Authors: Wang Ruliang, Hou Chuanwen (School of History, Nanjing University, College of Literature, Qingdao University)

Culture and civilization are two important categories in the field of humanities and social sciences, and they are also a pair of terms with similarities and differences and complicated relations. There have always been different views on the connotation and extension of the two and the relationship between them, or different perspectives, or positions first, and no relatively consistent and clear understanding has been formed. The author tries to distinguish it from a comprehensive perspective.

Definition: broad sense and narrow sense

From the perspective of etymology, the original meaning of "culture" is cultivation and farming. Compared with nature, everything created by human processing belongs to culture. Therefore, one of the most extensive definitions of culture is "culture is humanization", which means all human activities and their achievements. Taylor, a British cultural anthropologist, put forward in his book Primitive Culture that "culture or civilization, in its broad ethnological sense, is a complex whole including knowledge, faith, art, morality, law, customs and the abilities and habits acquired by anyone as a member of society". He regards culture and civilization as synonyms and refers to them as the overall achievement of human activities.

Culture in a broad sense can be divided into material, system, custom, spirit and other levels: material culture refers to the results created by manual labor; Institutional culture, including macro-level laws and regulations, administrative system and micro-level rules and regulations; Custom culture refers to customs, traditions and practices that have been established and passed down from generation to generation; Spiritual culture refers to the achievements of human spiritual activities with literature, history, philosophy, ethics, religion and aesthetics as the main connotations. Culture in a narrow sense mainly refers to human spiritual activities and their achievements, which is the fourth level in the above broad understanding. Marxism holds that "a certain culture is the ideological reflection of politics and economy in a certain society", and regards culture as a certain ideological form, that is, it belongs to a narrow understanding.

The word "civilization" originated from the ancient Latin civis and civilis, its original meaning is urban residents, and it is extended to the citizenship of the Romans, which means that it is superior to the living conditions of foreigners at that time, especially barbarians, so "civilization" is relative to "savage" or "primitive". However, the evolution and use of "civilization" in later generations are far more complicated. Fukuzawa Yukichi, a modern Japanese enlightenment thinker, pointed out: "The meaning of civilization can be interpreted in a broad sense and a narrow sense. In a narrow sense, it is simply to increase the material needs of human beings by manpower or to increase the appearance decoration of food, clothing and shelter. If interpreted in a broad sense, it is not only to pursue the enjoyment of food, clothing and shelter, but also to inspire Xiu De and raise mankind to a noble realm. " That is to say, the narrow sense of civilization is limited to the development in the material field, while the broad sense of civilization includes the development in the material field and the progress in the spiritual field. In his understanding, man is a senior life pursuing meaning, and naturally he should not be satisfied with food and clothing for a while; Civilization is dynamic, and awakening, independence and civilization are the only way for a nation to achieve civilization. In the context of China, the word "civilization" is often understood in its broad sense. For example, the Encyclopedia of China (Philosophical Volume) interprets civilization as the sum of material and spiritual achievements of human beings in transforming the world, and the History of Chinese Civilization edited by Yuan Xingpei also decomposes civilization into three aspects in its general introduction: material civilization, political civilization and spiritual civilization.

Relationship: diachronic and synchronic

From the diachronic point of view, "civilization" is the product of the development of culture to a certain stage, and the two have their own priorities. In a broad sense, culture is humanization. Since people came into being, there has been conscious or unconscious cultural creation, but not since people came into being. In this sense, civilization is a concept that represents the evolution of human history, as opposed to the uncivilized and barbaric cultural state. This can also be derived from the western etymology of the two: the root of culture, whose original meaning is farming, originated from the early agricultural production mode of human beings, and the root of civilization, whose original meaning is urban and civil, originated from the urban life that appeared in the later period of human beings.

The discussion on the symbol of civilization mainly focuses on the following aspects: politically, there are large urban settlements, magnificent public buildings, obvious class division of residents and the formation of a country; Economically, there is a developed social division of labor and commodity exchange, a relatively fixed tax system or a regular tribute system; Ideologically, there are relatively unified religious beliefs of the whole nation, including objects of worship and sacrificial ceremonies; In culture and education, there are the use of words and the development of science and technology, and there are some forms of schools. Only a society with the above symbols and characteristics in culture can be considered as a civilized society. In other words, the formation of a civilized society needs the accumulation and breakthrough of culture and special conditions and opportunities; Civilization is the result of human beings’ transformation of nature, society and themselves to a certain extent, and it is an advanced stage of cultural development.

From a synchronic point of view, there are two main types of understanding of the relationship between them at present. In the first category, the two are regarded as synonyms, which are interlinked and cross-cutting, and can be broadly understood as human activities and their achievements, either undifferentiated or biased. The former is like Taylor’s understanding in Primitive Culture, and the latter is like Qian Mu’s point of view, "Generally civilized culture refers to the life of human groups. Civilization is on the outside, which belongs to the material aspect. Cultural bias is a spiritual aspect. " The second category regards civilization as an aggregate that embodies cultural identity and classifies cultures. Huntington, an American scholar, thinks in The Clash of Civilizations and the Reconstruction of World Order that "a civilization is the most extensive cultural entity … civilization is the highest cultural classification of people and the widest range of people’s cultural identity". This view is more representative in international academic circles, such as The Decline of the West by Bingler, Historical Research by Toynbee, and The Rise of the West-The History of Human Community by McNeill. Huntington took religion as the main symbol to define different civilizations, and divided the world after the Cold War into eight civilizations: Christian civilization, Confucian civilization, Islamic civilization, Japanese civilization, Indian civilization, Orthodox civilization, Latin American civilization and African civilization. This is similar to the four major cultural circles in the world: European and American cultural circles with Christian culture as the main body, East Asian cultural circles with Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism as the main body, South Asian cultural circles with Hinduism and Buddhism as the main body, and West Asian and North African cultural circles with Islamic culture as the main body. Comparatively speaking, "cultural circle" has been replaced by "civilization" in appellation.The number has expanded from four to many, and the same thing is that religion is the dividing standard.

Application: subjective and objective

Culture and civilization are objective academic terms, which do not reflect specific value judgments. However, in the process of practical application, it is often artificially subjective, and the more representative ones are "culture-centered theory" and "civilization superiority theory".

Cultural-centered theory takes "self" culture as the center, and holds that self-culture’s beliefs, values, lifestyles and behavioral norms are superior to "other" culture. It may be generated and used between different cultural groups, different cultural categories and different cultural regions within the same civilization, and it may also be generated and used between different civilizations. The former is like Huaxia centralism in ancient China, and the latter is like Western centralism in modern times. The theoretical point of the latter is that after the Enlightenment, bourgeois revolution and industrial revolution, western culture is more advanced and developed than the East in politics, economy, science and technology, representing historical progress and inevitability.

In view of all kinds of cultural centralism, in the second half of the 20th century, the debate between cultural universalism and cultural relativism arose all over the world. Cultural universalism holds that the truth and value of human beings are universal and absolute, and human cultures have similar goals, unified values and common laws of development, which will surely be unified under the leadership of advanced and advanced cultures. Cultural relativism is the result of reflection on deconstructing cultural universalism and facing multicultural phenomena. It emphasizes that each culture has heterogeneity and independence that other cultures cannot share. Therefore, culture is relative and cannot be compared according to a unified model. The author believes that culture has both universality and relativity. Universality is the commonality of human culture, and relativity is the individuality of various cultures. Only by recognizing the commonness of culture and respecting the individuality of culture can we break away from the stereotype of cultural centralism.

The theory of superiority of civilization is a subjective argument that advocates that one’s own civilization is superior to other civilizations in history or reality. In history, the most representative is the "white superiority theory" based on racial differences. Morgan pointed out in "Ancient Society": "Aryans and Sumerians were the first to break away from the civilized state among all branches of human beings … These two groups were essentially the founders of civilization." Because Aryans and semu are both white, some westerners draw the conclusion that white people created civilization earlier, and then form the theory of white superiority. In fact, the four ancient civilizations in the East were all multi-racial, and the yellow race, black race and white race all participated in the creation of civilizations. In reality, the most representative is the theory of stagnation of eastern civilization, which is another form of the theory of superiority of western civilization. Its main point is that the eastern civilization, which has tended to be patterned and stereotyped in philosophy, literature, education and other fields since modern times, has been in a state of stagnation and needs to be stimulated and saved by the western civilization, which has been constantly reborn and developed sharply. This argument became an excuse for colonialists to invade and expand. For example, Fukuzawa Yukichi once advocated the war of aggression against China as a "war of civilization".

In this regard, in 1853, Marx put forward the scientific conclusion of colonialism’s dual mission in two articles: British rule in India and the future result of British rule in India. "Britain has to complete its dual mission in India: one is to destroy the old Asian society; The other is the mission of reconstruction, that is, to lay a material foundation for a western-style society in Asia. " In other words, the colonialists "acted as an unconscious tool of history" while doing all the bad things. This is the dialectics of history, not the so-called victory of superior civilization.

In a word, culture and civilization need to distinguish between broad and narrow meanings according to specific contexts. The relationship between them can be analyzed from the synchronic and diachronic perspectives. The theory of cultural center and the theory of civilization superiority are the results of the subjective application of these two concepts, which should be clearly understood.

(This article is the phased achievement of the major project "Oriental Cultural History" (11-ZD 082) of the National Social Science Fund)

Source: China Social Sciences Network-China Social Sciences News

When Degang Guo talks about cross talk, he often says, "Cross talk is all made up, but this paragraph is true." It is also quite appropriate to use this sentence to describe the final between Japanese team and American team in world baseball classic (WBC). The plots that appeared in hot-blooded comics and inspirational movies, such as the man saving the team, and the fate confrontation between the two men, all appeared in this game. Let people who have seen the game feel sincerely: comics may be made up, but the blood of the game is real.

Without gossiping, the game is directly brought back to the most exciting and final round. This is the first half of the ninth inning of the final between Japan and the United States. The 3-2 leading Japanese team has caught two outs, and it is only the last one to win the championship.

At this time, the player standing on the mound is the flag figure of Japanese baseball now, and currently plays for Shohei Ohtani of MLB los angeles angels team. As a pitcher, Otani played an outstanding role in this WBC competition. In the opening match of the Japanese team’s group match against China, and in the first round of the knockout match against Italy, he started to board the board and threw out wonderful contents, and eventually he became the winning pitcher on the spot. This time, as the "closed pitcher" in the last battle, it is enough to show the coach’s trust in him.

This world-class pitching skill is only half of Shohei Ohtani’s total ability. When he puts on his helmet, picks up his bat and stands in the batting zone, a hitter who is also the top player in the world will appear again. Counting the final against the United States, Shohei Ohtani hit all seven games in this WBC, hitting 10 hits with 23 hits, including 4 double hits and 1 home run. One person contributed 8 RBIs for the Japanese team.

Give a background introduction to friends who are not familiar with baseball. In short, baseball is a game of throwing and playing. The pitcher throws the ball on the mound and the batter swings the bat, which is the core of baseball. With the development of baseball, pitching and hitting, the two basic skills of baseball players, are now completely different. In particular, the emergence of the "designated hitter" system allows pitchers to hit the ball completely without swinging, and it is the pitchers’ turn to hit the bat, and special players will take their place. The purpose of this is to better protect pitchers, so that they can concentrate on pitching and devote all their energy to dealing with one batter after another.

The reverse is also true. In order to deal with pitchers who are getting faster and faster, and whose pitching lines are getting sharper and sharper, batters also need to make hard efforts to come back and keep swinging and hitting. In Major League Baseball, you are already a top hitter if you can hit a batting average of 30%. Under such difficulty, few hitters can be distracted to practice pitching, let alone improve their pitching ability to the level of playing in major leagues.

And Shohei Ohtani, is such a player. As mentioned earlier, in the seven games of WBC, Otani’s pitching and hitting are top-level, and for MLB fans, they have gradually become accustomed to Otani’s performance. Last season, Otani started 28 pitches on behalf of Angels, and scored 15 wins and 8 losses. His self-blame score was a career low of 2.33, and his strikeouts were a career high of 219. In the batting session, Otani played in 157 games, with 586 hits and 160 hits, including 34 home runs, with a batting average of 27.3%.

What kind of concept is this? If you use basketball as an analogy, it’s like a player who has a shooting percentage of about 42% in sports and a shooting percentage of about 35% in three points, and can get 28 points per game at the offensive end, and can also get 8 rebounds and 2 blocks per game at the defensive end. He is not only the top five scorer in the league, but also the top ten defender in the league. A team with him can win 6 to 8 more games in a single season. If you picture such a basketball player in your mind, his level in NBA is basically the same as that of Shohei Ohtani in MLB. The award of MLB american league MVP in 2021 is the recognition of Shohei Ohtani’s ability.

Before Shohei Ohtani appeared, baseball fans were used to dividing pitchers and hitters into two distinct groups. Because in modern professional baseball, no one can have two identities at the same time and play at a very high level. Otani did it. From Koshien to Japanese professional baseball to MLB, "throwing double knives" is the most shining label on him. At the same time, Otani is also using his own performance to make this unique identity more outstanding.

According to the structure of hot-blooded comics, such a genius must have a strong enemy standing opposite him. On the stage of WBC final, Shohei Ohtani ushered in such an opponent. Looking back to the final round of the Japanese-American final, the American player standing in the batting area at this time is Mike trout, a 10-time MLB All-Star, a three-time American League MVP winner and currently playing for los angeles angels.

Yes, trout, like Shohei Ohtani, is also from los angeles angels. Since Otani entered MLB in 2018, trout has been a teammate with him. Therefore, the two had never had a chance to face each other in a formal competition before.

How strong is trout? You can get a glimpse of one or two from the honors he has won above. The outfielder, who entered the major league in 2011, quickly became the top star of MLB with his super hitting ability, base running speed and defensive ability, and even entered the discussion category of "the best in history". In addition, in 2019, Angel gave the absolute core of this team a 12-year renewal contract with a total value of nearly 430 million US dollars, which became the largest contract in the history of professional sports in North America. Only from this contract, we can also see the status and value of trout today.

However, as a team sport, baseball is still difficult to support a team with only one or two top stars. Trout has been in the league for more than ten years. Except for one playoff in 2014, he lingered outside the playoff, not to mention winning the final world series. This situation has not fundamentally improved since Shohei Ohtani joined in 2018. Because of the pitcher’s overall strength and the constant injuries and other factors, Angel’s performance has not improved by leaps and bounds, and trout and Otani, the "double MVP" combination, have not been given the opportunity to show themselves on a bigger stage.

However, in the final stage of WBC, two players who were quite "depressed" in the Angels team had the opportunity to challenge the baseball world champion. WBC, which is held only once every four years, is the "World Cup" in baseball. Shohei Ohtani said in an interview: "I have seen the Japanese team win this game before. At that time, I hoped that I could be a part of this team. Now I am really happy to have such an experience."

In this way, like fate, two top baseball players and two teammates who fought side by side in the professional arena stood at both ends of the field for the honor of world champions. Otani knew trout’s hitting ability, so in this round of confrontation, he took out his best fastball and slider as weapons. After several fastballs with a speed of 100 mph or more were thrown in succession, the situation of the game also came to "two strikes and three bad balls".

Such a scene is really like the comic book Major League Baseball coming into reality. In that cartoon, the protagonist, Goro Mauno, played on behalf of the Japanese team and met the American team led by Gibson. In the cartoon, the two men also met head-on in the first half of the ninth inning, and Goro Mauno’s fastball with a speed of 100 miles per hour was thrown out of the wall by Gibson, which reversed the game.

But this time, it was Shohei Ohtani who had the leading role. His last ball threw a slider with a perfect trajectory. Although the speed was only 87 miles per hour, the ball he threw made a sharp turn at the last minute, which lured trout to swing and failed. "His slider was too sharp," Arena, the third baseman of the American team and the star of the Cardinals, said after the game. "It was a great ball. If Mike trout can’t hit it, I don’t think anyone can."

It was such a perfect slider that Shohei Ohtani struck out his teammates and helped the Japanese team get the last out of the game. When the Japanese players swarmed and embraced the excited Otani, the players from trout and the United States became the background for their opponents to celebrate their victory. The happy ending of the hot-blooded cartoon was projected on Otani and his Japanese teammates.

This is the beauty and cruelty of professional sports. Some people reap the victory, while others naturally taste the bitterness. But after witnessing such a peak showdown, the charm of baseball seems to go beyond the boundaries of victory and defeat. Lars Nuteba, the outfielder of the Japanese team and currently playing for the Cardinals, said sincerely after the game, "I think baseball won again by ending the game in this way. The overall level of this WBC has risen to a higher level. I hope that such a big exposure can increase more baseball fans around the world. "

This is the third time that Japan has won the WBC championship, and it is also the first time that it has won the match with the United States. After losing the game, trout said positively that he liked the competition atmosphere of WBC very much, and he also had a positive attitude towards participating in the next competition. In addition, he also shouted to the champion teammate Shohei Ohtani: "He won the first round of the confrontation." It seems that this confrontation like a hot-blooded cartoon has not yet come to an end.

Source: Feishu Shennuo

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