文明与文化的异同 civilizationand culture

Civilization is the progress of human being and the system of rational society. This concept is contract but also can be interpreted from two aspects-broad sense and narrow sense. From the former one, civilization means all the develop that culture gains as well as well-behaved life style, showing the level that the material civilization, spiritual civilization and political civilization has reached. However, if you see it from the latter perspective, civilization only is the one human use to describe the contrary side from barbarous society. There is also a new definition of this word nowadays. “people with specific spacial and temporary connection own the city architecture and scripture; the same civilization contains of several similar types of countries and races; civilization can be divided into politics, economic and culture, of which culture is the soul. ”That can explain why some countries was invaded or even conquered but their civilization got passed generations. Civilization also contains of philosophy, religion and art.

Most of scholars believed that there is some differences between civilization and culture. Like I mentioned in the definition before, civilization is superior to culture, which means culture is part of civilization. What’s more, that civilization and culture is subject to different attribute is also another popular theory. As Alfred Weber, one of Germany culture socialists, once said: “the difference between culture and civilization is that civilization is the one which be “invented” while culture is the one that be created. The former one can passed from one race to another race but doesn’t lose its specialty; it can passed from one generation to another generation but doesn’t lose its function. So all the things like nature science and material tools can be seen as civilization. But culture is created by human so it is the racial appearance of a specific time and place where can only persevere its original essence. Anyone who from other places want to copy it from past, they will lose its original essence. Not only the scholars from western countries but also some from Japan who held this kind of theory. They believe that civilization is material while culture is spiritual. Civilization can be spread while culture is cohesion.

However, there is also someone who reckon that civilization is hardly different from culture or even similar to each other. It gained popularity in France and Britain in 19th century. As what Taylor, the father of Britain anthropology, once said in his book, “primitive culture” : “from the perspective of ethology, no matter the culture or civilization they all are a compound which includes knowledge, belief, art, moral, laww, custom as well as the capacity and habit for being one of the society members.”

The most impeccable characteristic of Chinese civilization is its continuity. Chinese civilization is the only one that did not vanish in the river of history out of four ancient civilization which makes it so unique. Another marvelous characteristic for Chinese civilization is that it can brace numerous different cultures which go through thousands of years and from couple of foreign places. For ancient China, a hundred schools in pre-Qin times with Greece philosophy, Hebrew and other regions at that time all absorbed by Chinese civilization and become part of it. It never stop updating itself as well. For example, in modern times, facing the globalization and modernization, Chinese civilization tried to blend in with the condition of preserving its own essence.

If we talk about how Chinese civilization shows itself, the most important one will be Chinese character which live just as long as our civilization. Almost all the thoughts and history was recorded by Chinese character and passed by it too. Except that, the customs including the festivals, special events and daily lives show how we behave which is exactly influenced by Chinese civilization.