Comparative View Of "The Self" In West And China

This essay carries on research to the China and Western self-view with the comparative vision. First, the essay reviews the self-view of west and Chinese traditional culture, then compares the two from three respects, which are study purpose, research approach and development model. In the viewpoint of this article, western and Chinese self-views can complement each other in these three respects, if combining the advantages of these two kinds of self-views, perhaps it will have guidance meanings to the development of self-view, and can create a new research route. In fact humanism psychology is making this kind of efforts on it.Western self-view asked for the truth, western scholars devoted to seek answer to " who am I? ", they made effort to get some general and right truth. They adhered to rational thinking, both philosophy and psychology adopted rational method in carrying on research. They used analysis, abstract, inference and logic, etc.. The western self-view is a developing one. It is a set of numerous theories, from philosophy to psychology, with the gradual progress of history, the theoreticians stand on forefathers' shoulder, get new theory out constantly. These theories go through from " definite ------Deny------Create new ideas", make the western self-view develop one layer of promotions of gradual progress with history, its development model is an expanding type.The self- view of China's traditional culture does not care " who am I", but care " how can I do ". Chinese people's question is how to get "harmony between man and nature", how to combine with the universe with oneself. Chinese devoted to getthe ultimate "mercy", paid more attention to practice in the development route of the self- view. Chinese traditional culture regard "the self as a whole, believed that it's form and content, essence and phenomenon can't be segmented. So Chinese relied on intuition and comprehensibility to hold the self, didn't pay more attention to analysis and logic thinking. The study on oneself is unrational. And this causes little development of self-view for several thousand years.Generally speaking, Chinese and Western self- views are both different in studying purpose, research approach and development model, but the two have each advantage, the three respects can be complemented.