惠能与笛卡尔真理观的对比

The Contrast of Huineng and Descartes' Ways of Looking at the Truth

惠能是中国佛教禅宗的鼻祖,笛卡尔是欧洲理性主义的创始人,虽然,他们在不同的社会中生活;所处的时代也相差了八百多年。但他们都独自提出了"真理来自于人的内心"这一革命性的思想。然而,当他们接着探讨"用什么方法获取真理"时却完全不同,惠能主张用"体悟";笛卡尔则主张用"理性"。因而导致了两种不同的社会历史影响,惠能为之后的中国思想界所带来的是进一步的"超越",而笛卡尔则使欧洲的思想界由天国回到了"现实"。

Huineng(638-713) was the founder of Chinese Buddhism Chanzong, and Rene Descartes(1596-1650)was the originator of the West Rationalism. Both of them put forward the revolutionary view that the truth comes from man's heart, though they lived in different societies.It is also true that they had complete views on the method with which the truth can be obtained.. The former's advocacy is 'through experience', and the latter's rationality, so that there were two different consequences in history .Huineng accelerated the 'transcendence' in Chinese ideology and Descartes helped the westerners came back to'reality' from 'heaven'.