Book review

This book is a speech draft which is used by Feng Youlan to introduce history of Chinese philosophy. It presents the basic  information of Chinese philosophy which is clerar and ravishing and deserves to be digested. The main content of this book is  divided into two parts: Chinese philosophy and schools and their development.

The first part introduces the background and spirit of Chinese philosophy. It contains the reason of the particularity of Confucianism, the relation between religion ang philosophy, the problem foreign students and ancient Chinese philosopher face,  geographic and economic background of China, the value and spirit of Chinese philosophy, the family system, art, poetry, etc. The most impressive content is the relation between religion and philosophy which causes the association of me. In my opinion, the disappear of traditional view leads to the decline of traditional culture.  Additionally, there is no religion, so what is called ethic became the spiritual basis of Chinese culture. On one hand, there is no religious belief in people's minds. On the other hand, there is no science ideology which can edify persons. And ethic can't work as religion in most cases. These problem result in poor self-control thinking ability even anomic.

The second part recommends various schools and their development. The content of this part is rich so I just want to select some chapters that make me have deep feelings to talk about. The most impressive content of this chapter is Taoism, Confucianism and Mohism. These theories make me realise the right way to bear myself. First, we are supposed to treat Confucius' contributions objectively and rationally and learn from Confucius' perseverance and striving for greatness to make arduous efforts and strengthen sense of social responsibility. He is a great pioneer but not deity who made enormous contributions to the heritage of Chinese culture, but his ideology at the same time has boundedness of time. Second we ought to know that defeatism is a pessimistic ideology. Everyone should keep optimistic and believe that I am the master of my fate because nothing is fateful. And sense of  social responsibility is a pole to measure value of life. Not everyone can become successful and get high official positions and riches, but everyone can make contributions to society. The way we achieve our value of life is that we set a target of contributing to society and practise. Everyone is amenable to realise the value of life because it is achievement but not realising the value of life that needs luck.Third, I also like the difference between Confucianism and Mohism. But I prefer Mencius' perspective about jen and love to Taoism and Mohism. From my perspective, human can carry out all-embracing love but certainly can not get rid of preference, that is to say, human's love must be graduated. Mohist's all-embracing love is more suitable for the class that Mo-tse belongs to. That is knights-errant in which everyone is equal and share happiness and suffering, while jen puted out by Confucianists is more suitable for public.

The content of this book is concise but the details of this book are rich. After reading this book, I have the preliminary  understanding of the history of Chinese Phliosophy and found keen interest of it. I hope that everyone can read this book and I believe it will not make you disappointed.

2020-06-30

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