Religion, Art And Philosophy: Cultural Modalities In Human Spiritual World

As essence of human existence, practice decides the essence of human spiritual world. Human sense, emotion, thinking, and will are all inherent factors that may affect human practice. They decide the fact that human existence is a kind of significant existence with a certain intention and motive. As the cultural modalities in human spiritual world, and as different ways of expressing human historical thoughts, religion, art and philosophy are exerted by human to stipulate the existence so as to make it accessible and definable. It is on such basis that human spiritual world has been built up. It reflects the basic process of human thoughts in history. Human creative activities in religion, art and philosophy in history reflect both historical significance of human existence and human practice. By means of religion, art and philosophy, human keeps on defining and constructing significance and demonstrate the essence of his existence. However, the problem is how they could be created, and how they were created, and on what basis they were created. All the answers to these questions can only be provided by the scope on which human spirit relies. The reason is that such scopes in human spirit are the initiators who have created and solved the problems. Religion, art and philosophy are just the questions and answers all given by such scopes. Just as what Collin Wood has mentioned,"Spiritual life classifies itself into art, religion and other subjects for the purpose that it can realize its entity through such diversity."Religion, art and philosophy not only have inherent neutrality of their own but also have interactively extrinsic neutrality. They are in human spirit, shining upon and refracting each other. For religion, art and philosophy, neither of them can be independent enough or even take place of another. The complexity and uncertainty of the interpenetration among religion, art and philosophy take toot of the unity of scope of human spiritual world. Religion, art and philosophy are just different external forms based on their unity. They ought to and must be open and develop in a dynamic way.This thesis intends to illustrate the value and significance of life embodied in religion, art and philosophy so as to make it clear that how religion, art and philosophy have become important means by which human thinks of life, the world, the value and significance of human existence and by which he reflects on his living conditions and his future through analysis on the relationship between religion, art, philosophy and unity of scope of human sense, emotion, and significance.The first chapter, The World of Human Sense and Religion, Art, Philosophy, mainly disserts that religion, art and philosophy are cognitions of sense world by human. Religion, art and philosophy are unique ways of practice of human sense."The uniqueness of every essence power is right the unique essence of its essence power and it is thus the unique way of its objectization and also the objective, realistic, animated way of its existence."Through three different objectization forms of religion, art and philosophy, human makes his thought, emotion, and significance of life communicate with each other. Sense finds itself in religion, art and philosophy. They express themselves in different way. Sense of mystery is the initial point where religion came into being. It is also the starting point from which religion spreads around; sense of transition is the source of invention in art while art is the eternal intonation of sense of transition; sense of sublimity is one of the attributes of philosophy world while the latter is a dwelling place of sense of sublimity. Human sense is the precondition of historical existence of religion, art, and philosophy. It is also the consequence of historical existence of religion, art, and philosophy. Sense is thought and experienced in religion, art and philosophy, which are the intrinsic ways of human objectization. They all have intended to touch the sense. The intrinsic sense of sense is right where essence of human lies. In such a sense, the unity of various stipulations on existence of human has been present and developed.The second chapter, The World of Human Emotion and Religion, Art and Philosophy, principally deals with the dissertation that human experiences, perceives, expresses and characterizes the world of human emotion through religion, art and philosophy to embody the indispensability of emotion to human and to religion, art and philosophy, and to embody the complexity and variety of the world of human emotion. In religion, the existence of god has been considered as the basis of human existence. In this sense, god is the condition that human cognizes and expresses his emotions. Human emotion has been embodied a function of communication with god in perception; art is human experience on emotion world and art is in essence life in practice; the emotion world of human reflects human thought and thought can not exist alone without emotion; the world of philosophy is an emotion world with characteristics of reflection and the world of emotion is an world of thought with experience of philosophy.Human emotion is the sustaining existence of religion, art and philosophy, which took shape and developed in the world of human emotion. They are subordinate to and stipulated by emotion. They were given birth and developed along with emotion. Religion, art and philosophy are human rationality of practice which attaches importance to purpose, feedback, experience and reflection of emotion in terms of the world of human spirit. Reflection of emotion is their basic feature. The ability with which human reflects his emotion process has created basic condition of his construction of religion, art and philosophy.The title of the Third Chapter is The Way Human Thinks and Religion, Art and Philosophy. Human gets to cognize the abundance of his world of thinking through different ways of his thinking by religion, art and philosophy and consequently reveals the important role that thinking has played in proof of human existence. In fact, human is a medium of thinking. Religion, art and philosophy are actually experience and destination of the thinking of thinkers as well as the objectives that thinkers create and study. Thinking embodies essence of human by means of religion, art and philosophy, and stipulates them by human essence. Thinking makes it possible that religion, art and philosophy became ways for human to sense, cognize and grasp his self-essence. In religious sense, mysticism can help human, in process of thinking, to realize an upgrade that transcends human himself and bears something of god. In other words, mysticism comes out from the mystery of god. Mysticism itself is right the entity that has put human into the mysterious thinking of god.Thinkers with artistic experience grasp significance of human life by thinking of experience. The experience thinking mode of art is a kind of experience of both experience and taste. In other words, it is an experience thinking mode of a second experience with special dimensionality that takes experience and taste as its objective. Experience thinking is the basis on which human sets significance and establishes dimensions. It makes the construction of the world of art become possible and makes human be human. Philosophic thinking is a kind of thinking with reflection. Just as Dr. Sun Zhengyu, a philosopher of contemporary China, once said,"…in search of philosophy of'ultimate existence','ultimate definition'and'ultimate value', its'ultimate concern'has been realized in a way of self-reflection."The thinking mode of reflection in philosophy is a thinking mode with a characteristic of"skepticism". It is a thinking mode which doubts and questions the ready existence of thinking. It highlights the self-existence of human in the shade of various theoretical topics and logical concepts and makes philosophy obtain its rights of self-realization and self-designing.Thinking has been ways of human meditation on existence since from of old. How an individual connects himself closely to a way of thinking decides the way of construction of his thoughts, or the way how he forms the characteristics of his thoughts. Only with the help of such a speculation on the true nature of thinking, can we grasp the different thinking modes of the essence of religion, art and philosophy, and can we grasp different thinking of religion, art and philosophy on essence of human and thereby achieve the cognition on human spiritual world.The fourth chapter is The World of Human Significance and Religion, Art and Philosophy. The world of human spirit is a system of significance. Here significance refers to the relationship of significance between different texts of significance in human spiritual world. As different texts in such a system, religion, art and philosophy has helped to build up the universe significance of this system. The development of significance in human spiritual world occurred simultaneously in religion, art and philosophy. They are not only the intrinsic structure of significant text of human spiritual world but also the external form. Both the process from latency to forming and from inherence to externalization of significance is a process of formation, development, regulation and improvement of the significance of human spiritual world. Through infinite pursuit of significance, human has transcended his limited life. Significance has prolonged human life to a greater extent and has given the limited human life infinite significance.In religion, significance of human is the condition on which the significance of god's absolute significance realizes. The significance of human is the specific observation point of specific view of god's absolute significance; art is a world of significance where human pursuits truth."A decision should be made in art, to decide what the truth is."Art provides itself with all the view and significance of human and makes human realize his artistic existence or existent art; the world of significance is the real question field of existence of philosophy. Questioning about the significance of self-existence is the ultimate goal of philosophy. The goal of all philosophic ideals is to overcome the isolation and distance between significance and human so as to talk with significance to assimilate the significance of the old philosophic ideals and consequently make it their own significance.Religion, art and philosophy are different modalities observed by people in different views of the existing significance of those who exist. In his historical thinking career, human thinks about the significance of his existence by means of religion, art and philosophy, through which human questions about the essence of human existence, the weight and gravity of human life, and listens to their discourse with unique characteristics and questions about the significance of human existence.The fifth chapter is entitled"Human Will and Religion, Art and Philosophy". Just as Einstein said, that all religion, art and science are branches of a tree. The purpose of all the ideals is to make human life incline to nobility, to lift it up from purely physiologically surviving level, and to guide individual to freedom. Religion, art and philosophy are different pursuits of freedom that has been created by the power of human will. They are ways in which human realizes experience, reflection, creation and transcendence. The basic feature of human will itself in religion is will of love, will of survival, and will of belief. Human released his will into himself and the will released itself into belief and was taken into the primitive of the will of god by will of belief; artistic will is experienced by human in the world of art. Artistic will is a pursuit of probabilities of implementation on creative power of art and a pursuit of possessing the world of art. The essence of artistic will is the will of pursuing art. In nature, both artistic will and will of art belong to one essence: the essence of human. Will of art is essentially artistic will of human. It is the aim of artistic will of human. Only in essence of artistic will can the will of art construct the will of human. Human has always ensured himself with the probability of commanding will of art for artistic will. His negation on the world of art is merely an artistic will. Just as Phisitt?费希特once said,"What kind of person you are decides what kind of philosophy you choose."The will to pursue the significance of existence makes it possible for human to create philosophy in different sense. It makes human keep on improving himself, innovating, accepting new concepts and ideals, transcending, and staying at the starting point all the time. There is always an important and inherent characteristic in human's will to pursue the significance of existence: it leads to integration. Such a will comprehends other wills in its entity to the utmost. It awakes human's will of love, will of learning, will of seeking truth, will of beliefs, and will of freedom. It reveals human self-consciousness, keeps on awaking and boosting it until human achieve his independent dignity and self-liberation."The whole history is nothing but constant changes of human nature", as Marx wrote in Poverty of Philosophy. Human is a historical existence. The historical existence of human sense, emotion, thinking, significance and will decide that the existence of religion, art, and philosophy created by human are also historical existences. Religion, art and philosophy exist in human spiritual world and the unremitting evolving process of the historical sense, emotion, thinking, significance and wills of human. Religion, art and philosophy develop in human's unremitting exploration in history as cultural modalities of human spirit. The history of religion, art and philosophy can be characterized by stipulation in a sense of society and history.Only the existence that has been experienced and reflected by human spirit can construct the existence that is of significance to human; and only the existence that has been mastered and grasped by human spirit can provide human with definite proof of human existence. Therefore, the starting point of varieties of cultural modalities of religion, art and philosophy is based on this premise. With consonant tone and distinct timbre, they jointly present the symphony of human life. And it is the motive of human existence that drives them to create such a symphony. Art, religion and philosophy express, reveal, and characterize in different ways the living state of different people of different times. Their voice of history penetrates time and space. In the world of significance they have revealed, people can bend an ear to the spirit of the whole mankind. They have definitely proved the value and significance of human existence.Man devotes himself in the practice of religion, art and philosophy, and observes himself in them. Religion, art and philosophy are indispensable cultural modalities in the world of human spirit.