Feng You-Lan's Culture Philosophy On "Differing Generality And Particularity"

The cultural issues are complicated and difficult to unravel, on which people put forward lots of views for over one hundred years since the Opium War. The main clue on these argues was "how to make Chinese culture modernized while facing the powerful attack from Western culture ". With the unique theoretic approach, Professor Feng You-lan attempted to solve the problems of Eastern and Western culture by philosophical methods. The achievement of his research was his culture philosophy, which remained open to question and hasn't form a final conclusion. What Feng you-lan discussed hasn't got a breakthrough so far, people have to advance along Feng You-lan's footsteps. Just like some scholars said, the research in culture philosophy can exceed Feng You Lan's achievements, but can't ignore what he had done. Studying Feng You-lan's culture philosophy is of great theoretic and practical significance to the reconstruction, reforming and revival of modern Chinese culture.The characteristic of Feng You-lan's culture philosophy lies in "differing generality and particularity", which means studying East and West culture and its relationship from generality view and particularity view respectively. Generality analysis was intended to find the way of the modernization of Chinese culture, while particularity analysis reflected on the nationalization of Chinese culture. Trying to solve the problems of East and West culture in philosophy thoroughly, Feng you-lan made the metaphysics " differing generality and particularity " as the start point and cornerstone, which had been established in "Neo-Confucianism". "Differing generality and particularity" was both the metaphysical foundation of Feng you-lan's culture philosophy and its principle of methodology. Only by grasping the thought of "differing generality and particularity" deeply can we understand Feng's culture philosophy. Therefore, this article takes the thought of "differing generality and particularity" as the main clue to elaborate and adjudicate Feng's culture philosophy.This paper was composed of four sections. The first section expounded the source, main ideas and characteristics of Feng's "differing generality and particularity". The second and third sections emphasized the specific use of "differing generality and particularity" in the area of culture, analyzed systematically how Feng you-lan considered the modernity and nationality of Chinese culture from generality and particularity view respectively. The last section summed up all the arguments, tried to evaluate Feng you-lan's thoughts of culture philosophy completely, and speculated the modernization of modern Chinese culture.