  Many studies have shown that either the nearby astrophysical source or dark
matter (DM) annihilation/decay is required to explain the origin of high energy
cosmic ray (CR) $e^\pm$, which are measured by many experiments, such as PAMELA
and AMS-02. Recently, the Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) collaboration
has reported its first result of the total CR $e^\pm$ spectrum from $25
\,\mathrm{GeV}$ to $4.6 \,\mathrm{TeV}$ with high precision. In this work, we
study the DM annihilation and pulsar interpretations of the DAMPE high energy
$e^\pm$ spectrum. In the DM scenario, the leptonic annihilation channels to
$\tau^+\tau^-$, $4\mu$, $4\tau$, and mixed charged lepton final states can well
fit the DAMPE result, while the $\mu^+\mu^-$ channel has been excluded. In
addition, we find that the mixed charged leptons channel would lead to a sharp
drop at $\sim$ $\mathrm{TeV}$. However, these DM explanations are almost
excluded by the observations of gamma-ray and CMB, unless some complicated DM
models are introduced. In the pulsar scenario, we analyze 21 nearby known
pulsars and assume that one of them is the primary source of high energy CR
$e^\pm$.Considering the constraint from the Fermi-LAT observation of the
$e^\pm$ anisotropy, we find that two pulsars are possible to explain the DAMPE
data. Our results show that it is difficult to distinguish between the DM
annihilation and single pulsar explanations of high energy $e^\pm$ with the
current DAMPE result.
