原生与次生——华夏与欧洲文明路径的结构性对比

A Comparative Civilizational Analysis Based on "Productive Political Philosophy" Abstract: This paper employs the conceptual pair of "primary civilization" and "secondary civilization" as analytical tools to systematically compare the fundamental differences in the evolutionary paths of Chinese and European civilizations. China is a primary civilization—it independently answered the fundamental questions of cosmic origins, human survival, and political order at its source, without any higher external civilization to draw upon. Its mode of evolution is introverted, accumulative, and cyclical, responding to external pressures by adjusting internal structures. Europe is a secondary civilization—its myths, philosophy, and religion were all inherited from older civilizational matrices in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. Its mode of evolution is one of continually breaking and transcending inherited legacies, with each "leap" representing a further breakthrough after digesting existing achievements. This fundamental difference determines the stark contrasts between the two civilizations across six dimensions: mode of establishing subjectivity (built-in vs. reclaimed), form of philosophical leap (integrative leap vs. distancing leap), position of the sacred (publicization of religion vs. privatization of religion), mode of utilizing external resources (absorption and digestion vs. borrowing fire and creative transformation), logic of manifest-latent alternation (endogenous alternation vs. exogenous alternation), and spiritual pathology and anxiety response (endogenous collapse vs. exogenous projection). The conclusion of this paper is that these six differences are not a matter of advancement versus backwardness, but the respective unfolding of the evolutionary logic of two different types of civilization. Understanding this difference is key to breaking free from the twin shackles of "Eurocentrism" and "Chinese exceptionalism." The nature of the argument: the conceptual distinction between primary and secondary civilizations is an ideal-type analysis based on a theoretical framework; the comparison of the two civilizational paths is a logical reasoning based on empirical evidence and textual records; the analysis of Europe's manifest-latent alternation is a logical deduction based on the theoretical framework.