关键词: 礼乐文明, 文质论, 社会理论, 政治哲学

Abstract: In this paper, the author argues that, in contrast to the city-state civilization of ancient Greece and the social civilization of the modern West, traditional China has formed a kind of nomos-harmonia civilization, and it is constituted through the theory of nature-culture(wenzhi lun). Zhi is nature and Wen is civilization. It sees culture as internal to nature, an expression of intrinsic essence of nature. Hence civilization origins from nature and cannot transcend, change or destroy nature. Whether it is nature-oriented or culture-oriented, it is fundamentally a kind of culture. How could such a theory constitute nomos-harmonia civilization? The author first discusses about ritual and ceremony, which are used to formulate human feelings. Then comes the nomos system referring to a variety of systems at the social and political level, and nevertheless its constituent principle is the same as ritual and ceremony. On this level of nomos, affection is nature, and order is culture. The collective life of human society is not artificial constitution, but has its foundation in nature. Some basic human relationships are natural, especially that of parents and offspring. Order is found in such a relationship, upon which human civilizations are established. Hence the state is not a necessary evil, or a social contract, or a violent machine, but a cultural transformation of a natural community. Like Western social theories, wenzhi lun (nature-culture theory) does not regard the state as the highest human institute, and hence it should be treated as a social theory. Also similar to the Greek political philosophy, wenzhi lun origins from and returns back to nature.

Key words: nomos-harmonia civilization, nature-culture theory, social theory, political philosophy