中西文化差异——中西死亡观对比

Comparison of the Thanatopsis in Western Civilization

and in Chinese Civilization

LV Guang-zhao

Department of Translation, School of Foreign Languages, DUT Introduction

Along 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

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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’s