>> covered the whole history of philosophy from the embryonic stage to the period of heyday which impressed and benefited me a lot. Actually, philosophy is a kind of knowledge that let people realize that they still lack wisdom and have to learn something to perfect their thoughts. Philosophers devote themselves to the philosophical study is not only in order to improve their intellect, but to understand the philosophy itself. In other word, wisdom is not any specific means of doing something but the object that we should pursue. We should not take the gifted wisdom for granted , what we should do is loving and pursuing the higher wisdom which make us more capable of creating the new era. According to the traditional Chinese philosophy, the purpose of philosophy does not lie in increasing the positive knowledge to the objective world, but in order to gradually improve people’s consciousness. Specifically, the knowledge or scientific knowledge are utilitarian and useful tools which can used to get familiar to the whole world even transform the structure of it when the quintessence of philosophical theory has been rooted in our hearts. We also shouldn't pursue the wisdom under the utilitarianism, but simply for the wisdom itself. In my opinion, human beings should live under the instructure of philosophy in order to have more wisdom and more logical thinking , and should follow the Chinese traditional philosophy ideology from this book so as to harden our noble personality, to find our noble manhood We must pay more attention to the philosophy because philosophy is not the tools and means of survival, but the purpose and ideal of survival which has been misunderstood for long times. Socrates once said that the unexamined life is not worth living. Though after many rational searches we could not find the goals of our lives. The process of learning the philosophy is the process that we contact with the predecessors in the thought. Even the excellent philosophers like Confucius and Mencius has passed away, but the ways adopted by philosophers in solving the problems would never go out of style, since it has exerted a profound and lasting influence for the later generations in creating the world and changing the world.In this book, from the concept of subject acceptance to the establishment of the discipline system, Mr Fung yulan has made a magnificent contribution to the early discipline construction of the Chinese philosophy. Through the reading, I got lots of knowledge about Mr Fung yulan’s other philosophical ideologies and understand the Chinese national philosophy, the process of culture development and understand why the Confucianism became the national mainstream culture roots, also know that their thoughts are mutually impact and promotion. This book is the work that Mr Fung yulan established the framework and direction for the Chinese philosophy.Philosophy was born as a western noun, however, to the Chinese people, the philosophy is an indispensable and prime enlightenment what bible is to the Western people. In W esterns’ minds, Confucianism is peremptory the religion of Chinese. Due tothe long-standing differences in cultural, customs and many aspects between the Chinese and the Western, it can be understood that Westerns can hardly understand the Confucianism just like we can’t fully accept the concept from the bible. These differences have relations with eastern and western geographical location, culture and conventions.The spirit and problem of the Chinese philosophy is that the Chinese philosophies have paid lots of attention on the research of human beings. It is pointed that people, as higher creatures, are appointed of playing various roles when they come into this world, so there will always be unconditional reflex in our opinion. For example, how do we think about a professor if we never known him before, just know his title of so-called profess? We maybe associate that he has profound and immense learning and certain that he must be a master of one kind of subject. When we meet such kind of people at first side, we will naturally regard these people as representatives of the secular under Chinese philosophy. We judge one person not according to his personality or behaviour, but out of the inertia mind, sometimes called mind-set. We make various conclusions without knowing much about the panorama. Although it is subjective judgment without intention, we can not deny that a one-sided mistakes was made in that unconscious process. This is the first step of analyzing the roles played by human beings.The second step is the meaning of human beings’ existence. As a student, the greatest wish is that we can learn more knowledge, getting higher score, living up to teachers and parents' expectations . As a teacher, the greatest aspiration is cultivating their students to become pillars of the country or have successful careers when they grown-up. These things are all on the basis of the concrete reality. There has formed a universal idea that that people’s highest achievement is becoming holy, the highest achievement that becoming holy is integrating themselves with the universe. In the article of Confucius, people should “morality-cultivated, gathering the family, managing the country and unifying the whole world”, if this sentence have been reversed that is what we should do nowadays, in the book <<Great learning>> It is said that if you want to use your virtue to unify the world, you should manage your country at first; if you want to manage your country, your should gather your family well; if you want to gather your family, you should train your morality-cultivated at first; if you want to train your morality-cultivated well, you should have good attitude.Some one said that Confucius is the only person that can be qualified as a “teacher”among numbers of scholars from the past to the present. To a large extent, Chinese traditions were influenced by Confucianism that the Confucius is the core and it behoves us to address Confucius respectfully. Confucius emphasized the importance of righteousness in personal character, and he also has required to “rectification of names” of the social relationships and follows the natural rule. In dealing with people, he has proposed many famous criterions that benefit us a lot and should always be kept in ourminds, such as “people who live in glass houses should not throw stones” and so on. These grateful sentences are playing heuristic roles in our life planning. If one person has determined what he want to do in the future, he just need to follow and carry it out. From fifteen to thirty years old, there also has been fifteen years, and now we have about the age of twenty, it just has past the quarter of our life, we should think much about our future. Actually, I have never thought much about philosophy, and boring is the only word I know about it. I think it is unrelated to our studies, for I had no interests in being a authentic philosopher. But this mind has been changed as I started to read in depth. I always ask myself whether I have get ready to work hard for my own future. As the saying goes, histories make men wise.Everyone is doomed to meet his or her opponent in life time, even the most great person who was considered to be always right and stand for the truth. As for Confucius, Mo-tse was the first and the biggest opponent to him who kept striking up a different tune. But not all the things from Confucianism that was opposed by Mo-tse. There were still something in common. For example, the topic of “righteousness” in their theories are basically the same. Mo-tse has advocated “not attack” that was coinciding to the Confucius’ “kindheartedness and justice”. The main difference of them was the social background. They were totally not the same. In the age of Confucius, Confucians have attached upper class society and they have got the favor of the ruling class. But Mo-tse was born in ranger family and later rangers gradually have became the bottom class, so they had lots of different views from the Confucian, basically there were the criticisms to the classics of Confucian and Confucius. For example, Confucian insist an elaborate funeral but Mo-tse thought that it was not only waste fortune energy but also they need to wealth for 3 years, these were the loss outweighs the gain. If you think about the Mo0tse with the Confucius’ social background, you will find a truth: in different environment, different class, there will have a different person.Facing the society which pressure is increasing and economic rapid developed, facing the strong impact of the expectation and reality, many of us can’t find peace in our mind with exhaustion and anxious. Mr Fung yulan said: “the effect of teaching is to help people to finish the things which have been done for a while. If a person has completely done what he had understood, he is the holy.” This seems that people do not need high demand but has condensed a thousand years that the gentleman cultivating one’s ideal. What should be done have been completely done, even the most mundane business. Finishing the thing “complete” is supreme good, there will be no regret in our minds and we won’t never be disappointed.The status of Confucius in Chinese history is beyond doubt. I n westerns’ mind, t hey just get familiar with the Confucius mostly. Nowadays Confucius institutes have run schools in the whole world. They have played a positive role for propagating the Chineseculture .Due to the function of philosophy itself does not aim to strengthen some external things that only exert the influence on the skin-level, but the internal soul and the essence of our thoughts, we have to go deeply in the philosophy of Confucianism instead of superficially understanding and thoroughly upgrade ourselves. That's the positive contribution that the Confucianism has made and is still making for us and for the whole society.。