On Marx's Critique Of Modernity And Its Contemporary Significance

This dissertation takes "the critique of modernity " as the angle of view to research Marx's thought. That involves two inside related aspects actually, studying modernity problem in Marx's thought and re- explaining Marx's thought with the clue of critique of modernity. The main body comprises of Introduction "Marx's Concepts of Modern and Modernity", Part one "The Development of Marx's Critical Theory of Modernity", Part two "Logic Structure of Marx's Critical Theory of Modernity", and Part three "Critical dialogue with contemporary discourse". Firstly, The Introduction explains "modern" and "modernity" in the visual field of historical materialism, and illustrates the basic character and basic direction of Mark's critical theory of modernity.Three chapters constitute Part one. The author think, without critique of modernity as total clue, many explainers understand Marx's thought dividedly, which covers the totality of Marx's thought, so, this part takes "the critique of modernity " as clue to explore and summarize the identity and difference in the development of Marx's thoughts. It's agued that before The Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law, Marx's though has basic character of enlightenment modernity, in On the Jewish Question and Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law, Marx already started to criticize modernity in the field of philosophy of law and developed his special "modernity" concept. From Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 to Manifesto of Communist Party, Marx's critical theory of modernity maturedcompletely, which expressed in the inside fusion of philosophy, critique of political economics and critique of political thoughts, and gradually formed total historical materialism in critique of modernity. After 1848 European revolution, Mane's critical theory of modernity expands in critique of political economics, but the basic position and meaning of his critique of political economics should get an assurance in "critique of modernity ".From several mutually related aspects, Part two delineated the inside structure and characteristics of Marx's critical theory of modernity. Chapter four points out that Marx setting out from Hegel's "rational critic paradigm" of modernity, criticized metaphysics generally, then turned to criticize and analysis realistic history itself. Marx's main task isn't to criticize modern philosophy but to criticize modernity itself through philosophy. therefore, "goods", "capital" and "alienation" become the basic categories in Marx's theory. Chapter five elucidates the characteristics of modernity put forward by Marx. From Marx's standpoint, it's exactly because the capital principle's abstraction widespread completely, many characteristics of modernity come into being, such as the abstraction, liquidity, contradiction, secularity etc. of the modernity. This chapter brings to light the inside relationship of these characteristics, and try to manifest that some basic topics in critique of modernity can be comprehended more reasonably and deeply in the dimension of Marx's thought. Chapter six summarizes and explains theoretical characteristics of Marx's critique of modernity. By explaining these characteristics, we show the special and important position of Marx's critical theory of modernity in the numerous and complicated modernity discourse.Totally speaking, the third part belongs to conclusion. The purpose of this part lies in explaining the importance of Marx's thought in critique of modernity. Meantime, dialogue with contemporary modernity discourse brings to light the inside limits of Marx's critical theory of modernity. This part is divided into three chapters also. Chapter 7 maintains that the critique of modernity in post-modernity context takes modernity as characteristic of ideology and spirit expressing, so, critique of modernity becomes critique of ideology and gradually lose its effects in the reality. All of these indicate the abruption and difficult situation of modernity criticism without the dimension of Marx's thought. Chapter 2, choosing J. Habermas, A. Giddens, F. Jameson and J. Baudrillard as representatives, summarizes their reflections on Marx's critical theory of modernity from their own standpoints, critically talking about their new explanation on Marx's thoughts. Based on the two chapters above, the last one explains the important position and limits of Marx's thoughts on modernity, at the same time, puts forward some concrete points to advance critique of modernity on the foundation of Marx's thoughts.