The Concept Of Modernity In Marx's Context

Modernity is one focus on philosophical topics with our long-term and common concern. However there is no any united definition about the concept of modernity in the academic circles of philosophy. Because the concept of modernity refers to a wide range, a lot of authors and a great deal of theory, I do not have enough ability to interpret all the works one by one but only analyze the most popular and the most common concept of modernity through the relevant works on modernity, then reveal the connotation and the theoretical difficulties of the common concept of modernity. By interpreting the Manifesto of the Communist Party, German Ideology and Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts in 1844 and exploring and absorbing the idea of Marx's theory of modernity I try to find the reasonable core of modernity and break through the theoretical plight of the common modernity.This thesis is divided into three parts: introduction, body and conclusion. The introduction simply introduces what's the modernity concept, why do I write the article and how to study the topic; the conclusion concisely summarizes the main points of the article; the body, which contains three chapters (I, II and III), constitutes the main article.Chapter I in the body chiefly introduces and analyzes the connotation and the theoretical difficulties of the common concept of modernity. First of all I generally introduce the most common interpretation about modernity in the current time, which mainly makes Modernity and Postmodernity in fifteen Lectures written by Professor Chen Jiaming and a series of books on the research about modernity edited by Zhou Xian and Xu Jun as the templates. Next I analyze and research the popular interpretation about the concept of modernity, which contains ration, subjectiveness and identity in common. At last, I reveal the theoretical plight of the common modernity: the First Set about the concept of modernity, namely abstracting the modernity theoretically from a certain type of modern people's point.For the theoretical plight of modernity in Chapter I, Chapter II displays the dialectical and reasonable core in Marx's modernity ideas through interpreting the Manifesto of the Communist Party and German Ideology. In Chapter II I firstly show that Marx's thoughts are beyond the vision of the general modernity, namely basing on the society as a whole to conduct an overall grasp of capitalist society and find out the law of social development. Moreover I discuss the law in great detail and get two truths: Modern society is the society of people being rational; modern society is the unity of positivity and negativity. Furthermore I prove that negativity is the critical factor in social development from three angles including production relations, social relations and the nature of people. Finally I have come to the logic about modernity developing by itself. So modernity as the theoretical characterization of modern society contains two contents: In a quantitative sense, modernity is the unity of positivity and negativity which base on the promise of people being rational; in a qualitative sense, negativity is the decisive factor in any revolutions.In Chapter III I try to look for a reasonable mode of thinking on modern society and modernity and then find out bright prospects of modernity on the basis of clarifying the connotation of the concept of modernity. I absorb Marx's historical materialism and make use of Professor Sun Zhengyu's achievement of theoretical research which is that Marx's historical materialism is the new world view of Marxism, that's to say, we should observe modern society and interpret modernity from a historical perspective. In the first place I interpret the historical Principle of interpretation from two aspects which are vertical aspect of history and horizontal aspect of history. In the next place I explore the reasonable basis of the historical principle of interpretation, which bases on the precondition of"real people and their historical development"as same as historical materialism. Eventually I point out the way which is Marx's modernity historically. In addition, I introduce Marx's concept of"Organism"about society and discuss social character of the entirety and the cause oneself in this part. Using the idea of"real history"in Marx's works such as German Ideology, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts in 1844 and so on, especially Marx's demonstration on social history, I answer the question of the way of modernity which is history itself from a historical point of view.In a word, I display the character of Marx's modernity beyond the common one and drive into the reasonable core of modernity from researching the common concept of modernity and revealing the theoretical difficulties to introducing Marx's ideas about modernity, and then combining the historical principle of interpretation use Marx's theory of historical materialism to find out the way of modernity, which constitutes the main route of this article. I express three ideas in turn in the thesis: The first one is that the very important premise of modern society is the people being rational, and modern society is the unity of positivity and negativity, what's more, the negativity is the decisive factor on social revolution; the second one is that the history of the people being rational is the overall contents of modern society, and we only use the historical principle of interpretation in order to accurately grasp the full meaning of modernity; the last one is that with the combination of the connotation of the concept of modernity , history itself is the way of modernity from a historical point of view. In my opinion, the way is also Marx's historical materialism.