The Modern Pursuit And Criticized

The western world has turned into modern society from classical era since Renaissance, So modernity is the most important question the western thinkers focus on. Because west-modernity was brought forward just for opposing religious theology, it includes two aspects of scientific spirit and Humanism, and they were contrary to Mysticism and the idea to consider God as the center of the world. That led to the fact that original modernity had two aspects: Enlighten-Modernity and Aesthetic-Modernity. But during the subsequent developing process, Enlighten-Modernity became the only content of modernity, which materialized and unilateralized human beings. Just in order to solve the problems produced by modernity, Bergson put forward his philosophic system.There are a lot of resemblances between modern China and Renaissance, which provide the precondition for Bergsonism's spreading and influence in China. But on the other hand, there are a lot of differences between them. Because of the special tradition and the problems modern China confronted, thinkers could not deal with it as it is, contorted it discretionarily according to his own practical purpose, and made it serve China's modernity construction. The questions above are the core of this thesis.Realization of modernity is the inevitable outcome produced by western history, but China is different from this. Because compelled by the West, the traditional China had to turn into the modern China. So how to deal with the relations between China and West, tradition and modernity, is a most important problem for China. Anti-traditionalists, as Li Da-zhao and Chen Du-xiu , employed Bergson's Creative Evolution Theory to defend the opinion that in order to construct modernity ,we must overthrow tradition and copywest modernity. Neo-traditionalists just as Liang Shu-ming insisted that the emergence of Bergsonism be the sign of the revival of Chinese tradition, because Bergson criticized the western society. So not only China modernity but also world modernity was to revive Chinese tradition. Conciliationist wanted to find a way to construct China modernity which to some extent stays between west and China. Zong Bai-hua considered Conciliatory theory as the best way to solve that problem, while Zhu Guang-qian suggested distancing theory. Though they seem different from each other, in fact, they had made same mistakes: both of them forgot Bergson's past ontology and thought modernity has only one form.Because scientific spirit is one part of modernity, China have to deal with science rightly for the sake of changing from classical era to modern era. Anti-traditionalist thought Bergsonism was based on science, so it gave us a proof that, in order to establish China modernity, we should use western science to replace Chinese superstition. On the contrary, criticizing scientific reason and advocating intuition were the important parts of Bergsonism. Intuition was the special character of Chinese traditional philosophy; Zong Bai-hua and Zhu Guang-qian pointed out that, both reason and intuition were useful though they fit different areas. So we should use both of them when we construct China modernity. Bergsonism set a good example for China.The ultimate goal of humanism is freedom, freedom also is the emphasis of Bergsonism, so most ideologists of modern China kept relations with Bergsonism when they looked for the way to turn freedom into reality. Anti-traditionist on one hand considered freedom as their aim, on the other hand, they considered it as a tool to make China rich and keep alive. But personal freedom was ignored by this way. So they pursuit freedom at the beginning, but at last they give it up. Neo-traditionist and Aesthete paid more attention to human's value and opposed to consider human as a tool. So they useBergsonism's freedom theory to emphasize personal freedom, opposing collectivity suppress individual.The different comprehensions of Bergsonism indicated their different concerning about China's fate and the differ...