世界观：中西不同 Worldview: East and West See Different Views

世界观可以说是包含了那些就界定而言，不能在逻辑上被证明的基本信念与自明之理。

在西方，到了柏拉图与亚里士多德以后，所谓的‘两个世界’的世界观已经垄断了古典希腊的思想。西方思想家主要关心的是如何发现与分别实在世界与变化世界。他们寻找那些克服起初的混乱后获得统一、秩序、改变世界的设计的永恒不变的第一原理。他们寻找变化后面的‘实在’构造，一旦明了这些构造之后，生命就会可以预测与有保障。这些‘实在’构造有各种名称，如柏拉图理念、天神法规、自然律法、道德律法、天主，等等。

人类横跨两个世界，灵魂属于高级的、有原创力的、持久永恒的世界，而身体属于现象世界。灵魂通过理性与启示接触‘实在’，所以能获得知识。被假定为‘单一秩序世界’的基本宇宙秩序通过发掘后，宇宙变成可被人类认识与预测。

另一方面，华人世界观可说是‘单一世界’观，只有一个连贯的与具体的世界。这个世界是我们所有经验的源头与所在地。它肯定的有活力、自动产生、自我组织，也是活生生的。

在华人传统思维里，所谓的独立的秩序创造者与其建立的秩序之间是没有分别的。世界与世界任何时刻的秩序都是自我造化，自发的自然。（自然就是自己如此。）真、美、善作为标准并不是‘给定’的，而是历史的演变、我们所为、文化的产物。

因此孔子说：‘人能弘道，非道弘人。’

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A worldview can be considered as comprising a number of basic beliefs and axioms which cannot, by definition, be proven in the logical sense.

In the West, by the time of Plato and Aristotle, the worldview that had come to dominate classical Greek thinking is the so-called Two-world theory. The main concern of the Western thinkers is to discover and distinguish the world of reality from the world of change. They look for permanent and unchanging first principle that has overcome initial chaos to give unity, order, and design to changing world. They seek the ‘real’ structure behind change that when understood, made life predictable and secure. This ‘real’ structure is called variously Plato Ideas, divine law, natural law, moral principle, God, etc.

The human being straddles the two worlds, with the soul belonging to the higher, originative, and enduring permanent world and the body belonging to the realm of appearance. The soul has access to the ‘reality’ through reason and revelation, and thus can make claim to knowledge. It is through the discovery of the underlying cosmic order which is assumed to be a ‘single-ordered world’, that the universe becomes intelligible and predictable for the human being.

On the other hand, the Chinese worldview can be known as One-world view that there is one continues and concrete world. The world is the source and locus of all our experience. It is resolutely dynamic, auto-generative, self-organizing and alive.

In the Chinese traditional thinking, there is no final distinction between some independent source of order and what it orders. The world and its order at any particular time are self-causing – spontaneously ‘so-of-itself’ (natural, ziran). Truth, beauty, and goodness as standards of order are not ‘givens’ as much as they are historically emergent, something done, a cultural product.

It is for this reason Confucius said, ‘It is human beings who extend order in the world, not order that extends human beings.