Chinese Traditional Concept Of Harmony And Its Contemporary Value

Harmony is both the keynote and essence of traditional Chinese culture and it constitutes the basic spirit and ways of thinking for the Chinese culture which exists for thousands of years. Traditional Chinese concept of harmony contains a wealth of harmonious resource and wisdom and it is not only the internal ideological motivation for the development of various dynasties in Chinese history, but also the valuable cultural resources for us to build a socialist harmonious society and harmonious world. We must carry forward the traditional Chinese concept of harmony, strive to reflect the characteristics and requirement of the times, use its essence, remove its dregs, serve the present by the past and make the innovation.Using some reference materials, the traditional Chinese concept of harmony comprehensively and its contemporary value were analyzed and assessed in this paper by considering the unity of logic and historical development, the combination of exegesis and interpretation and the comparison methods. The meaning of traditional Chinese concept of harmony, its cultural background and historical development were mainly inspected. The three theoretical form of harmony were analyzed in detail and the position of harmony in the Chinese culture was discussed. On this basis, the characteristics and ideological essence of harmony in Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism which are physical and mental harmony, group harmony and cosmic harmony respectively, were assessed comprehensively. Thus, the achievements and shortcomings of the traditional Chinese concept of harmony were revealed, which provided a theoretical basis for the next discussion of the contemporary values of the traditional Chinese concept of harmony. In the discussion of the contemporary values of the traditional Chinese concept of harmony, both the relationship and positive reference between traditional concept of harmony and scientific concept of development, building harmonious society and harmonious world were mainly inspected.The feature of this paper is that in spite of the different historical background for traditional and contemporary Chinese culture, the desire for people to achieve a harmonious society is the same and it has the historical properties with the same strain. On the basis of valuable intellectual resources of traditional concept of harmony, we should understand and grasp the relationship of the history, reality, inheritance and innovation properties for the concept of harmony scientific and make traditional Chinese culture of harmony emit the light of civilization, which will shock the Western world once again in the process of building a modern society and a harmonious world.