On Cultural Communication

"On Cultural Communication" sets the target on the following Questions:Are the ongoing communicational practice among all the nations and countries worldwide possible? And How is this possible? The central topic is "How people from different cultural background construct and understand meaning system?" mostly include the following concrete topics:"Is the inter-cultural communication possible?", "Is different cultures mutually understandable? Or say, commensurable?", "whether the countries and their cultures gain their new lives in the 21st century when modernization and globalization are taking their way? ". The unique perspective is to remove the conceptual limen brought by the cultural which people come on. The main interest is to construct the Chinese culture properly according to the actualizing mechanic to acclimatize to the global modernization progress and to China's characteristic Socialist cause.We take cultural communication to be one of the human social practices, the essence of which is the communicating agents' including not only the communication among agents and also communicating among countries and nations. This research will go back to the unique given things acquired by the agent through her idiographic existence and thus known from nature. The legitimacy premise, practical plight, and actualizing mechanic are summarized. The understanding of the whole world including human world and natural world is promoted. This research based on the basic social epistemological methods, and will widen and deepen the domain, object and methodology of social epistemology.There are totally 6 chapters, with a introduction raising the problem, the theoretical and practical significance, the logic and methodology.In the 1st chapter, we take up with the connotation and denotation of the "cultural communication ". According to the already existed suggestions and concepts, via an analysis through "culture and civilization", "culture and philosophy", "cultural, economical, political, military, communication, and material, spiritual and civilizational communication", we put forward an interpretation of the phrase" cultural communication", and gives a clearly defined domain of my research.In chapter 2, we systematically cards the historical progress of cultural communication from a diachronical point of view, and on this base, we draw a general definition of "cultural communication". This chapter is established in the history of world's cultural history, and focus on the long history of cultural communication, i.e., the cultural communication in agricultural age (from the remote antiquity to 15th century), industrial age (15-19th century) and information age (the end of 19th century to today). Through a outline and an analysis of the main picture of the three ages, we try to find the basic forms, the concrete figures, the main rules and the social functions of cultural communication. Three key pronging problems are elementarily discussed and explained.In chapter 3, we try to analysis and dig the existential base of cultural communication on a ontological level. Firstly, we mine historical causes, and practical conditions of the happening of cultural communication from a genetical point of view. Then we briefly analyze the social-historical and theoretical premises, and bring forward the substantial base for cultural communication to be a social and vital phenomenon. On this base, we launch a further examination and exploration.In chapter 4, we identify and analyze several theoretical and practical plights of cultural communication from a synchronical point of view, i.e., the legitimacy problem of the cultural subject, and the possible communication and mutual understanding among the subjects. Firstly, we answer the formal by establishing conditions, self-consciousness and the practical construction of cultural spokesman, to say, the legitimacy of the communicating agents. And then, we give a deep explanation of whether the exchange and understanding among the agents commensurable. At last, we give a clear picture of the depth, scope, and the complexity of the practical communication that the different communicational practice types illustrate.In chapter 5, we give a philosophical reflection on cultural communication's practical plight from a epistemological perspective on the base of chapter 3, the ontology of cultural communication. Cultural communication is the mutual understanding and cognition among different agents. From a epistemological perspective, knowing include two different side, knowing of the objective things and knowing of other persons, both in a subject--object mode. Cultural communication practice shows its complexity in this via-objects epistemological function. To uncover this riddle of complexity, in this chapter we try to mine the possible epistemological root of the practical plights of the real communicational practice from the following three layers:inter-subjectivity problem involved in the real communicating process, the identity of some problems in a philosophical hermeneutic level, and several main relations in the communicating process.In chapter 6, a "return analysis" is given as to the re-thinking and re-deeming of China's reality. With a rich cultural heritage, China is facing the cultural communication with all cultures through out the world. That is not easy. The above analysis of practical plight and realizing mechanic, though far from its mature form, can surly make significant suggestions on China's social development and the cultural communication involved. Chinese culture was found its vegetal vigor and space to its solidification, development and flourish in the inundated communication with other cultures. In this chapter we meant to begin and deepen "Chinese way of cultural communication", which is a highly changeable and complex research program, although my reasoning and discussion is neither conclusive nor sufficient. This is just the standpoint of my dissertation.