美国著名东方学家赛义德认为,自14世纪东方学在西方产生,“东方的”这一概念即包含着对任何亚洲事物所表现出来的或专业或业余的热情,而“亚洲的”则被奇妙地等同于异国情调的、神秘的、深奥的、含蓄的。这是文艺复兴盛期欧洲对古代希腊所爆发的热情向东方的转移。在19世纪的作家如福楼拜、马克思那里,对“东方”的普遍概括是 Saeed, a famous American orientalist, argues that the concept of “orientalism”, which originated in the West in the 14th century, contains the passionate professional or amateurism of any Asian thing. The “Asian” Is marvelously equivalent to exotic, mysterious, esoteric, subtle. This is the mid-Renaissance Europe’s passion for the eruption of ancient Greece to the east. In the 19th century writers such as Flaubert and Marx there was a general summary of the “East.”