Huang Wenshan Culture Thought

Huang-WenShan is a cultural scholar who has the ability to " sit on the cold wooden bench for a decade, but write none of half an empty sentence". He has devoted all his life to constructing a scientific culturological system. He is not only one of the founders of Chinese culturology, but also one of the pioneers of the international contemporary culturology.The course of Huang-WenShan constructing culturology may be divided into two periods: the first is the period before Huang-WenShan left China for America in 1949, and it is the stage when Huang-WenShan has formed the basic theories of culturology and when he endeavors to solve the main problem of finding the way out for Chinese culture. The second is the period after 1949, and it is the stage when Huang-WenShan has perfected his culturological system and when he wants to solve the problem of finding the way out for Chinese culture and even for the culture of the human race. His rich knowledge of Chinese and Western cultures and his ample cultural experiences make his culturological system characterized by the merit of having"the world view and the Chinese characteristics".Huang-WenShan deems that culturology develops from sociology and takes cultural anthropology and cultural philosophy, etc as the specific direction for its development. He attaches importance to "scientific character" and "methodology" of his culturological studies. He constructs culturology as a science in the strict sense of the word, and builds it with scientific methodology. "culture"," culturology" and "the cultural system", are the basic categories in his culturological system. Based on them, there are the definition, category, nature and characteristics of "culture"; the object, mission, the research mode, and the development course of" culturology"; ten "basic types", three "the upper level types", the structure, and the mentality of "the cultural system"; the twin categories of "culture" and "society", "culture" and "nature", "culture" and "civilization", "culturology" and" sociology"," the cultural system" and" natural system"," the cultural system" and" social system", etc. The main propositions of his culturological system include: The culturology is an independent and systemic science in its own style; the culturology holds the highest position in the scientific system; the cultural system not only grows and declines, but also " revives" or " get rebirth"; the future culture is the middle-of-the-road type which is the synthesis of both the meditative and sensual types of culture; the way for the world cultural development is to constitute a culture which blends the Chinese and the western cultures. Cultural blending is a natural conclusion drawn from his culturological system and a mature answer to the question concerning the way for the development of Chinese culture and even the world culture.From the perspective of dealing with the culturological system in a comprehensive way, Huang-WenShan is particularly outstanding among his contemporary scholars; from the perspective of constructing culturology as an independent and scientific subject, only a handful of culturologialists at his time, such as White and Chen-XuJing, etc. who can approach him during that time. Huang-WenShan's pioneering work in culturology can provide for us much experience and lessons in constructing " the contemporary culturological system" in China.