The Study Of Du Weiming’s Enlightenment Ideas

Enlightenment and Modernity are our major theoretical and practicalproblems in20th, because they not only promoted the rapid development ofhuman society, but also led to the crises of modernity, such as the badrelation of human being to nature, self-alienation and reification of theirown. Therefore, many Chinese and foreign scholars havedevoted themself in the reflection of Enlightenment and the criticism ofModernity from the different perspectives. Among them, one of therepresentative of contemporary Neo-Confucianism, Du WeiMing, is veryunique. On his view, we should transcend the Enlightenment Mentality andmake use of Confucian Culture to overcome the limitations of westernenlightenment. That is, we should mould a new global ethics andhumanistic spirit through cultural comunication and dialogue amongcivilizations. According to this dissertation, the starting point of DuWeiMing is to fully affirm the core value of western enlightenment thoughts, and at the same time analyze its limitations. There are three partsin his basic theory and frame of the repairs of modernity： thecontemporary Confucianism rehabilitation as its basis, the mode ofmodernization of Singapore, South Korea and Japan as its practicalexamples, the cultural comunications and dialogues among civilizations asits approach and mechanism. This dissertation agrees with the historicaland comprehensive analysis of Du WeiMing on the Chinese and westerncultural spirit, especially his active exploration about the global ethics andthe new cultural spirit under the background of globalization, and hisrevelation and meaning of encouraging us to fully recognize the value ofenlightenment and modernity. At the same time, the limitations of DuWeiMing’s viewpoint of enlightenment lie mainly in two aspects： on theone hand, he has been dependent on modern western philosopher, so that hecould not establish a set of his own theoretical system, even talking aboutthe culture itself without the specific social and historical conditions. Onthe other hand, to a certain extent, because of the lack of in-depth analysis, he may have the tendency of overstating the effect of the Confucian cultureon East Asia modernization.