理性秩序与审美秩序 The Rational and Aesthetic Orders

东西以不同眼光来看世界，他们对秩序的概念也是不同的。西方称理性或逻辑性秩序，而东方则是审美秩序。

西方的两个世界学说区分实在世界与变化世界，这个区分就促进以二元思维来看世界。他们寻找永恒与不变的第一原理来克服最初的混乱，欲把变化世界达成统一、有序与设计的世界。他们寻找变化背后的‘实在’建构；这个‘实在’一经理解后，生命就会变得可预测与安全了。

为了要在他们的四周围达到社会和谐，西方人钟情于和谐、秩序、统一，而不喜欢不一致、混乱、无主宰（无政府状态）。所以，西方对秩序的理解所最熟悉是与统一性、模式规则性相联系的。这些所谓理性或逻辑性秩序牵涉到宇宙的设想；这个设想以由因果定律及形式模式形成的宇宙的罗各斯为特征。它也同时反映了一个假设，那就是这个秩序有一个原初及独立的源头；这个秩序源头一经被发掘与理解，就能够对人类经验给予一个贯通性的解释。

在审美秩序式的思维中，由个别个体所界定的世界秩序是独特的。这是因为在这个秩序中，个体成员的世界中并没有一个能够称为统一的超越原理。古代中国人相信我们所看到的世界秩序并不是来自一个独立的、激活的力量所给予的。世界与世界任何时刻的秩序都是自我造化，自发的自然。每样事务都是按每样事务之意。

所以，华人对秩序的意识以具体特殊性为特征，而这些特殊性对秩序本身很重要。在这个观点中，最后的统一是不可能的；因为如果是这样，整体的秩序会压倒各部分的秩序，取消了各个体成员的特殊性。因此，审美秩序最终是非秩序（非宇宙）的，因为没有一个压倒性的秩序。

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The West and East see the world differently, and they also have different concepts of order, which can be called rational or logical order and aesthetic order respectively.

The Western thinkers’ two-world theory distinguishes the world of reality from the world of change, a distinction that fosters a dualistic way of thinking about it. They seek that permanent and unchanging first principle that has overcome initial chaos to give unity, order and design to a changing world. They seek the ‘real’ structure behind change that, when understood, made life predictable and secure.

In order to achieve social stability in their surroundings, the Westerners favour harmony, order, unity rather than discord, chaos and anarchy. Therefore, the most familiar understanding of order in the West is associated with uniformity and pattern regularity. This ‘logical’ or ‘rational’ ordering is an implication of the cosmological assumptions which characterize the logos of a cosmos in terms of causal laws and formal patterns. It also reflects a presumption that there is some originative and independent source of order that, once discovered and understood, will provide a coherent explanation for human experience.

In the aesthetic way of thinking, the particular individuals defining the world order are said to be unique. This is because in this order, there is no transcendent principle by which its constituent particulars in the world can be called to be unified. The classical Chinese believe that the order this world evidences is not derived from or imposed upon it by some independent, activating power, but inheres in the world as a source of reconstrual. The world and its order at any particular time are self-causing – spontaneously ‘so-of-itself’ (ziren). Everything is what it is at the pleasure of everything else.

Therefore, the Chinese sense of order is characterized by concrete particularities whose uniqueness is essential to the order itself. No final unity is possible in this view since, were this so, the order of the whole would dominate the order of the parts, cancelling the uniqueness of its constituent particulars. Thus, ‘aesthetic’ order is ultimately acosmological in the sense that no single order dominates.