The Development Of Western Concept Theory And Marxism Concept Theory

Concept, a basic unit of our language and thinking, is widely applied in almost every corner of our life. As concept has such a profound influence on our life, it must be of great theoretical and realistic significance to explore the subject of philosophical research on concept. However, where should we proceed to develop our exploration on this subject as it is such an abroad one? To this question, philosophy itself has given us an answer. In tradition, the basic questions of philosophy rely on the questions of ontology and epistemology. From these two aspects, we can proceed with our philosophical research on concept, which thus converts into two main questions or two main directions: one is on ontology of concept, that is, research on what concept is. And the other, epistemology of concept, that is, research on how the knowledge of concept is obtained. Following the venation of the history of western philosophy, the article develops its expatiation from these two aspects.First let us take a look at the first question. An inquiry into the question of what concept is is actually an inquiry into the essence of concept, which is in fact an understanding on the relationship between generality and specialty. In resumption, it is a question on universality, for which, we can proceed with further inquiry: what is the connotation of universality in specific? Or what does it mean by being "universal"? Following this question, we will come up with the question on the identity and similarity of universality. For this question, Mr. Zhang Shiying has written a book to unveil the connotation of universality. Along with the direction of identity and similarity, if we put the universality view into the field of the philosophical history of the western, we will be able to identify the two directions of the universality view of traditional western philosophy and the concept view of contemporary western philosophy, the former of which is the subject of part two of this article, and the latter, subject of part three.Now we come up to the second question. The epistemological view on universality, in its direct appearance, develops mainly in the scope of the classical western philosophy. One sub-question of this issue is "How the epistemological view on universality is possible". Those modern conception theories raised by the analytic philosophy, viewed in the formation dimension, could be put into the structure of epistemology. But they actually form individually the third part of the article, owing to conforming to the whole writing clue that the essence of the universality is divided at the beginning of the article into two forms, that is, "identity " and " similarity".Marxism philosophy is a very important part of the family of philosophy, especially in our country where the influence of Marxism philosophy is absolutely fundamental and deep. The research on concept should not ever exclude Marxism philosophy. What is more, developing Marxism philosophy has been a mission of many a philosopher. Probing and exploring the concept view of Marxism philosophy and by associating and comparing it with concept view of western philosophy will be of great contribution to the development of Marxism philosophy.Encompassed with the above contents, the design of the structure of this article is as follows: part one is to unveil the essence of concept. After a brief introduction to the meaning of research and current researching situation, the part turns to a logical analysis on the concept in general. This brings the question of essence of concept. The last section is an elicitation of the basic trend of the connotation: identity and similarity.Part two focuses on the evolvement modality of universality view in western philosophy where the essence of universality is understood as identity. It first describes the general modality of universality view in western philosophy history, and then turns to a preliminary inquiry into the two basic questions of ontology and epistemology.Part three is an introduction on the basic modality of contemporary concept view. It describes briefly some background of the formation of the theory the three kinds of basic views.Part four is a basic discussion on the concept view of Marxism philosophy. After a brief introduction to the basic connotation of the concept view of Marxism philosophy the part begins to the contents of some thinking on the doctrine of concept of Marxism.