文明的比较：中国、日本、欧洲，以及英语文化圈

by Alan Macfarlane, 艾伦·麦克法兰, 荀晓雅 (Translator)

我们正生活在一个互联互通的世界上，各种历久弥新的文明将在未来几十年也许是几百年中与我们同在。而试图让这些文明成为一种统一的、全球化的世界文明注定是徒劳无功的。我们将生活在这些由世界历史潮流所创造的坚不可摧的文化区块之中。这意味着文明之间的相互理解至关重要。那么我们要如何通过对世界以及自身态度的彻底反思来达到这种理解呢？ 随着信息与技术种类的多样化，形态、文化与身份已遍布在政治分化的各洲，我们有理由认为文明才是在这个星球上起主导作用的主要单位。基于这种认识，为了世界的未来，我们应给予文明足够的重视。 我们可以尝试研究文明，找到一个简单的方法拆解其复杂性，直至我们能够理解和比较它们。

236 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2022

About the author

Alan Macfarlane was born in Shillong, India, in 1941 and educated at the Dragon School, Sedbergh School, Oxford and London Universities. He is the author of over twenty books, including The Origins of English Individualism (1978) and Letters to Lily: On How the World Works (2005). He has worked in England, Nepal, Japan and China as both an historian and anthropologist. He was elected to the British Academy in 1986 and is now Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Cambridge and a Life Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge.

Reviews

[Vadim Polikov · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a short and easy to read book that culminates and summarizes many of the positions MacFarlane had written about in other books. Each of the 4 civilizational groups he focuses on gets a chapter and then there are some chapters comparing them in different dimensions. It was particularly interesting for me to see parallels between Japan and England and between China and Europe and the important differences between Englamd and the rest of Europe. Worth rereading just because it is short and consise.