Reflections of Chinese Philosophy and Thought to The Ancient Cities
Çin Felsefe ve Düşüncesinin Antik Kentlerine Yansımaları

Author : Turgay OVALI
Number of pages : 684-699

Abstract

The aim of this study is to explain the relationship between space and thought through Ancient Chinese cities. For this purpose, at first, the theories of the origins of the cities will summarize, and then, how the religious and intellectual background on which the formation and development of the Chinese ancient city is based, will be reflected on the cities of Ancient China as the physical environment and the city life in the social areas in the historical process. The article is a multidisciplinary research in terms of combining a two-way study. On one hand, the constituent texts in which the Chinese philosophy is based, along with passages about the city and its administration, quotations about the formation and development of common living spaces, will be given; while on the other hand, formation of the city as reflections of these passages and quotations in the physical space will be touched together with the help of various maps. In other words, the study deals with the history of anthropology and philosophy on one hand, and archeology and history of city on the other. In this article, formation of urban space which symbolizes the material expression of the world of meanings in societies, emphasis of an inseparable link between the urban form and the social relations system, in this respect, questioning the urban form as dependent variable, and the relations that prepare it as independent variable and revealing the nature of the relationship between the two, are presented as the study of the relationship and interaction between the ancient Chinese cities and the values system of the society generating these cities. For this, the founding texts of Chinese philosophy and the ancient Chinese cities are subject to reading in a certain totality.

Keywords

Ancient Chinese Cities, Chinese Philosophy, Space-Thought Relation

Read: 2,051

Download: 955