Of course, although the cultural process is independent, in essence, it is the result of people's active understanding and transformation of nature. Man is the active subject, and culture is only the passive object. The emergence, development and transcendence of culture begin with human existence and activities and end with human development. In people and culture's subject-object relationship, man always occupies a dominant position, and is the real undertaker, initiator and promoter of the subject-object relationship. However, in specific objective activities, people grasp the functional characteristics of the object in different ways from their own subjective standpoint, which is the so-called human subjectivity, mainly including human self-action, initiative and creativity. Based on people and culture's objective relationship, this paper discusses how human subjectivity is expressed, confirmed and stipulated in the cultural process of cultural production, cultural development and cultural transcendence.
First, human self-sufficiency is the fundamental source of culture.
In modern life, we always encounter culture in different ways, whether it is the daily life of food, clothing, housing and transportation or the creation and invention of abstract thinking, the ubiquitous cultural phenomenon presents the real existence of everyone. However, behind all kinds of cultural phenomena, there is always a fundamental question, that is, where does culture come from? Or how did culture come into being? In the west, the ancient Greeks regarded poetic life as the embodiment of God's will, and attributed all human cultural behaviors to God's creation. In ancient China, the generation of culture was mostly related to the merits of clan ancestors and attributed to saints. In addition, some western scholars have put forward the theory of natural occurrence or imitation of nature, arguing that people's lifestyles are all derived from imitation of nature and animals. However, these simple and intuitive views ignore the social practice essence of culture. From the origin, culture is neither created by God nor given by nature. The real origin of culture lies in human's "self-action", which is the result of objectification of human survival activities and practice methods.
The so-called "self-action" and "self" are objects other than the subject, and man is the only subject of culture. Vico warned us in New Science that the poetic wisdom of human existence does not come from nature and God, but from human activities. People have the possibility and inevitability to undertake cultural creators. In Marx's view, man's self-awareness and ability to dominate himself and the world are the basis and conditions for the establishment and realization of man's subjectivity in cultural production. In the long process of human evolution, people have acquired unique abilities such as self-awareness, language communication and free hands. According to archaeological findings, about 2.5 million years ago, the human brain expanded significantly, surpassing any other early primitive people. Since then, culture has developed and become more and more important in people's survival. The human brain ensures its sustainable survival and development by means of culture, and the gradually developed human brain in turn makes cultural development a means possible.
"For me" is the purpose of culture. Marx and Engels believe that where there is a certain relationship, there exists for me. All the relations between subject and object have the nature of self for the subject, and the "I" here refers to the subject. For me, it is based on the existence and activities of the subject and the development of the subject as the destination. For me, it is not necessarily the conscious purpose of all subjects, but it is the substantive purpose of all subject activities. People and culture's objective relationship was established from the perspective of "for me". Culture does not spontaneously enter the field of human activities, it depends not only on itself, but also on people's abilities and needs. People take their own needs and purposes as the starting point, destination, basis and scale of activities, and try to make culture have a "for me" relationship with them according to the purpose. In the functionalist cultural school, Malinowski's basic starting point is that the function of culture is to meet people's basic needs. Marx and Engels also regard meeting people's needs as the basis of the cultural world formed by production activities and various social relations.
People's behavior practice is a means of producing culture. Marx believes that there is no predetermined abstract relationship before or outside people's practical activities. People are "not in a certain relationship, but active", and they are in a certain relationship between subject and object through their own behavior and practice. When Marx and Engels criticized Feuerbach in German Ideology, they emphasized that human practical activities "such continuous perceptual labor and creation, such production, are the very profound foundation of the entire existing perceptual world". It is this creative activity that makes the world a human world where people live. With the enrichment of various human practical activities, people's practical activities are more and more involved in natural processes. Judging from the value of culture, no matter what kind of perceptual objects are meaningful to people, humanized nature can be created into social culture. Therefore, it is particularly critical for people to consciously realize the meaning of perceptual objects. The main difference between human beings and animals is that instinct is replaced by active consciousness, or that human instinct is an instinct that is consciously realized. Only by getting rid of natural instinct and developing into abstract thinking can human consciousness create spiritual cultures such as philosophy, religion, law, literature and art, but the development of human consciousness has to go through a complicated and long process. Although influenced by many factors in this process, there is no doubt that human behavior practice plays a key role. Without the social practice of human beings, the social consciousness generated in this practice and the language to express these consciousness, the understanding of culture will lose its foundation. Looking back at the original cultural forms of human beings, the original poems, myths and legends were all formed in the early labor process, so was art, and so were other cultural forms.
Second, human initiative is the driving force of cultural development.
Today, when we speculate on the primitive culture and wild life of our distant ancestors and lament our own scientific and technological culture and modern life, we know that this is a very long process. Rich and colorful cultures are not invented and created at once, but the result of long-term accumulation of human beings, including both preserving old cultures and adding new ones. Cultural accumulation is the unique ability of human beings and the foundation of cultural progress. It is through the slow accumulation of experience and knowledge that mankind has risen from an ignorant society to a civilized society. Moreover, the speed of cultural accumulation is directly proportional to the development of culture. The more cultural accumulation, the faster development. In terms of cultural communication, on the one hand, it is to pass on the experience, knowledge and thoughts of the previous generation to the next generation; On the other hand, the next generation constantly supplements, enriches and develops the original experience, knowledge, technology, ideas, theories and methods through their own practice, and creates and accumulates new cultures.
It is affirmed that the development of culture is progressive, so where does the driving force of cultural progress come from? Theological theory attributes the motive force of cultural progress to the will of God, while natural development theory regards nature as the motive force of cultural development. However, it is an absurd theory to explain cultural progress with the will of God or nature. The motive force of cultural development can only be found from the objective relationship of cultural creators and the inner essence of creators' own spirit. Man is "a dramatist and playwright in his own history." As the creation of human beings, culture originates from human activities. Of course, the progress of culture cannot be separated from human activities, and human activities must be the result of cultural progress.
Subjective initiative is a great source of creative wisdom and a great force to transform the world. When talking about subjective initiative, Mao Zedong once pointed out that when people do things, they must first draw ideas, reasons and opinions based on objective facts, and put forward plans, principles, policies, strategies and tactics before they can do them well. Thoughts and so on are subjective things, and actions are subjective and objective things, which is the special initiative of people. This kind of initiative, which we call' conscious initiative', is the characteristic that distinguishes people from animals. "It can be seen that human initiative is the ability to actively understand and transform the world. This ability can be manifested in two basic forms: the initiative of consciousness and the initiative of practice. On the one hand, people consciously process and transform all kinds of information in the cultural world, grasp the relationship between cultural elements, grasp the essence and laws of culture, and on this basis, predict and predict the results, determine the action goals, choose and formulate action lines and policies, unify their thinking, standardize and adjust their actions; On the other hand, returning to practice becomes a perceptual activity, becoming the subjectivity of objective essential power, externalizing essential power to nature and perceptual object, and creating the cultural world needed by the subject.
Of course, in any objective activity, it is not easy for people, as the main body, to control objects and achieve their goals. Culture is the result of human activities, and its formation and development are the products of human activities, which are saturated with human consciousness, but culture itself is still an objective existence independent of human will and has its own objective laws of development and change. In the process of cultural change and progress, culture not only does not automatically satisfy people, but also constitutes an obstacle for the subject to achieve the predetermined goal by reacting or resisting people. In order to achieve the predetermined goal, people must actively and creatively exert their subjective abilities and talents, overcome various obstacles of object reaction or resistance, and process and transform culture in different ways, thus creating the expected results of the subject-material products and spiritual products. This cultural achievement is the realization of people's activities as the main body, the objectification of people's initiative, talent and activities, and the final realization, expression and confirmation of people's subjectivity in the object activities of cultural creation. As mentioned above, initiative is the unique basic content of subjectivity, which is not only manifested as ideological initiative such as purposefulness, planning, foresight and abstraction, but also as practical initiative that directly changes the world and revolutionizes the existing world. So, how does human initiative promote cultural progress?
First of all, people's initiative is reflected in the conscious purpose in all cultural activities. Marx said: "History is only the activity of people who pursue their own goals." Purpose represents the subjective desire of the subject to be ahead of time, and embodies the requirement of the subject to objectify its own essential strength. Human cognitive activities and practical activities are activities of creating culture, which are rooted in the needs of human development. On the one hand, need is the driving force of cultural awareness activities. Everything has many qualities and attributes. When people know something, they often don't know all its qualities and attributes, but only know one or several aspects according to their own needs. The diversity of human needs determines the diversity of cognition. Different themes, different needs and different cultural objects are recognized. Even for the same knowledge object, people with different needs have different emphases. In essence, cultural cognition is also a creative activity of different subjects. Because the transformation of culture requires people to form an idea of future things on the basis of gaining an understanding of the essence, attributes and laws of culture, and to reflect their own needs into their consciousness. Therefore, before we carry out the practice of transforming culture, the purpose and result of the activity already exist in our minds in the form of ideas. This concept of new things is a kind of forward reflection, which conceptually creates an ideal object that people need and does not exist in reality. It is the re-creation of the object in the concept, showing the trend and possibility hidden in reality. It is realized by conceptually linking the attributes of cultural objects with the needs of the subject. Here, the ideal culture constructed by concept includes not only the understanding of the attributes, essence and laws of ready-made culture, but also the understanding of what the ready-made culture does not have. These contents are formed by changing the regulations and forms of existing culture according to people's needs and the laws of cultural development. On the other hand, demand is also the driving force of cultural creation activities. People's needs and desires are not satisfied with maintaining their lives, but are constantly improved in the development of practice. Driven by their inner desires, people March into deeper and wider fields of activities, thus promoting the continuous development of culture. The process of human history creation is not only the process of human needs, but also the process of practical development to meet this need. In this sense, a history of cultural development is a history of human needs. The development and improvement of people's needs have promoted the development of people's understanding and practice, the development of people's creativity and the progress of human culture.
Secondly, people's initiative is reflected in their choice of all cultural activities. In the objective activities of people and culture, people inevitably take the attitude of questioning, studying and choosing in the face of complex things in the external world. Through the exertion of the main function, people can independently decide the way to master and use a particular culture. This move shows that people have the freedom to choose what to do and how to do it in culture, rather than being passive and blind. This initiative means that people are not completely passively influenced by the current culture, but can actively choose to understand the essential laws of culture and actively change the current culture according to people's own legal requirements. It has been described in detail that both practical activities and cognitive activities are purposeful. In order to meet their own needs, people choose and set a specific cultural object, that is, the object as the main goal. Specifically, when the subject chooses and changes the object appropriately, the expected purpose can be achieved. If the subject's practical activities and cognitive activities adopt the object aimlessly or improperly consider the object, it is impossible to achieve the expected purpose of the subject. Of course, people's cultural cognition and the target choice of cultural practice activities are diverse, with different systems, models, ways and paths, as well as rich and colorful national characteristics and traditions. However, it is people's different choices that make the development of culture show diversity and richness.
In addition, people's initiative is also reflected in the ability of creation, adjustment and organization in cultural creation activities. Human culture has two basic characteristics: inheritance and creativity. People's creation of culture needs to make certain value choices based on their own subjective requirements, hobbies and interests. Facing the objective cultural laws and conditions, people can show great initiative. Laws and conditions are linked. Although people can't violate the possibility provided by objective conditions and laws, they can change existing conditions and create new conditions under certain conditions to achieve the initiative of cultural creation. At the same time, in the process of cultural creation, people always bear and measure the consequences of the interaction between subject and object in their own scales and ways, and test whether the process and results of this interaction meet their own needs, purposes and abilities at any time, and make appropriate adjustments according to this test, so that the relationship between subject and culture is always in mutual adjustment. In addition, people's initiative is also reflected in organizing and integrating various necessary factors of culture, so that they can work together as a whole according to the purpose and direction set by the subject, and form cultural achievements suitable for the needs of the subject.
Thirdly, human creativity is an important condition for cultural transcendence.
Generally speaking, cultural development is always carried out through the generation, crisis, transformation and innovation of cultural forms, and it is realized through the sublation of specific cultural forms such as religion, art, ethics, science and philosophy. From the dynamic process, cultural development is characterized by inheritance and innovation in content and continuous transcendence in value realization. No culture can be absolutely perfect, and it will always have some shortcomings under certain historical conditions. There is always a certain gap between the ultimate value presupposed by the free nature of culture and a specific culture, and this gap just provides the possibility and necessity for the self-transcendence of culture. So we can see that the development of culture always points to a certain purpose, which is not to the past or the present, but to the ideal future. In this sense, cultural transcendence is essentially a kind of cultural innovation, and it is a criticism and denial of its unreasonable reality by culture. Cultural transcendence means constantly surpassing reality and creating more reasonable and superior advanced culture.
Of course, as an object, culture cannot realize this leap from reality to necessity alone. Cultural transcendence is inseparable from an important premise, that is, the participation of the main creative activities. As a natural movement, transcendence itself has no value attribute. Only when it is combined with people's practical activities can it become a form of value movement. As a cultural subject, creativity embodied in its practical activities is essentially a kind of transcendence, which is one of the fundamental characteristics of the subject activities. Judging from the creative ability of cultural progress, human creativity is beyond instinct and nature. As the son of nature, man can never leave nature, but the basis of being a man is not nature and instinct, but man's transcendence of nature and his cultural creation. Pascal revealed the fragility and greatness of human beings in poetic language in Records of Thought. "Man is just a reed grass, the most fragile thing in nature; But he is a thinking reed. " Landman also pointed out that it is people's innate defects in natural instinct that need to be created the day after tomorrow to make up. Man transcends instinct and nature to establish a cultural world, and culture also shows the essence of freedom and creation because of man's practical nature. In Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844), Marx put forward the famous view of double scales of human activities. People always want to know and control the laws of things according to their own inherent standards in order to pursue and realize free and conscious creative activities. Therefore, the inherent freedom and innovation of culture itself are embodied in people's sublation of nature and instinct, which contains the possibility of people's creative activities and free behavior by virtue of reason. People no longer live freely by instinct like animals, but gain freedom and creative space.
As far as the essence of cultural transcendence is concerned, people's creativity is embodied in the transcendence of ideals over reality. In the process of the objective relationship between subject and object, the object always restricts, limits and determines the activities of the subject as an objective factor and objective condition. The limitation, restriction and decisiveness of the object to the subject are the attributes of the passive object. Therefore, the human subject is not limited to such constraints, restrictions and decisions, but always tries to surpass them. People always pursue what they think should be ideal based on their own needs, ideal purpose and scale, and strive to make the object exist and develop according to human scale. Therefore, he focuses on idealism here. Sorokin, a famous cultural scientist, pointed out that man can accomplish the greatest discovery, invention and creation mainly because he is a great creator of the super-consciousness, a rational thinker, an observer and practitioner who appeals to experience. In the view of cultural philosophy, no matter what form culture appears, it is essentially the externalization of human spirit and the realization of human ideals. In the early days of mankind, although people in evolution could not completely distinguish themselves from nature, they had a desire to go beyond the limited living conditions. Although they often aim at satisfying the desires of the most intimate material and spiritual life, a certain degree of self-awareness and planning makes the activity itself have a significance beyond the present. External transcendence is based on internal transcendence. The human spirit can achieve its own transcendence and look forward to the beauty that is currently unavailable. Man's internal transcendence is objectified into external transcendence through constant practical activities. Lenin said: "People's consciousness not only reflects the objective world, but also creates it." People do not take the comfortable things in the external perceptual world ready-made, but create the ideal object and object world that meet the needs of human survival and development through creative activities in a form that suits human needs. People's creative activities are a complicated process. In the whole activity process, on the one hand, we should follow the objective scale of things as the object of activity according to the objective realistic conditions, on the other hand, we should apply the internal scale of the subject to the object according to people's own needs and practical strength to meet them, and unify the two scales to create.
Looking back, human culture has gone through a long process from ignorance and barbarism to modern civilization. The mainstream culture is developing in an alternative and continuous way. The former is characterized by criticism and the latter by inheritance. Cultural transcendence is a combination of criticism and inheritance: criticizing the cultural lag, removing its dross, inheriting its essence, and forming a new culture through absorption, complementarity and integration. It is worth emphasizing that this integration is not a simple and unprincipled compromise, but a dialectical and comprehensive creation of the subject. With the acceleration of economic globalization, especially the rapid development of modern media technology, the openness of contemporary culture is particularly prominent. In the process of constantly surpassing the existing culture and pursuing the advanced characteristics of culture, it needs to be emphasized that, on the one hand, we should overcome our obsession with incomplete and arrogant ideas and pay attention to absorbing and drawing lessons from them; On the other hand, we should pay attention to reflection and criticism, correctly face the great pressure and challenges brought by power politics, hegemonism and various western values, and enhance cultural identity and criticism. Only in this way can the culture constantly surpass itself and show its advanced nature of being inclusive and learning from others.