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Nishan Topics|Dr. David Bartosch:One very important means to establish connectivity amongst different civilizations is culture

2021-09-28 08:55:57 大字体 小字体 扫码带走
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山东商报·速豹新闻网记者 刘建宇

 

Dr.David Bartosch works a special foreign expert at BFSU’s School of International Relations.In Germany,he is known foran in-depth comparative study on the philosophies of Wang Yangmingand Nicolas da Cusa,the two most importantChinese and European philosophers at the beginning of the Early Modern Period.Bartoschteaches Comparative Eurasian Philosophy(based on Chinese,Indian and Westerntraditions),Comparative Culture and Cultural Diplomacy.

In the Seventh Nishan Forum on World Civilizations,Dr.David Bartosch said,to understand the world in its unity and entirety means to deeply accept its plurality.In Lunyu,Confucius famously said:“Is it not delightful to have friends coming from distant quarters?”We all here in this room are driven by the desire to see a more just human environment emerge.Such an environment can only be multilateral and multipolar.To accept the multiplicity of our shared one world in its entirety means to understand the newly emerging system which is being initiated in many minds and actions throughout the Eurasian continent as a unity through difference.

The greatest thinkers have always understood the highest wisdom that the striving for unity cannot mean the exclusion of something,otherwise we would make the mistake to identify a part(respectively a part that we identify with while excluding others from it)as the whole.Unity means to connect and to integrate all parts—this is the meaning of unity through difference.Without multiplicity,there can be no unity,because unity is the connection which can only be found in plurality.In this sense,the future belongs to us all–to all of humanity–together,and to no one alone.

One very important means to establish connectivity amongst different civilizations is culture.Very generally speaking,all cultural practices and all cultural products can be characterized as human self-refinement.Learning in the most general sense,getting better at what we are doing or thinking through,individual and collective betterment and effort of self-perfection,constant reform—this is the true meaning of culture in the ancient civilizations of Eurasia.A successful system as a whole must be diversified,like a well-balanced ecosystem,where all organisms make their differences complementary—for their mutual benefit and the benefit of the system as a whole.

This is the age that we are living in today.But humanity will only be able to flourish,if the people in all the countries and civilizations will develop themselves on the fertile basis of their own cultural foundations as well as in the sense of a global network of self-modernizing tradition-related cultures at the same time.This will also mean to accept,respect,and even embrace our different heritages and forms of life.Only then we will be able to let all the resulting cultural transformations and creations interact with all others.I very much hope that the very basic understanding of the principle of the unity of unity and difference,which is also Confucius'infinitely all-permeating principle,can become the bridge and the path which will enable us to reciprocally ignite more and more lights among the Confucian and traditional German-language philosophies.

速豹新闻网·山东商报编辑:徐晓阳
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