Home Signs and beliefs What is the difference between the Eastern type of thinking and Western European. What type of thinking do you have? Western or Eastern? What conclusion would you draw from this picture?

Signs and beliefs

What is the difference between the Eastern type of thinking and Western European. What type of thinking do you have? Western or Eastern? What conclusion would you draw from this picture?

Reflections on the book by Alexander Bogadelin "Kikimora and others ..."

RETRACT SECOND. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EASTERN AND WESTERN THINKING. YOUNG VERSION

Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss psychoanalyst, cultural philosopher and founder of analytical psychology, conceptualized the difference between Eastern and Western thinking in his Psychological Commentary on The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation.
In terms of modern psychology oriental type thinking is called introverted (i.e. directed inward). It is characterized by a metaphysical understanding of the individual soul, spirit, which are part of the World Mind.
In contrast to the eastern, "style" Western thinking can be called extraverted (directed outward). For him, "mind" (mind, spirit or soul) has lost its metaphysical essence since the Middle Ages. It is understood as the rational functioning of the soul, the mindset, the mentality of the individual.
If the result of the eightfold path is the "self-liberation" of man, then the Christian West considers man entirely dependent on the mercy of God, or at least the church as the only earthly instrument of salvation sanctioned by God.

Jung goes on to make a very subtle observation about the reflection of the type of thought in religious attitudes.
“The religious point of view always expresses and formulates the essential psychological attitude and its specific prejudices, even when it comes to people who have forgotten or never heard of their religion. In spite of everything, the West remains wholly and completely Christian as far as its psychology is concerned. Mercy originates somewhere else; in any case, forgiveness comes from outside. Any other point of view is sheer heresy. … Through fear, remorse, promises, obedience, self-humiliation, good deeds and praise, he (Western man – A.B.) tries to propitiate the great power, which turns out to be not himself, but a totaliter aliter, Completely Other, completely flawless and “external”.
The East, on the contrary, shows sympathetic tolerance for those “lower” spiritual stages, when a person, in his complete ignorance of karma, still worries about the sin and torments of his own imagination, believing in absolute gods, which turn out to be just a veil of illusion woven by his own unenlightened mind. Thus the soul acquires absolute importance: it is the all-pervading Breath, the essence of the Buddha; she is the Spirit of the Buddha, the One. Everything that exists comes from it and all separate forms dissolve back into it. This is the basic psychological prejudice that pervades the whole being. oriental man seeps into all his thoughts, feelings and actions, no matter what faith he professes.
And further.
“The Eastern attitude nullifies the Western, and vice versa. It is impossible to be a good Christian and free yourself from your own sins, just as it is impossible to be a Buddha and worship God.”

If we return to psychology again, then we can say that consciousness in the Western sense of it is unimaginable without the "ego", i.e. "I" - aware. In the Eastern interpretation, consciousness is able to transcend the limits of its ego-state, merging with the World Mind. Ego-consciousness for the Eastern world is considered the lowest state, avidya. Whereas samadhi (liberation) is associated with mental states where the ego is practically dissolved.
And in this plane there may be a compromise that allows you to "connect the unconnected." Western psychology recognizes an area of consciousness that is not controlled by the mind - the unconscious. “It is safe to assume that what the East calls “mind” must correspond more to our “unconscious” than to “mind” as we understand it,” writes Jung.
In modern dictionaries, the unconscious is defined as: 1) a set of mental processes, acts and states caused by the phenomena of reality, in the influence of which the subject is not aware of; 2) a form of mental reflection in which the image of reality and the attitude of the subject to it do not act as an object of special reflection, constituting an undivided whole.
But we will be more interested in the contents of the unconscious. There is a point of view that it consists only of instincts or of repressed or forgotten contents that were once part of the conscious mind. But for Jung, the unconscious is an image-creating mind that contains an unlimited number of archaic motifs reflected in dreams and mythology. This is how he explains the unity of mythological motifs among peoples separated by continents, when migration as a means of communication was practically excluded.
"The unconscious," he writes, "is the birthplace of forms of thought, just as our tradition considers the Universal Mind."
We will return to the unconscious, but no longer individual, but collective and try to determine the archetypes that inhabit it. And I would like to end this digression with the perspective that Jung predicts:
“The affirmation of spirit over matter, opus contra naturam (subjugation of nature (lat.)), is a symptom of the youth of the human race, still enjoying the use of the most powerful weapon ever invented by nature: the conscious mind. The maturity of mankind, which lies in the distant future, can develop completely other ideal. Over time, even victories and conquests cease to be a dream.”

A few preliminary words -
The origin of paganism -
Reflection on the Path
1. Topic for reflection -
2. Cotton of one palm -
3. Combination of incompatible -
4. The difference between Eastern and Western thinking -
5. Western interpretation of the Way -
6. The Lonely Way of Friedrich Nietzsche -
7. Technical and humanitarian balance -
8. The humanitarian component of the balance -
9. Excessive variety. Big and small Ways -
10. Meditation on "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" -
11. Personal balance -
12. Awareness of the Way -
13. Loneliness Walking the Path -
14. Moving on - how scary -

When Horace Capron first arrived on the island of Hokkaido in 1871, he was looking for signs human life among endless prairies, forest thickets and gloomy mountains. “A deadly silence reigned in this magnificent landscape,” he later wrote. “Not a single leaf moves, not a bird chirps, not another living creature.” This is a timeless place, he thought, downright prehistoric.

“How strange that such a rich and beautiful land, belonging to one of the oldest and most densely populated countries in the world ... remains uninhabited for so long and almost as unknown as the African deserts,” Kapron reflected.

This is the outskirts of Japan - its own version of the American "Wild West". Hokkaido is the northernmost of the Japanese islands, separated from Honshu by rough seas. Travelers, daring to move, doomed themselves to a life in harsh climatic conditions (it is extremely cold here in winter by Japanese standards), among volcanic landscapes and wildlife. Therefore, the Japanese government basically did not bother the Ainu, the indigenous people of Hokkaido, who hunted and fished.

Everything changed in the middle of the 19th century. Fearing a Russian invasion, the Japanese government decided to repopulate their northern island, recruiting former samurai and sending them to Hokkaido. Soon thousands of settlers followed the samurai, and farms, ports and railways. American agronomists like Horace Capron were brought in to teach the new settlers the best Western farming techniques. In just 70 years, the population has grown from a few thousand to over two million. In the new millennium, Hokkaido is inhabited by almost six million people.

Until Emperor Meiji decided to settle Hokkaido, only the Ainu lived on the island.

The formation of our thinking may even be influenced by what kind of plants our ancestors grew.

Few people living in Hokkaido today have ever had to explore and conquer the wilderness. Yet psychologists have found that the "frontier spirit" still manifests itself in the way they think, feel and reason compared to people living in Honshu, just 54 km away. They are more individualistic, more proud of success, more ambitious for personal growth, and less connected to the people around them. This "cognitive profile" is closer to America than to the rest of Japan.

The history of Hokkaido is just one example in a growing body of research that studies how social environments shape our minds. Our thinking may even have been shaped in a certain way depending on what kind of crops our ancestors grew. And a flowing river can mark the boundary between two different cognitive styles.

Wherever we live, understanding these forces will help us understand our own thinking a little better.

"Weird" Minds

Until recently, scientists have largely ignored the global diversity of thought. In 2010, in an authoritative article published in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences, they wrote that the vast majority of participants in psychological research were "Western, educated, developed, wealthy and democratic" or "weird" for short ( “western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic” - “Weird”). Nearly 70% were Americans, most of whom were students who sacrificed their time to take part in these experiments in the hope of earning pocket money or course credit.

The default assumption was that this sample group might represent universal truths about human nature that all people are basically the same. If that were true, the western bias wouldn't matter. However, the small number of available studies, in which the subjects were people from other cultures, showed that this was far from the case. “Westerners – and Americans in particular – were moving to the far end of the distribution,” says Joseph Henrich of the University of British Columbia, co-author of the study.

The population of Hokkaido has grown rapidly from a few thousand to the six million people who live there today. (Photo: Alamy)

One of the most notable differences is related to the concepts of "individualism" and "collectivism"; whether you consider yourself independent and self-sufficient, or close-knit and interconnected with other people around you, whether you value the team over the individual. As a rule, for people in the West, individualism is more characteristic, and for the population of Asian countries - India, Japan or China - collectivism.

In most cases, this manifests itself more noticeably than one might expect. When asked about their views and actions, people in individualistic Western societies tend to value individual success over group achievement, which in turn is also associated with a need for greater self-esteem and the pursuit of personal happiness. But such a craving for self-affirmation is also manifested in excessive self-confidence and a tendency to overestimate one's abilities, as evidenced by the results of many experiments. For example, 94% of American professors, when asked about the level of their competence, claimed that it was “above average”.

But, as it turned out, such a tendency to self-inflation is practically absent in a number of studies conducted in East Asia. In some cases, participants were more likely to underestimate their abilities than to inflate their sense of self-worth. People living in individualistic societies may also place more emphasis on personal choice and freedom.

Holistic thinking permeates the philosophy and culture of the East.

It is important to note that our "social orientation" obviously extends to fundamental approaches to reasoning. People in collectivistic societies tend to think about problems in a more "holistic" way and focus on the relationships and context of the situation. On the other hand, people in individualistic societies tend to focus on individual elements and view the situation as fixed and unchanging.

As an example, imagine seeing a picture of someone tall bullying someone smaller. Without additional information, Westerners are more likely to think that this behavior reflects something significant, and fixate on a big figure: he must be a bad person. “Thinking holistically, you can think about what could be going on between these people: maybe this big guy is the boss or the father,” Heinrich explains.

This style of thinking extends to how we categorize inanimate objects. Suppose you were asked to name two related items in a list containing the words: "train, bus, path." What would you say? People in the West choose "bus" and "train" because they are types of vehicles. And a holistic thinker would say "train" and "path" because he focuses on the functional relationship between them - one element is necessary for the other to work.

Social orientation can even change how you see. An eye movement study by Richard Nisbett at the University of Michigan found that East Asian subjects spent more time looking at the background of an image—processing the context. But Americans tend to focus on the center of the image most of the time. Interestingly, this difference is found in children's drawings from Japan and Canada, hence the suggestion that different ways of seeing appear at a very young age. What we focus on determines what we later remember.

“If we are what we see, and we pay attention to different things, then we live in different worlds', Heinrich says.

There are no clear boundaries between the difference in thinking of both cultures; people in immigrant communities can incorporate both mindsets.

Although some argue that our social orientation has a genetic component, there is evidence that we adopt it from other people. Alex Mesoudi of the University of Essex recently researched the mindsets of British-Bangladeshi families in East London. He found that over the course of a generation, immigrant children adopt more elements of an individualistic worldview and less of a holistic cognitive style. The main driver of the transition is mainly the media.

But why do different styles of thinking come to the fore? The obvious explanation is that they reflect an established philosophy that has come to prevail over time in a particular region. Nisbett points out that Western philosophers emphasize freedom and independence, while Eastern traditions such as Taoism tend to focus on the notion of unity. For example, Confucius emphasized "obligations between emperor and subject, parent and child, husband and wife, elder brother and younger brother, between friend and friend." Various ways visions of the world are embedded in literature, education, political institutions, so it is perhaps not surprising that these ideas also influenced some basic mental processes.

Even so, differences between individual countries point to many other unexpected factors at work.

On the border

Consider the United States, the most individualistic of all Western countries. Historians such as Frederick Jackson Turner have long argued that western expansion fostered an independent spirit as each trailblazer in the wilderness fought for his own survival. In line with this theory, recent psychological research has shown that border states (such as Montana) tend to have higher levels of individualism. However, to confirm the "voluntary settlement theory," psychologists wanted to study another independent example.

William Clark is one of the American agronomists who helped develop Hokkaido. His call "Guys, be ambitious!" personifies the thinking of the pioneers, preserved to this day.

It is for this reason that the example of Hokkaido is so interesting. Like most East Asian countries, collectivist and holistic thinking prevails in Japan. However, the rapid migration to the northern territories resembles the active settlement of the American "Wild West". The Meiji government even hired US agronomists, one of them Horace Capron, to help with farming techniques. If the "voluntary settlement theory" is correct, the pioneer settlers on the island of Hokkaido must have developed more independent views than those in the rest of Japan.

Shinobu Kitayama of Michigan State University found that Hokkaido residents tend to place more importance on self-reliance and personal achievement, as well as emotions such as pride, than Japanese on other islands, and are less concerned about other people's opinions. Next, the study participants were asked to take a social reasoning test in which they were asked to discuss a doping baseball player. The Japanese from other islands tended to explore the circumstances, such as considering the drive to succeed. And the Japanese from Hokkaido blamed the player's personality more or talked about a flaw in his moral character. Again, the tendency to blame personal qualities is characteristic of an individualistic society, and much closer to the responses of the average American.

germ theory

Another (paradoxical) idea is that the difference in thinking is an evolved response to microbes. In 2008, Corey Fincher (University of Warwick) and colleagues analyzed global epidemiological data to show that the level of individualism and collectivism in a region correlates with incidence: the more likely you are to catch an infection, the more you become a collectivist and less an individualist .

In general, the idea is that collectivism, characterized by coherence and respect for others, may encourage more conscientious people to avoid behaviors that help spread the epidemic. It was difficult to prove that the apparent correlation in the real world was not caused by some other factor, such as the relative wealth of the country. But laboratory experiments supported this idea. When people are afraid of illness, they seem to be more accepting of collectivist thinking, such as behaving in line with group behavior.

Hokkaido is no longer a wild borderland, but the history of the region has left an imprint on its inhabitants, endowing them with unique features.

But perhaps the most surprising theory is the farming one. Thomas Talhelm of the University of Chicago studied 28 different provinces in China and found that the orientation of thought is related to the region's agricultural culture.

Talhelm said he was first inspired by his own impressions of the country. During a trip to Beijing, he noticed that in the north, strangers are much more sociable: "If I ate alone, people would come up and talk to me." But in the southern city of Guangzhou, people are more reserved for fear of offending.

Respect for others seemed to be a sign of a more collectivist mentality, so Talhelm wondered what might lie behind the two worldviews within the same country. The split did not correlate with indicators of wealth or modernization. But the researcher noticed that there is a difference in the agricultural crop grown in the regions: in most of the southern regions - rice, in the north - wheat. “The split runs exactly along the Yangtze River,” Talhelm says.

Rice cultivation requires much more collaboration: it is a labor-intensive process involving complex irrigation systems that cover many different farms. In contrast, growing wheat uses about half the labor force and depends on rainfall rather than irrigation. And this means that farmers do not need to cooperate with their neighbors, and they can focus on caring for their own crops.

Compared to other branches of agriculture, rice cultivation requires more collaboration within the community, as it requires intricate irrigation systems spanning many plots.

Can these differences lead to a collectivistic or individualistic mentality? Collaborating with scientists in China, Talhelm tested more than 1,000 students from rice and wheat regions, using the Triadic Holistic Thinking Test, among other measures. Also, the subjects were asked to schematically depict the relationship with their friends and like-minded people. People in individualistic societies tend to draw themselves larger than their friends, and collectivists try to portray everyone the same height. “Americans have a tendency to draw themselves very large,” Talhelm says.

Of course, people from wheat-producing areas scored higher on the individualism scale, and people from rice-growing areas showed more collectivist thinking.

Talhelm tested his hypotheses in India, where the regions are also clearly divided into wheat and rice. The results are similar. Of course, many of the people interviewed are not involved in agriculture, but the historical traditions of their native regions still shape their thinking. "There is some inertia in the culture."

Cognitive kaleidoscope

It is important to emphasize that these are only general trends among a huge number of people. But within each population studied, there is a range of directions. "The black-and-white divide doesn't work from an anthropological point of view," says Delwar Hussain, an anthropologist at the University of Edinburgh who worked with Mesudi on a study of British-Bangladeshi communities in London. As Hussain points out, there are many historical ties between Eastern and Western countries. This means that some people have mastered both ways of thinking. Factors such as age and class will also have an impact.

Absolutely all peoples have made efforts to the emergence of philosophy: from the tundra to the tropics. As the foundations of the origin of philosophy, there are:

1. Social. When a philosophical worldview arises through the decomposition of the tribal system.

2. Intellectual (spiritual). When philosophy arises as a need to move from a value-based form of consciousness to a form based on knowledge. The philosophical worldview is a form of individual human consciousness, each of which expresses in its own way the contradictions of the individual and the world around him. The process of the emergence of philosophy: (see lectures)

Mythology itself is a complex system of education. A system of knowledge emerges. In addition, in mythology there is an irrational moment - magic. The religious worldview arose on the basis of the unity of the new value system and the irrational moment. Philosophical and religious worldview emerge from the mythological and coexist together, (remarks by Filatov)

The emergence of philosophy:

1. It is claimed that philosophy arises from religion on the basis of doubt about the truth of biblical dogmas. Reasons: the basis was the process of the emergence of philosophy in Western Europe in the Middle Ages, where philosophy played an auxiliary role - the interpretation of biblical dogmas. Hence, philosophy comes out of religion, reflecting the same mode of production, and Mars proved that this is impossible.

2. Philosophy arises from the corrupting primitive communal mythology - myth. This concept dominates. Reasons: the basis is the emergence and development of philosophy in Ancient Greece, India, China. And the main authority here is Aristotle, who writes why Thales is the first philosopher, because he was the first to begin to explain the world based on the natural causes of its existence. Aristotle notes that philosophers are those who can compose new myths, which are based on new causes and foundations.

In general, philosophy arose when it became necessary to rename things; when mythological imagery began to be replaced by scientific abstraction. And this moment is determined by the emergence and development of the first stage scientific revolution in the way of thinking. This stage is called the substrate stage. The essence is an abstraction of the concept by which they begin to rename things, containing a real basis. Thales "The world is made of water." This stage laid the foundations of knowledge.

Philosophy arises from the need to move from a system of values to a system of knowledge. M.I. Shakhnovich:

1. For the emergence of scientific consciousness, a radical change was necessary in the way of life of the respective peoples. Engels writes about the Greeks that in the 6th-5th century BC. The Greeks from the peoples of farmers and pastoralists turned into merchants and sailors. In India, at this time, the Aryan civilization arose, a civilization that gave rise to the development of Buddhism (lokayata).

2. In order for philosophy to arise, a state interest in it was necessary. In Greece, the political struggle required the development of rhetoric and logic. 3. In order for philosophy to emerge as a form of freethinking, the relative independence of secular life in relation to spiritual, religious life was necessary. In the literature on understanding religion in ancient world(Greece, Rome, Persia) there were two opinions:

1) In scientific circles: ancient polytheism (the religion of Rome, Greece, Persia) is a mythology that is indoctrinated.

2) An ancient religion is indeed a religion in the truest sense of the word.

In order for philosophy to arise, the practical necessity of that worldview and consciousness was necessary, which would give orientation not only in the external world, but also in the world of politics and economics. The self-development of the market economy raised the theoretical question of the emergence and development of an abstraction system, with the help of which it was possible to describe the development of the cycle of the production process. Heraclitus: "All things turn into fire, and fire turns into things, just like gold is exchanged for a commodity, and a commodity for gold."

For development philosophical outlook needed to work out new system morality, attitudes towards a person, which would emphasize two points:

1) The absolute value of man (man is a microcosm, the measure of all things)

2) The system was supposed to emphasize the relative value of a person, his changing consciousness within the framework of one measure,

In order for philosophy to emerge, some initial knowledge base was needed, which would serve as the basis for further development. cultural development: the beginnings of the first philosophical and scientific schools. The emergence of traditions scientific research, continuity of generations. All the first philosophers of Greece received their status when they went to study in Egypt and Babylon. The Greeks did not respect people who squander their inheritance.

The development of ancient scientific knowledge was especially necessary not only as the formation and development of natural scientific knowledge. At this time, the formation of humanitarian knowledge took place, that is, the same system, abstraction, the content of which could not be reduced to any specific substance of nature. These abstractions reflected the properties of objects (system properties). Socrates laid the foundation for this knowledge. And it was a contribution to the development of the whole culture. This unity of all these foundations was the beginning (cause) that is involved in the emergence of a philosophical worldview. The formation of philosophy as the first form of scientific knowledge was a true necessity, and it laid the foundation for the development of the entire culture of mankind as a whole. In each human epoch, man answers 99% of all the problems put before him by the Greeks, 1% again creates all 100% of the problems of man in another historical epoch. On the other hand, the emergence of a philosophical worldview was a historical accident that might not have materialized.

Features of Western and Eastern styles of thinking. (Jung K.)

Western psychology understands by "mind" the mental function of the psyche. Mind is the "reasonableness" inherent in the individual. In the East, the mind is a cosmic principle, the essence of being in general, while in the West we have come to the conclusion that the mind forms an indispensable condition for cognition, and therefore for the world as representation. In the East there is no conflict between religion and science, because science there is not based on a predilection for facts, religion is based on faith alone: the East is characterized by religious knowledge and a knowing religion. With us, a person is incommensurably small, and the mercy of God decides everything; and in the East, man is God who saves Himself. The deities of Tibetan Buddhism belong to the realm of illusory appearances and projections generated by the mind - nevertheless, they exist; but with us the illusion remains an illusion, and therefore, in fact, nothing. Even a superficial acquaintance with Eastern thought is enough to notice the fundamental differences between the West and the East. The East relies on psychic reality, that is, on the psyche as the main and only condition for existence. One gets the impression that this Eastern intuition is a psychological phenomenon rather than the result of philosophical reflection. We are talking about a typically introverted attitude, as opposed to the equally typically extroverted point of view of the West. As you know, introversion and extraversion are character traits inherent in the temperament or even the constitution of the individual; it is impossible to artificially form them under normal circumstances. In exceptional cases, they can be developed by an effort of will, but only under special circumstances. Introversion, so to speak, is the "style" of the East, its constant collective attitude; extraversion is the "style" of the West. In the West, introversion is perceived as an abnormal, painful and generally unacceptable phenomenon. Freud identifies it with the autoerotic mindset.

The Christian West considers man entirely dependent on the mercy of God, or at least the church, as the only, sanctioned by God, earthly instrument of man's salvation. The East, however, insistently affirms that man is the only cause of his higher development, for the East is turning into "self-liberation."

That the East can so easily get rid of the Self seems to indicate a "mind" that cannot be identified with our "mind." It is quite obvious that in the East the ego does not play such a role as it does with us. The Eastern mind seems to be less egocentric, its contents are probably not so rigidly related to the subject, and perhaps those states in which the Self is weakened are considered more important.

Philosophy is multifaceted. The field is vast, problematic layers, areas of philosophical research are diverse. Meanwhile, in various teachings, only certain aspects of this complex phenomenon are often one-sidedly emphasized. For example, attention is focused on the connection "philosophy - science" or "philosophy - religion" in abstraction from the rest of the complex of issues. In other cases, the inner world of a person or language, etc., is turned into the only and universal object of philosophical interest. The artificial narrowing of the problematics gives rise to impoverished images of philosophy. Real philosophical interests, on the other hand, are in principle directed to the entire diversity of socio-historical experience. Thus, Hegel's system included the philosophy of nature, the philosophy of history, politics, law, art, religion, morality, that is, it embraced the world of human life and culture in its diversity. The structure of Hegelian philosophy largely reflects the problems of philosophical worldview in general. The richer the philosophical concept, the wider the field of culture becomes in it the subject of worldview comprehension.

The historical-materialistic approach made it possible to understand philosophy as a complex, multidimensional phenomenon, taking into account the entire system of connections in which it manifests itself in the spiritual life of society. This approach corresponds to the real essence of philosophy and at the same time meets the acute modern need for a broad, full-fledged understanding of the world, which cannot be achieved on the path of narrow specializations. philosophical thought.

Considering philosophy as a cultural-historical phenomenon makes it possible to cover the entire dynamic complex of its problems, interrelations, and functions. The social life of people, when considered culturally, appears as a single, integral process associated with the formation, functioning, storage, and transmission of cultural-historical values.

Being effective method historical research, the culturological approach can play a significant role in the development of the theory of certain social phenomena, since it acts as a summary, a generalization of their real history. Concluding that philosophy is based on the understanding of human history, K. Marx had in mind not the actual description of the historical process, but the identification of patterns and trends in history. Accordingly, the philosopher, in contrast to the historian, seemed to him a theoretician, generalizing historical material in a special way and forming on this basis a philosophical and theoretical worldview.

From a historical point of view, philosophy is not the primary, simplest form of consciousness. By the time of the emergence of philosophy, mankind had come a long way, accumulated various skills of action, accompanying knowledge and other experience. The emergence of philosophy is the birth of a special, secondary type of social consciousness, aimed at comprehending the already established forms of cultural practice. It is no coincidence that the way of thinking embodied in philosophy, addressed to the entire field of culture, is called critical-reflexive.

Beautiful- an aesthetic category that expresses the absolutely positive significance of an object for all of humanity and each person individually, as well as expressing the degree of human dominance over this object (degree of freedom, skill).

The processes taking place in the world today pose a number of problems for the world community not only of a socio-economic, but also of a cultural nature. On the one hand, the prospects for the development of a multipolar world require intercultural interaction, a dialogue of cultures. On the other hand, the growing intensity of communication, political, economic ties does not contribute to understanding and cultural rapprochement. The peoples of the world became physically close before they learned to understand each other. This is the relevance of the consideration of this topic.

The division of cultures into Western and Eastern implies not only their geographical location, but also the different mentality of the peoples inhabiting these territories, that is, the difference in the characteristics of the ways and methods of knowing the world, scientific, religious, artistic, aesthetic and spiritual values, basic worldviews, socio-economic and political structures. As the German ethnographer Leo Frobenius noted at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, world history is the history of "the eternal struggle between Western civilization and the world of the East" Culturology / Ed. N.G. Bagdasaryan. - M., 1999. S. 24 ..

A review of the problem of the difference between Western and Eastern types of thinking implies the attitude of consciousness to being, as well as ways and methods of knowing the world. It is also necessary to stipulate that dualism is considered in relation to the Western and Hindu-Buddhist, Taoist-Confucian worldviews as more opposed to Islamic, based, like Christian, on the religion of Judaism, and also, in philosophical and scientific aspects, on ancient views.

In this period of global change, interest in Eastern culture is intense, both throughout the world and in Russia, and in general becomes a significant phenomenon. The range of interests is connected not only with ecological, aesthetic and exotic aspects, not only with the pragmatic, communicative, but also with the spiritual side. On the one hand, this interest is formal. On the other hand, representatives of the Western world turned to the spiritual, essential foundations of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism. Does it not follow from this that the pragmatic and rational type of the Western personality needs a certain moral position, which he is looking for in religious beliefs or philosophical ideas, methods of spiritual practices of the East.

As C. G. Jung notes in his work “On the Psychology of Eastern Meditation”, the inconsistency of Western views is reflected primarily in religious teachings, since here the beneficial influence comes from outside - from religion and "God's Grace". In turn, religion directs the aspiration of individuals in love for their neighbor "as for oneself."

There is a prejudice regarding the inherent value of the Eastern type of thinking, philosophical views, which opposes them to active, rational, pragmatic thinking and positive philosophy in the West. This attitude, perhaps primarily, is rooted in the ideas of Western European imperialism of the 19th century, as well as the somewhat distorted idea of F. Nietzsche about the “superman”, which contributed to the perception of Indian and Chinese cultures as barbaric, dark and ignorant, in need of the expansion of Western progress. So the ways of “liberation of personal consciousness”, characteristic of Eastern teachings, are interpreted by the followers of Z. Freud as “depersonalization” in the sense of regression to primitive forms of consciousness, which was served by the Freudian interpretation of the principle of “nirvana” as the desire of the individual to return to the “mother’s womb of the oceanic consciousness (unconscious). aesthetic economic culture

In the textbook "Culturology", which considers characteristic national types, a clear definition of this phenomenon is given: "the virtues of a Western person are energy and intensity, fashion and sensation, an Eastern person is the exact middle and mediocrity, noiselessness and withering, about the virtues of a Russian person - passivity and patience , conservatism and harmony” Culturology. Textbook for students of higher educational institutions / Ed. prof. Drach G.V. - Rostov-on-Don, 1997. P.339. .

Its focus on knowledge and development inner world subject, the Eastern worldview and, in particular, Buddhism, led representatives of European, Russian philosophy and religious thought to characterize it as: "religion of fatigue" (O. Spengler), "selfish magic" (S. N. Trubetskoy), "religion egoism” (V. S. Solovyov), “pessimistic doctrine” (A. Men). Contrasting the Eastern and European types of thinking, Hegel considered the Western, extreme type, as "independent consciousness, for which being-for-itself is the essence", and formal Eastern, as "non-independent consciousness, for which life or being-for-some-other is the essence”: “the first is the master, the second is the slave” Hegel G.W.F. Phenomenology of the Spirit. - SPb., 1992. P. 103 ..

Such a "distorted" view of Eastern teachings, according to J. Botsman, is inherent in Europeans in connection with the desire to consider all other philosophical and religious doctrines through the prism of Greek metaphysics. While primitive peoples perceived nature as a whole, Western thinking is characterized by a dilemma, which is based on the problem of comparison with the reality of reasoning, since the mind has the property of being alienated from reality.

This difficulty, according to J. Linden, is a feature of the very process of symbolization and logical reasoning, since in order to analyze the abstract properties of the world, an individual must be excluded from consideration of himself, which complicates the Eurocentrism inherent in European consciousness, as well as the feeling of the priority of "high" culture over "barbarian ", ideas about the difference in mental abilities highly developed peoples and peoples at lower levels of evolution.

Thus, the ideologist of Eurocentrism, the German theologian and philosopher E. Troelch argued that non-European peoples lack historical self-awareness and a critical attitude towards the past, and only European civilization, which inherited the great ancient culture and professing the "Holy truths of Christianity", gave birth to a spirit capable of realizing the unity human race and penetrate all countries. The American anthropologist P. Bitek called this view "intellectual smuggling" that European scientists bring to non-European cultures, which, for example, finds expression in the distortion of the results of studies of religious beliefs in the field of African studies.

As for the differences between Western and Eastern types of thinking, which can be defined as left hemispheric - Western, and integral - Eastern, they reflect, first of all, the ways of cognition, where in the empirical sense, Eastern philosophy has always been more scholastic and less scientific than Western . In particular, V. Solovyov in his early works ("Criticism Western philosophy", "Philosophical beginnings whole knowledge", "Criticism of abstract principles"), considering the antithesis of East and West, characterized the Western as "abstract" and "analytical-rational", and the Eastern as "whole", "synthetic-intuitive" Solovyov V.S. Philosophical journalism: in 2 t. - M., 1989. T. 1. S. 6 ..

In search of truth, based on rationalism, European consciousness strives outside, towards the social and political absolute. Eastern thinkers, striving for Enlightenment, use reflection in search of not so much theoretical answers to questions about the nature of human existence, as they create methods for managing mental processes leading to deep self-knowledge, the maximum realization of the potential of the individual's psyche. Eastern teachings, due to their practical orientation and synthetic universality, are characterized by the desire to overcome the dualism of knowledge and action, theory and practice.

A distinctive feature of the development of consciousness in European culture is dynamism, which is based on a continuum, but inside it there are constant changes, cyclical advances either forward or backward, characterized either by a holistic vision of the world, or by the dualism of cognition, and in modern conditions by the splitting of consciousness in that number.

So the source of the "universal talent" that left its mark on the best achievements of European culture (and not only European), the ancient Greeks, as F. Engels noted, was in the extraordinary development of both types of thinking. The integrity of ancient Greek thinking was based on the fusion of the ethical, aesthetic and epistemological aspects. While the prevailing development of the left hemisphere type of thinking formed in the Romans severe realism and prudent pragmatism. On the other hand, the powerful agonal spirit of the ancient Greeks and the imperial claims of the ancient Romans contributed to the development of Eurocentrism, characterized by an unbridled desire for power, self-affirming imposition of one's will on the surrounding peoples, individualism, one might say, egocentrism. D. Suzuki believes that the Western mind, corresponding to the Western tradition, is insightful, intellectual, inductive, conceptual, schematic and impersonal.

Aspirations, the goal of the evolution of Western culture, as E. Neumann notes, is "the liberation of man from nature and consciousness from the unconscious" Neumann E. The origin and development of consciousness. - M., 1998. S.391.. This process, underlying the existence of the European type of culture, contributes to the disintegration of Western man. In his studies of Eastern and Western types of thinking, K.G. Jung focuses on this process, which contributes to the splitting of the individual into a conscious personality and an unconscious being. The reason was the sudden intrusion into the European process of development, which is still in a primitive state, "the psychology and spirituality of a culture of a much higher level", which explains the endless relapses of "barbarism" throughout historical development Western civilization. "And so we became highly disciplined, organized and rational, while remaining at the same time primitive beings, with a slave psychology, cut off from education and culture" Jung K.G. Yoga and the West: A Collection. - Lvov, Kyiv, 1994. P. 25 ..

This characteristic reflects the fact that ever more advanced scientific and technological achievements are becoming more dangerous and can lead to global destruction. Another reason for the "spiritual impassability" of the West, Jung considers the historically determined split in the European consciousness.

Analyzing the thought process of the Indian, Jung emphasizes its difference from the European and considers it as "observation of thought", reminiscent of the original way of formulating thoughts among representatives of primitive culture. But the thinking of primitive man is largely an unconscious activity, in which the subject is aware only of its result.

Hinduism, and then Buddhism, created methods that allow you to deeply understand and transform human nature, moreover, proven by the experience of more than one millennium. First of all, this concerns the philosophy and methods of yoga, and then Vedanta, Buddhism, Taoism, the goal of which is the liberation of a limited, egocentric consciousness from any connection with objects and objects. A. Watts believes that physical or social, biological or cultural ties become the basis for such a limited consciousness. One of the main reasons for this is that a person cannot get rid of the influence of his unconscious. According to Jung, the European must first know himself as a subject, that is, his unconscious. But for Western man, in most cases, the desire to repress unconscious material is characteristic. It should be noted that 3. Freud and C. G. Jung differ in their assessment of the unconscious material: for the first, the unconscious is an appendage of consciousness, where everything that is incompatible with consciousness is forced out due to the presence of a number of complexes in the subject; for the second, the unconscious is creative in character, a collective psychic predisposition.

Eastern schools, including yoga, turn to the conscious will in working with the unconscious - to reduce its potential, that is, they strive to ensure that the unconscious covers as little part of the personality as possible. In Buddhism, unconscious behavior, which is understood as "habitual selective acts of consciousness that hide or "isolate" objects from their context," is transformed with the help of "intense concentration, disciplined consciousness" Watts A. Psychotherapy. East and West. - M., 1997. P.79.. Reducing the potential of the conscious contributes to the reflection of the unconscious in symbolism and metaphysics.In European culture, the unconscious is also reflected in symbols, primarily in dreams, but here the individual does not consider it necessary or is not able to analyze them independently.

Methods may include some form of meditation, including focusing on an object, a symbolic image, attempts to suppress verbal thinking or forms of dialectics, and others, including analytical meditation or symbolic interpretation. Methods differ between schools and teachers, and also depend on the motivation and mental organization of the student. The purpose of the method and techniques of liberation is to ensure that the individual himself gets rid of accepted mythologies, from his own illusions, fears of other people and independently cognizes the truth (in the context of Buddhism and Taoism - emptiness as the "true nature of things").

Buddhism does not extensively explore metaphysics and cosmology, and in the latter case, it does not consider the world as such, but the world expressed as an aspect of mental experience, but distinguishable worlds as different levels of consciousness of a living being. Thus, liberation must come from illusory perception, and not so much the physical world, as Watts emphasizes, but from social institutions, from the concepts and forms of thinking with which they are described.

In European philosophy, one can also find a similar idea of an illusory perception of reality by the ancient philosopher Epictetus, and then by E. Cassirer there is a statement that a person lives and perceives the world through the prism of his imaginary emotions and fears, illusions and their loss, his own fantasies about things. Cassirer emphasizes that instead of turning to reality itself, a person is constantly turned to himself, separating physical reality by artificial mediators - immersion in linguistic forms, symbols, artistic images and religious rituals. The illusory nature of perception, as noted by A. Karmin, as a factor that determines human behavior, is facilitated by such a manifestation of the impact of language on thinking as the ability to create verbal illusions that are formed from childhood, in which, for example, knowledge of the name of an object is taken for knowledge about it.

In the study of Eastern teachings as a holistic psychological phenomenon, in particular jnana yoga (yoga of cognition), based on the work of representatives of transpersonal psychology (S. Grof and his school), E.A. Torchinov considers cognition not intellectual, rational knowledge, but " a peculiar, intuitive gnosis. According to this school, cognition is the main means of achieving liberation, which is based on a kind of "intellectual intuition" of the self-revealing absolute, "identical with the last basis of the subjectivity of the cognizer." It is characteristic that in Western philosophy, in particular, in the work "Critique of Pure Reason", speaking of the purely theoretical and abstract possibility of knowing things in themselves, Kant notes that the subject needs to free himself from his inherent forms of a priori sensory contemplation (space and time) and the categories of reason. And then he considered it necessary to acquire a new one, non-sensory type of contemplation, which Schelling later called "intellectual intuition."

Thus, using the characteristics of Eastern thinking by D. Suzuki, we can say that the Eastern mind is “synthetic, integrating, impenetrable, deductive, non-systematic, dogmatic, intuitive (rather even affective), spiritual-individual and social-group” Fromm E., Suzuki D., Martino R. Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis. - M., 1997. S. 11 ..

Based on the foregoing, we can draw the following conclusions that European and Eastern types of thinking are distinguished by the dominance of one or another type of thinking, which is expressed in the ways of knowing the world and its description, since each nation dismembers, structures and classifies the observed phenomena from the standpoint of its own mentality and native language requirements. European and Eastern types of thinking differ in their orientation and ways of realizing the personality.

It can be assumed that the basis of the Western personality's interest in Eastern traditions and methods of spiritual self-improvement of the individual are: fear of global catastrophes, to which the accelerating scientific and technological progress leads; loss of illusions in relation to a number of values of Western civilization and, in particular, the value of the individual and human relationships; the loss and, first of all, among young people of the moral guidelines of responsibility, compassion, a sense of duty, the desire for self-improvement, an inclination towards a using style of being; confidence in the effectiveness of oriental traditional methods of self-realization.

As sociologists and psychologists have been writing for a long time, in the Western world market relations invade deeply intimate spheres of life. Oriental culture makes it clear that in the future, for humanity, a transformation will be important that is directed not outside, but inside a person, and which should be facilitated by a new understanding of life and death.

Bibliography

1. Hegel G.W.F. Phenomenology of the Spirit. - St. Petersburg, 1992.
2. Cultural studies. Textbook for students of higher educational institutions / Ed. prof. Drach G.V. - Rostov-on-Don, 1997.
3. Neumann E. Origin and development of consciousness. - M., 1998.
4. Soloviev V.S. Philosophical journalism: in 2 volumes - M., 1989.
5. Watts A. Psychotherapy. East and West. - M., 1997.
6. Fromm E., Suzuki D., Martino R. Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis. - M., 1997.
7. Jung K.G. Yoga and the West: A Collection. - Lvov, Kyiv, 1994.

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on the topic: The difference between Eastern and Western thinking

As C. G. Jung notes in his work “On the Psychology of Eastern Meditation”, the inconsistency of Western views is reflected primarily in religious teachings, since here the beneficial influence comes from outside - from religion and the “Grace of God”. In turn, religion directs the aspiration of individuals in love for their neighbor "as for oneself."

There is a prejudice regarding the inherent value of the Eastern type of thinking, philosophical views, opposing them to active, rational, pragmatic thinking and positive philosophy in the West. This attitude, perhaps primarily, is rooted in the ideas of Western European imperialism of the 19th century, as well as the somewhat distorted idea of F. Nietzsche about the “superman”, which contributed to the perception of Indian and Chinese cultures as barbaric, dark and ignorant, in need of the expansion of Western progress. So the ways of “liberation of personal consciousness”, characteristic of Eastern teachings, are interpreted by the followers of Z. Freud as “depersonalization” in the sense of regression to primitive forms of consciousness, which was served by the Freudian interpretation of the principle of “nirvana” as the desire of the individual to return to the “mother’s womb of the oceanic consciousness (unconscious). aesthetic economic culture

With its focus on the knowledge and development of the inner world of the subject, the Eastern worldview and, in particular, Buddhism, led representatives of European, Russian philosophy and religious thought to characterize it as: "religion of fatigue" (O. Spengler), "selfish magic" (S N. Trubetskoy), “religion of egoism” (V. S. Solovyov), “pessimistic doctrine” (A. Men). Contrasting the Eastern and European types of thinking, Hegel considered the Western, extreme type, as "independent consciousness, for which being-for-itself is the essence", and formal Eastern, as "non-independent consciousness, for which life or being-for-some-other is the essence”: “the first is the master, the second is the slave” Hegel G.W.F. Phenomenology of the Spirit. - SPb., 1992. P. 103 ..

This difficulty, according to J. Linden, is a feature of the very process of symbolization and logical reasoning, since in order to analyze the abstract properties of the world, an individual must be excluded from consideration of himself, which complicates the Eurocentrism inherent in European consciousness, as well as the feeling of the priority of "high" culture over "barbarian ", ideas about the difference in the mental abilities of highly developed peoples and peoples standing at lower stages of evolution.

Thus, the ideologist of Eurocentrism, the German theologian and philosopher E. Troelch argued that non-European peoples lack historical self-awareness and a critical attitude towards the past, and only European civilization, which inherited the great ancient culture and professed the "Holy Truths of Christianity", gave rise to a spirit capable of realizing the unity of the human race and penetrate all countries. The American anthropologist P. Bitek called this view "intellectual smuggling" that European scientists bring to non-European cultures, which, for example, finds expression in the distortion of the results of studies of religious beliefs in the field of African studies.

As for the differences between Western and Eastern types of thinking, which can be defined as left hemispheric - Western, and integral - Eastern, they reflect, first of all, the ways of cognition, where in the empirical sense, Eastern philosophy has always been more scholastic and less scientific than Western . In particular, V. Solovyov in his early works ("Criticism of Western Philosophy", "Philosophical Principles of Integral Knowledge", "Criticism of Abstract Principles"), considering the antithesis of East and West, characterized the Western as "abstract" and "analytical-rational", and the eastern as "whole", "synthetic-intuitive" Solovyov V.S. Philosophical journalism: in 2 vols. - M., 1989. Vol.1. C. 6..

So the source of the "universal talent" that left its mark on the best achievements of European culture (and not only European), the ancient Greeks, as F. Engels noted, was in the extraordinary development of both types of thinking. The integrity of ancient Greek thinking was based on the fusion of ethical, aesthetic and epistemological aspects. While the prevailing development of the left hemisphere type of thinking formed in the Romans severe realism and prudent pragmatism. On the other hand, the powerful agonal spirit of the ancient Greeks and the imperial claims of the ancient Romans contributed to the development of Eurocentrism, characterized by an unbridled desire for power, self-affirming imposition of one's will on the surrounding peoples, individualism, one might say, egocentrism. D. Suzuki believes that the Western mind, corresponding to the Western tradition, is insightful, intellectual, inductive, conceptual, schematic and impersonal.

Aspirations, the goal of the evolution of Western culture, as E. Neumann notes, is "the liberation of man from nature and consciousness from the unconscious" Neumann E. The origin and development of consciousness. - M., 1998. S.391.. This process, underlying the existence of the European type of culture, contributes to the disintegration of Western man. In his studies of Eastern and Western types of thinking, K.G. Jung focuses on this process, which contributes to the splitting of the individual into a conscious personality and an unconscious being. The reason was the sudden intrusion into the European process of development, which is still in a primitive state, "the psychology and spirituality of a culture of a much higher level", which explains the endless relapses of "barbarism" throughout the entire historical development of Western civilization. "And so we became highly disciplined, organized and rational, while remaining at the same time primitive beings, with a slave psychology, cut off from education and culture" Jung K.G. Yoga and the West: A Collection. - Lvov, Kyiv, 1994. P. 25 ..

It can be assumed that the interest of a Western personality in Eastern traditions and methods of spiritual self-improvement of an individual is based on: fear of global catastrophes, to which accelerating scientific and technological progress leads; loss of illusions in relation to a number of values of Western civilization and, in particular, the value of the individual and human relationships; the loss and, first of all, among young people of the moral guidelines of responsibility, compassion, a sense of duty, the desire for self-improvement, an inclination towards a using style of being; confidence in the effectiveness of oriental traditional methods of self-realization.

Bibliography

1. Hegel G.W.F. Phenomenology of the Spirit. - St. Petersburg, 1992.

2. Cultural studies. Textbook for students of higher educational institutions / Ed. prof. Drach G.V. - Rostov-on-Don, 1997.

3. Neumann E. Origin and development of consciousness. - M., 1998.

4. Soloviev V.S. Philosophical journalism: in 2 volumes - M., 1989.

5. Watts A. Psychotherapy. East and West. - M., 1997.

6. Fromm E., Suzuki D., Martino R. Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis. - M., 1997.

7. Jung K.G. Yoga and the West: A Collection. - Lvov, Kyiv, 1994.

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