East Asian Social Thoughts and the Exploration of a New View of Society

Abstract

How to view a society is an important basis for understanding the sociological reality. The purpose of this paper is to explore a new view of society on the basis of the unified world view on which the East-Asian thought is founded. The view of society in modern sociology can be divided into an individual - oriented one and a whole-oriented one. In the former a society is regarded as a simple aggregate of individuals, while in the latter a society is thought to be an independent being existing in the outside of individuals and affecting the individuals. These two views of society are different in that one emphasizes the individual and the other the whole but they stand on the same premise in that both views think that the individual and society are basically separate categories. On the other hand, the unified world view in East-Asia has a different premise: that is, this view tries to understand the world on the premise that the part and whole are not different and they are a unified body. From the unified world view, an individual being has her/his own individuality and autonomy, containing the whole simultaneously. As such, the process of individuality of a person has a structure which ultimately attributes the realization of how to be unified with the whole and the development of the whole. The unified view of society has several meanings which can help the development of sociology. This paper searches the possibility of solving the confrontation between the theories of social nominalism and social realism on the basis of the new view of society. It also tries to find out the possibility of new definition of some important sociological notions such as liberty, inequality and rationality. Finally this paper explores the possibility of attributing the repletion of theories of social problem and social development.