Tao And History: The Idea Of Progress In Modern China

This paper attempts to analyze the internal origin of the idea of progress in China, from the following two perspectives:the conversion of the connotations of Tao and history as well as the relationship between them. Traditional theory of Tao possesses two functions, reasonable explanation of一阴一阳之谓道in the aspect of the Tao of heaven and normative analysis of乾健坤顺in the aspect of the Tao of human. These two functions are not coordinate in explaining the circulation theory of history. On one hand, the circulation of the times between peace and turbulence represents the success of the Tao of heaven. On the other hand, turbulence times indicate the absence of the Tao of human. I named this kind of phenomenon in the historical rupture in traditional thought. The resulting consciousness of bridging rupture is more general and profound than consciousness of escaping from predicament, which was pointed out by Thomas A. Metzger. Historical speculations in traditional Chinese philosophy (such as Gong-yang School in Han dynasty, Cheng Zhu Neo-Confucianism and philosophy of Wang Chuanshan) can be regarded as attempts to bridging rupture, which is doomed to failure due to basic presuppositions of the theory of Tao and social historical facts of dynastic cycle.The idea of progress is a foreign idea imported from the West. But from the view of tradition the rise of the idea of progress can be seen as the final success of bridging rupture, and the close relationship between Tao and History is ultimately established. This relationship is demonstrated in two aspects, the historization of Tao and the taozation of history. As for the historization of Tao, the Tao of heaven itself is considered to be progressive, and the progressive history is the perfect manifestation of the progressive Tao of heaven. The Tao of heaven is no longer contradictory to normative principals of the Tao of human. As for the taozation of history, history conducts the normative argument about the Tao of human. Chinese people rebel against traditional morals in the name of progress while a way of thinking which focuses on the history and aims to reestablish morals and meanings comes into being/Based on the historization of Tao, that is, the conversion of the connotation of and the change of the form by which the Tao of heaven uses to demonstrate history, this paper divides the development process of the history of the idea of progress in modern Chinese into three phases, pre-evolutionism phase (from Taiping Rebellion to the publish of Tian Yan Lun), evolutionism phase (from the publish of Tina Yan lun to the controversy between science and mataphysics), and systematic philosophy phase (from the controversy between science and mataphysics to the publish of Six Books of Zhen and Yuan). In the pre-evolutionism phase, the actual idea of progress has take shape in the historical field, but no close relationship has been established between Tao and History. In the evolutionism phase, the traditional Tao is converted to the Tao of evolution, and the thought of To Illuminate Progress with Evolution prevails. In the systematimetaphysicsy phase, reflections are made on the scientism tendency, and arguments about progress are raised to the level of ontological argument.In the development process of the idea of progress, the following three theoretical problems are discussed, relationship between determinism and Free Will in terms of historical philosophy, relationship between universality and specificity in terms of cultural philosophy, as well as the ultimate concern or human’s freedom in terms of ontology. What runs throughout all the discussions is the change of thoughts on the "heaven-human" relationship, specifically, the conversion from "metaphysical uniform of heaven and human" to "dialectical interaction between heaven and human". The overall thought that Chinese thinkers use to answer those problems can be summarized as the following, dialectical understanding of historical laws in terms of historical philosophy, spirit to fuse Chinese and western civilization and to create new civilization in terms of cultural philosophy, and confirmation to the possibility of freedom in realistic history in terms of ontology.