Zhou compared the differences between China and the West in what China people lack. Through comparison, he found that one of the weaknesses of China culture is to attach importance to practical value and ignore spiritual value. The weakness of this culture has led to the lack of great thinkers and philosophers in China since ancient times. Although China has Confucius, Mencius and Wang Yangming, there are no great philosophers like Plato, Nietzsche, Shakespeare and Aristotle.

Pedagogy was first differentiated from philosophy, and later became an independent discipline. From the perspective of educational history, you will find that although China's educational record is earlier than that of the west, China's early education thought about education from the perspective of people, while the west thought more deeply. For example, Aristotle in ancient Greece demonstrated the possibility and importance of education from the perspective of human and animals, and then concluded that education should include "physical education, intellectual education and moral education". In addition, he also put forward "free education" (seven arts), which seems hard to find in the history of education in China.

China did learn from the west for a period of time, such as "making foreign things serve China", but this selective learning removed the ideological basis of the western core "freedom" and only learned what was useful to China. Is this still "practical"? Few people in China are interested in pure theory. For any theory, we decide whether it can be used as soon as possible. Compared with your own way of thinking, it is true.

Now we have 24-character core values and ethical values, which are also the spirit of China, but these spirits are still based on practicality and social harmony and stability. There is a big difference between China spirit and western spirit, that is, the western spirit is based on "self-worth", while China spirit is more based on "ethics" and has social utility. In China's respective spiritual values, the independent value of individual spirit always falls out of sight.

Why think about pure spirit or philosophy here, because philosophy is to explain the life of the universe in order to save the confusion in our souls. Philosophy is "eternal truth, not temporary truth", and "uselessness" is better than usefulness! It is the most sacred and noble spiritual value, because it meets the needs of the soul and has a far-reaching impact on a person or a nation.

Due to the cultural differences since ancient times, this difference has been caused. We can't unilaterally measure good and bad, but we can recognize the existence of the problem and awaken the overall public consciousness. Some people are willing to try to make up for the shortcomings, which is also a kind of perfection and promotion for individuals or nations.