People in China pay attention to the study of ethics and politics. For example, Confucianism puts forward "monarch, minister, father, son, son", while Taoism puts forward "governing a big country is like cooking a little fresh" They all study the issues of national governance and interpersonal relationships. For China, which has been in agricultural civilization, this theory does not need to be changed.

However, the political system and ideological habits of westerners have undergone tremendous changes in history. Ancient Greece was a city-state, while ancient Rome was an empire. After the German invasion, Germany was full of principalities, while Italy appeared a bunch of city-states like Venice. They have agricultural civilization and commercial civilization.

The constant change of national form urges people to form new ideas and pay attention to new problems. Therefore, their philosophical thoughts can be updated rapidly with people's continuous thinking. It is the difference between geographical environment and humanistic environment that causes the great difference between eastern and western philosophical thoughts.

We are all familiar with China's philosophy, such as Confucianism's self-denial, Taoism's inaction, Mohism's universal love and non-attack, and so on. These important thoughts all appeared in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, and have become philosophical classics that have continued to this day.

However, there is a problem with China's philosophy, that is, with the evolution of history, it has hardly developed or developed slowly. After Confucius and Mencius, Confucianism developed and reformed in the period of Zhu in Song Dynasty and Wang Yangming in Ming Dynasty. After Laozi and Zhuangzi, Taoism became a secular school such as health preserving school, alchemist school and hermit school, and there was no breakthrough in theory.

So when it comes to thinkers, we only know Confucius and Laozi. In these two thousand years, China people seem to have stopped thinking. The development of western philosophy is continuous, from the ontological research in ancient Greece, that is, exploring the ultimate origin of all things in the universe, to the epistemological research in the Renaissance, that is, exploring how people perceive the world, and then to the modern semantic logic research, that is, exploring the relationship between human language and human cognitive ability.

Although Europe experienced the dark ages of the Middle Ages and the development of philosophy stagnated, European intellectuals brought Europe back to the rational world through the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.