Abstract：Up to now, people still use conceptualized and objectified way of thinking of Western traditional philosophy to study Chinese traditional philosophy. In general, the mainstream traditional Chinese philosophy explores the situational metaphysical ontology in real life, and the corresponding way and level of thinking are pre-thinking or situational reflection. The situational ontology and situational reflection in traditional Chinese philosophy are rich in profound phenomenological thought. However, it is known that ancient China did not even have the discipline of “philosophy”. How, then, could it produce the profound situational ontology and situational way of thinking that was explicitly proposed and expounded by the phenomenology theory of modern Western philosophy? The reason lies in Chinese characters. A Chinese character contains an indication of pronunciation as well as an indication of meaning. More importantly, unlike alphabetical writings which are one-dimensional and linear, Chinese writing system is not based on an alphabet. Chinese characters are in a square shape. The pattern of Chinese character structures can be roughly categorized into five types: left-right, left-middle-right, top-bottom, and top-middle-bottom. These are tow-dimensional flat structures. They are ideographic, representing a situational image way of thinking. Therefore, Chinese characters actually gave birth to and nurtured situational ontology and situational reflection in traditional Chinese philosophy. Chinese characters and Chinese traditional philosophy are inherently connected. In terms of creation, Chinese characters are related to keeping records using string and knots. In other words, using knots for record keeping came first, then people transferred this approach to a flat structure, resulting in the divinatory diagram schema of the Book of Changes. The diagram of hexagrams then simultaneously diverged in two directions: in one direction it developed into ancient Chinese way of counting and calculating, giving birth to arithmetics; in the other direction it evolved into Chinese characters in ancient China, giving birth to the Chinese writing system.
康中乾, 王江维. 情境本体和情境反思：汉字与中国传统哲学的内通性[J]. 《深圳大学学报》（人文社科版）, 2022, 39(6): 31-39.
KANG Zhong-qian, WANG Jiang-wei. Situational Ontology and Situational Reflection: Connection between Chinese Characters and Traditional Chinese Philosophy. , 2022, 39(6): 31-39.
2022, Vol. 39 
粤公网安备44030502007936号