The Origin of Chinese Philosophy Ontology

Of course, ontology is a Western concept, but when we spy on Chinese culture today, it is difficult to make it only with nothing, you say no, Lao Zhuang's learning, Wei and Jin metaphysics, Song and Ming science, there are examples of their ontology. And the metaphysical is the way, and the metaphysical is the instrument. There is no judgment, you say yes, and return to the reality of cosmogenesis and the persistence of moral sentiments.

Therefore, "all things in the world are born from being, and some are born from nothing".

Ontology is a philosophical theory of the origin or substrate of the world.

Often, when we understand "a sheep itself", we may think of a sheep with two hard horns, four hooves, white or black, soft and smooth fur, a sheep's smell, the ability to make bleating sounds, and so on.

In fact, this understanding is not the ontology that is philosophically speaking. Philosophically, everything we see, hear and feel is just a phenomenon, color is not a thing of the sheep itself, it is a visual effect brought to us by light, in the same way, smell, sound is not, what we call hard, smooth, etc., are just a feeling of us, the result of our comparison.

That is to say, the thing we call a sheep exists, but all our knowledge of it is only a phenomenon, and the thing we call a sheep is itself unknowable, and that thing is what philosophy calls ontology.

Broadly speaking, ontology refers to the ultimate nature of all realities, which needs to be known through epistemology, so the study of the ultimate nature of all realities is ontology, and the study of how to know is epistemology, which is the relative symmetry of ontology and epistemology.

An ontology is a being that is capable of being all that exists. Compared to the rest of existence, it is the origin of all existence, it can be any kind of existence, while the rest of existence cannot be it as its origin, it is a definite existence, an eternal existence, a first existence, and the rest of existence is not necessarily existing, it is dependent on its operation. In unitary ontology, the ontology is the self-congruence.

The ontology, as a kind of first existence, exists before the emergence of human beings as observers, so human beings do not know the ** of the ontology. Not only that, but humans are also agnostic to existing ontologies. If human beings observe the ontology in the free world in which the ontology is located, since human beings cannot be regarded as beings yet, only the ontology itself exists.

Therefore, in the ontological world, there can be no human knowledge of the ontology, only the ontology's self-knowledge of itself. If human beings are to observe the ontology in the current real world in which they live, they must first interact with the ontology with the help of senses, instruments, or the sensing body of some kind of force. Since the ontology exists first, it can be seen that the existence of the ontology is independent of any other existence, is not related to the other existences, and exists independently without any interaction with the other beings.

The basic point of view of materialism:

On the basic issues of philosophy, he advocated that matter is the first nature, spirit is the second nature, the origin of the world is matter, and spirit is the projection and reflection of matter. It is a fundamental view of ontology in philosophy.

Philosophy is a big proposition. The essence of philosophy is the relationship between thinking and being, spirit and matter.

Due to the complexity of the world, the physical presence and spiritual thinking within the various realms are not the same. So each industry has its own philosophy.

For example: political philosophy, natural philosophy, epistemic philosophy, philosophy of life, moral philosophy, philosophy of art, philosophy of health, etc.

No matter what kind of philosophy, there is a common characteristic, that is, philosophy is general, abstract, reflective, and universal.

This characteristic gives people a sense of mystery about those who study philosophy. He believes that philosophers are people who have the ability to see beyond the ordinary.

In fact, philosophy is not mysterious, it is the way people understand the world. Therefore, the most ordinary masses of the people, as long as they have a little understanding, can be called philosophers.

Because philosophy exists in people's daily lives.

Here's an example: quantitative change to qualitative change. I would like to ask a pedant to explain this to you, and he can start from the aspects of chance, inevitability, particularity, universality, contradiction, regularity, etc., which can make you dizzy.

If you ask an old farmer to tell you, he will tell you: a bowl, a mouth, still a bowl. A fine line appeared, still a bowl. Syllable! If it's broken, it can't be called a bowl. This is a quantitative change to a qualitative change.

Lao Tzu's political philosophy talks about "ruling by doing nothing". Let the philosopher explain, and it will give you three days and three nights. Let the old peasant tell you that it is very simple: you cannot rule the world with selfish will, you should take the will of the people as your will.

Therefore, philosophy is not high, but is hidden in many lowly and subtle things. As long as you pay attention, you can realize that philosophy is everywhere. This is the essence of philosophy.

The history of philosophy is continuous, Hegel's philosophy is the result of previous philosophies, and the philosophy after Hegel is the result of the addition of previous philosophies after Hegel. Some of the ontological ideas continue the main divisions of Hegel, but with some new formulations, or some new forms.

Ontology is inherently divided into two broad categories: dualism and monism. Monism is divided into two types: discredited materialism and idealism.

Of course, there is also a kind of monism that tries to blend materialism and idealism, such as Schelling. The ontology after Hegel is still like this.

1. Representative of the two dry talk metatheories: Henry Bergson. Its main point is to highlight the importance of the life impulse, to see matter as inert, spirit as active, and spirit and matter as opposed (the opposition of weaker celebrations).

2. Representative of idealism: Bradley. Its main point of view is similar to that of Hegel, which acknowledges the absolute.

3. New realism, which has a certain intention to transcend materialism and idealism, although it is still classified as an idealist camp by materialists. Its representatives are: Alexander, Meynon, Moore, Brandt Russell, Whitehead.

They admit objective reality, but not as an idea as the ideaists say, nor as matter as materialism believes, but only "reality".

4. Dialectical materialism. Representative figure: Lenin. Needless to say, this faction is not much to say.

In addition, there is also "voluntarism" represented by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, which believes that the will is an ontology and a kind of monism. Bergson's views are close to voluntarism. In general, voluntarism is also classified as an idealist camp by materialism.

<> ontology is ontology, which means logos about being, which is more reasonable to translate as "ontology". Why, then, did Parmenides use "being" to define the logically prior nature?

First, let's analyze the concept of "existence". In the Greek Kongjichang language, "to on" has two meanings, one is all that exists, and the other is the existence of beings, and there is no word in Chinese that can contain these two meanings, so it is a bit reluctant to translate it as "existence". The concept of "being" has a deep linguistic background, and it is a product of the idiomatic structure peculiar to the Indo-European language family, which refers to:

A sentence is usually formed by connecting the subject and the object. The reason why natural philosophers use a certain natural element as the origin is that the original element needs to meet the condition that it must be able to maintain itself while being able to transform into other natural elements, and only in this way can the diversity and unity of nature be explained. Parmenides, therefore, argues that the primordial cannot be something that is truly unchanging, that it is in motion, that it is both present and non-existent.

So, what is really constant? That is language, and language is existence. For in the eyes of the Greeks, what is expressed in language is the same thing as what is expressed, that is, the subject and object of a sentence are both variable, but the words that connect the two are constant.

For example, if the sky is blue and the flower is red, the "being" here precedes what is, i.e., the "being" precedes the being—and the "preceding" here refers to the logically first. It can be seen that existence is not only the only unchanging thing in all things, but it is also the premise and basis for the existence of all things that exist.

The so-called logical precedent means that the reason why a thing becomes this thing is that there is certainly the problem of the materials that make it up, but the material is not the root that determines what a thing is, but what really determines that a thing is its definition, concept or essence. Of course, all Parmenides could do was establish existence as the object of philosophy, and leave the question of the relationship between being and non-being, essence and phenomena, feeling and reason, etc., to posterity.