The Basic Spirit of Western Modernity from a Critical Perspective

At every level of modern social space, although the degree and manner in which subjectivity is manifested vary, human beings have become the masters of their own lives, no longer unilaterally subordinating themselves to external others or to some transcendent principle of rule. This is the basic spiritual condition of Western modernity. In our view, the spirit of modernity initiated by the West mainly comprises five basic aspects: secularity, individuality, creativity, practicality, and positivity. That human beings become subjects in modernity means that these basic spirits have awakened to varying degrees, thereby distinguishing them from pre-modern human beings. From a critical perspective, the establishment of these five basic spirits of modernity signifies both the great achievements of Western modern liberation and its fundamental historical limits.

在现代社会空间的各个层次上，虽然主体性体现的程度和方式不同，但人都成了自身生命的主宰，不再单向地屈从于外在他者或者某种超验原则的统治。这就是西方现代性的基本精神状况。在我们看来，经由西方发端的现代性精神主要包括世俗性、个体性、创造性、实用性和实证性五个基本方面。人在现代成为主体意味着这些基本精神不同程度的觉醒，从而与前现代的人区别开来。从批判性的角度来看，这五种现代性基本精神的确立，既意味着西方现代解放的伟大成就，也意味着其根本的历史限度。

The spirit of secularity. In the Western Middle Ages, human beings were regarded as God’s children; God’s will was the basis of secular life, and the value of life lay in serving God, moving toward the salvation He promised, and heading for eternal life in the hereafter. In pre-modern societies, various theological worldviews always regarded the otherworldly realm as the essential world and the source of all value. In modernity, the transcendent divine world has completely collapsed; human beings recognize that there is no longer a transcendent otherworldly realm opposed to reality outside the real world—the world is merely this one secular world. The intellectual foundation for understanding life has returned to the real earth; it is not God but human beings themselves who become the root of existence. The modern slogan “the root of human beings is human beings themselves” means that human beings have been thoroughly liberated from the transcendent divine world. This is a key step in human beings understanding themselves as subjects in modernity. Through this step, such real attributes of human beings as reason, interests, rights, and desires—once fettered by religious theology—acquired legitimacy. Human beings truly came to possess their own reality, rather than negating their own attributes of existence to conform to God’s will or some abstract principle, such as moral dogmas like “preserve heavenly principle, extinguish human desire.” [1]1 “Preserve heavenly principle, extinguish human desire” (存天理，灭人欲) is a Neo-Confucian moral maxim associated with the Song dynasty philosopher Zhu Xi, advocating the suppression of human desires in favor of universal moral principle. Nietzsche once called the process of secularization the advent of nihilism; Heidegger interpreted this process as the collapse of the transcendent world. What they both discuss is the process of establishing this secular spirit, in which God and the transcendent world lose their fundamental authority in modernity. Without the establishment of this secular principle, it would be impossible to form subjectivity in the modern sense, and there would be no modernity. However, in the process of its establishment in the West, this spirit of secularity has been accompanied by the disappearance of faith, sublimity, and great things, and by the arrival of value nihilism.

世俗性精神。在西方中世纪，人被看作上帝的子民，上帝意志是世俗生活的根据，生命的价值在于作为神的仆人朝向神所许诺的救赎，走向来世永生。在前现代社会，诸种神学世界观总是将彼岸世界看作本质的世界和一切价值的来源。到了现代，超验的神性世界彻底崩塌了，人认识到在现实世界之外再也没有一个超验的彼岸世界与现实对立，世界就只是这一个世俗的世界。理解生命的思想基础回到了现实大地，不是神而是人本身成为存在的根本。“人的根本就是人本身”这一现代口号，意味着人从超验的神性世界中彻底解放出来。这是人在现代将自身理解为主体的关键步骤。通过这一步骤，人的理性、利益、权利、欲望等被宗教神学束缚的实在属性获得了正当性，人真正拥有了自身的现实，而不是否定自身的存在属性以符合上帝的意志或者某种抽象原则，诸如“存天理，灭人欲”等道德教条。尼采曾经将世俗化的过程称为虚无主义的到来，海德格尔将这一个过程阐释为超验世界的崩塌。他们讲的都是上帝和超验世界在现代失去了根本统治权这一世俗精神的确立过程。没有这种世俗原则的确立，就不可能形成现代意义上的主体性，就没有现代。但是，这种世俗性的精神在西方确立的过程中，却伴随着信仰、崇高和伟大事物的消逝，伴随着价值虚无主义的到来。

The spirit of individuality. If the secular spirit established human subjectivity in opposition to the transcendent world, liberating human beings from the rule of a capitalized Other, then the spirit of individuality further liberates human beings from the lowercase others of the secular world, and modern subjectivity is further concretized at the individual level. That is to say, after secularity established human beings rather than God as the ground of existence, the spirit of individuality further deconstructed various “capitalized human beings,” liberating individuals as human beings from the rule of concepts such as family, caste, and rank, and establishing them as subjects of existence with independent rights and interests. Human beings no longer live for the afterlife, nor do they live for real-world others. Each individual conceptually regards himself as the ground of his own existence; the world is merely his own self-unfolding and self-realization. Individuals possess independent rights and simultaneously bear independent obligations. This is the modern spirit of individuality. Modernity is an era of individual-based egoism and individualism, which liberates subjects from traditional society based on dependence among persons and establishes the independence of the individual. Of course, the so-called spirit of individuality or principle of individuality does not mean that human beings in fact exist in isolation from others; rather, it means that in modernity, the individual becomes the starting point and core of his own life, the narrative ground in an ontological sense. In modern economic theory and political theory, the economic man and the political citizen, as core categories, are precisely the modern spirit of individual subjectivity manifested in the form of theoretical categories. Marx pointed out that this individual is, on the one hand, the product of the dissolution of feudal society, and on the other hand, the product of the new productive forces that have emerged since the sixteenth century. [2]2 This refers to Marx’s discussion in the *Grundrisse* (1857–1858) of the emergence of the independent individual as a product of the dissolution of feudal relations and the rise of capitalist productive forces. Marx not only generally affirmed the establishment of modern individual subjectivity but also indicated the connection between this spirit of individual subjectivity and socio-historical change, pointing out the socio-historical basis of individualism and egoism, thereby opening up the existential direction of historical materialism for a dialectical understanding of the modern spirit of individual subjectivity.

个体性精神。如果说世俗精神在与超验世界相对的意义上确立了人的主体性，使人从大写的他者统治中获得解放的话，个体精神则使人从世俗的小写他者中获得解放，现代主体性进一步落实到个体层面。也就是说，在世俗性确立人而不是神作为存在的根据之后，个体性精神进一步解构了各种“大写的人”，将作为个体的人从家庭、种姓和等级等观念的统治中解放出来，树立为具有独立权益的存在主体。人非但不是为来世活着，也不再为现实的他者活着。每个个体都观念地将自己看作自身存在的根据，世界只是他自身的自我展开和自我实现。个体拥有独立的权利，同时独立地承担义务。这就是现代的个体性精神。现代是个体本位的利己主义和个人主义时代，使主体从以人的依赖为基础的传统社会解放出来，确立了个体的独立性。当然，所谓个体性精神或者个体性原则，并不是说人事实上脱离于他人而孤立存在，而是说到了现代，个体成为自身生命的出发点和核心，成为存在论意义上的叙事根据。在现代经济理论和政治理论中，作为核心范畴的经济人和政治公民，就是以理论范畴的方式彰显出的现代个体主体性精神。马克思指出，这种个人一方面是封建社会解体的产物，另一方面是16世纪以来新兴生产力的产物。马克思不仅一般地肯定了现代个体主体性的确立，而且指明了这种个体主体性精神同社会历史变迁之间的关联，指明了个人主义和利己主义的社会历史基础，为辩证地理解现代个体主体性精神开启了历史唯物主义的存在论方向。

The spirit of creativity. Modern human beings understand themselves as the drivers and creators of reality, rather than as passive beings. Modern subjectivity contains a spirit of creativity; reality is understood as a creative process unfolded by human practical activity, rather than a process-in-itself or a fatalistic process governed by some mysterious force. Only human beings who possess the spirit of creativity are modern people. Under the dominance of creative consciousness, concepts such as competition, innovation, development, leading the way, initiation, prospect, and struggle have become keywords, from grand narratives to daily life, and have come to dominate people’s basic practical activities, defining the value and meaning of existence. People understand life existence and the real world itself in accordance with the concept of creativity. The concepts of pure externality and pure being-in-itself have been thoroughly dismantled; people live amid the freedom and bondage brought about by self-creation. On the basis of the spirit of creativity and creative practice, modernity is an era in which human beings produce and reproduce nature and society, and even human beings themselves, through science and technology. Human beings already live in a process increasingly distant from being-in-itself; actual nature, society, and life itself all appear as conscious creations of human beings, mediated by creative practice and no longer natural existences. It is in this sense of a man-made world that the essence of modernity is sometimes interpreted as an escape from nature. Although still within the material world of nature, the humanized world that essentially transcends nature has already become the essential form of the world. In this process, human beings both produce things according to the concept of the human and produce human beings themselves according to the concept of things; in the materialized self-production of human beings, the humanization of things is simultaneously realized, and the world is becoming a materialized “human-like world.” This is the possible consequence of the unfolding of the modern spirit of creativity; reflecting on this possible consequence is precisely the intellectual task we face today.

创造性精神。现代人将自己理解为现实的推动者和创造者，而不是被动的存在。现代主体性包含一种创造性精神，现实被理解为由人的实践活动展开的创造过程，而不再是自在的过程或者受某种神秘力量支配的命定论过程。拥有创造性精神的人才是现代人。在创造性意识的主导下，诸如竞争、创新、发展、领跑、开启、展望、奋斗等概念，从宏观叙事到日常生活都成了关键词，并且主导了人们的基本实践活动，规定了生存的价值和意义。人们按照创造性的观念理解生命存在和现实世界本身。那种纯粹外在性和纯粹自在性的概念被彻底瓦解了，人们生活在自我创造带来的自由和束缚当中。以创造性精神和创造性实践为基础，现代是人类依据科技生产和再生产自然与社会，乃至于生产和再生产人类本身的时代。人类已经生活在越来越远离自在存在的过程之中，现实的自然、社会和生命自身都表现为人类有意识的创造物，受到创造性实践的中介而不再是自然的存在。正是在这种人造世界的意义上，现代的本质有时被阐释为对自然的逃离。虽然仍在自然的物质世界之中，但本质上却超越自然的人化世界，已经成为世界的本质形态。在这一过程中，人既按照人的观念生产物，也按照物的观念生产人本身，人在物化的自我生产中同时实现着物的人化生产，世界正在成为一个物化的“类人世界”。这就是现代创造性精神展开的可能后果，对这种可能后果的反思正是我们今天面临的思想任务。

The spirit of practicality. In pre-modern societies, where human beings had not yet been understood as subjects, individual secular desires, interests, and needs had not yet acquired legitimacy; they were concealed and hidden under various guises, either conquered in faith and benevolence or evaporated in the spiritual transcendence of sensibility. In such social life, although practical relations existed, practicality had not yet become a basic ontological consciousness; people had not yet taken pragmatism as the fundamental principle of conduct in life. In modernity, human beings understand themselves as real subjects; with the establishment of the secular principle and the individual principle, the pursuit and satisfaction of material desires acquired legitimacy and became the ground of life’s value. Secular relations became utilitarian relations centered on the individual; practical reason became the basic principle of modernity and also the basic manifestation of secularity and individuality. Modernity is an era in which practicality becomes an -ism; “the useful is the truth” becomes, in a vulgar sense, the basic value orientation of modernity. In modernity, instrumental reason and calculative reason replace disinterested faith, morality, and aesthetics, becoming the inner requirement of practical reason. People guide their practical existence with the spirit of pragmatism; as subjects, human beings regard all beings as tools for realizing their own ends and means for satisfying their own needs. Thus, relations between people become naked “cash transactions”; “human dignity becomes exchange value”; [3]3 This is a reference to Marx and Engels’ *Manifesto of the Communist Party* (1848), where they describe how the bourgeoisie “has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment’” and “has resolved personal worth into exchange value.” people live amid cold, egoistic calculations. Modernity is a secular, individual-based era of pragmatism. Everything is calculated within secular utilitarian relations. Existence is subordinated to all kinds of calculations; practicality has become the inner soul of the spirit of the age, and the spirit of reason has naturally been one-sidedly reduced to instrumental reason.

实用性精神。在人尚未被理解为主体的前现代社会，个体的世俗欲望、利益和需要还没有获得正当性，而是被以各种名义遮蔽和隐藏，不是在信仰和仁爱中被征服，就是在感受性的精神超脱中蒸发掉了。在这种社会生活中，虽然也存在着实用性的关系，但实用性并没有成为基本的存在论意识，人们还没有将实用主义当作为人处世的根本原则。到了现代，人将自己理解为现实的主体，随着世俗原则和个体原则的确立，追求和满足自身的物性欲求获得了正当性并且成为生命价值的根据。世俗关系变成了以个体为轴心的功利性关系，实用理性成为现代的基本原则，也成为世俗性和个体性的基本体现。现代是实用成为主义的时代，“有用就是真理”在庸俗的意义上成为现代的基本价值取向。在现代，工具理性和计算理性代替了超功利的信仰、道德和审美，成为实用理性的内在要求。人们以实用主义精神指引生存实践，作为主体的人将一切存在者都看作实现自身目的的工具、满足自身需求的手段。由此，人与人之间变成了赤裸裸的“现金交易”，“人的尊严变成了交换价值”，人们生活在冰冷的利己主义的打算之中。现代是一个世俗的、个体本位的实用主义时代。一切都在世俗的功利关系中被计算。生存屈从于各种算计，实用性成了时代精神的内在灵魂，理性精神当然也就片面化为工具理性了。

The spirit of positivity. Corresponding to the spirit of practicality is the spirit of positivity. What is commonly referred to as modern scientific rationality or technological rationality, for instance, is essentially the elevation of positivity into a fundamental principle of modernity; modern subjectivity contains a spirit of positivity. In religious faith and moral benevolence, or in aesthetic apprehension, the object-consciousness through which humans grasp objects is not, in essence, knowledge in the positive sense, nor is it the reflection and description of objects by a knowing subject. These forms of object-consciousness and the corresponding objectifying activities all take the transcendence of empirical reality as their basic orientation. They construct, within the material world of things, a space of meaning and value that transcends the material, through means such as belief, imagination, metaphor, symbol, analogy, association, and fiction, thereby elevating the world from a material world of things into a transcendent human world. In faith, benevolence, and apprehension that transcend reality, positivity neither has nor can become a fundamental principle. On the contrary, speculation, revelation, and feeling occupy an important place, and are therefore filled with mystery, virtue, and poetry. In modernity, humans have been liberated from the transcendent world, viewing the world and themselves with a material gaze; the spirit of positivity has thus become the fundamental principle of modern subjectivity. Positivity demands not only an experimental mode of cognition but also verifiable cognitive results. Positive science has become the absolute ideology. Not only are superstition and ignorance dismantled under the demand for positivity, but sacredness, mystery, interest, and poetry have also lost their value to varying degrees. The world is increasingly understood as a material world organized according to the principle of necessity. The essence of consciousness is defined as positive cognition, and spirit is one-sidedly reduced to the positive capacity to reflect and reproduce objects. Whether behavior and cognition conform to objective laws and whether they are scientific has become the basic criterion. Humans are regarded as knowing subjects capable of scientifically understanding the world and effectively utilizing the fruits of science. Modernity is an age of scientism dominated by positive science, with science and technology becoming core elements constituting the modern ideology. Hence, the critique of instrumental rationality has become a fundamental theme of the critique of Western modernity.

实证性精神。与实用性精神相适应的是实证性精神。诸如通常所谓的现代科学理性或技术理性等，本质上就是实证性成了现代的基本原则，现代主体性包含着一种实证精神。在宗教信仰和道德仁爱中，抑或审美的领悟中，人把握对象的对象性意识本质上都不是实证意义的知识，不是认识主体对对象的反映和描述。这些对象性意识以及与之相应的对象化活动都以超越经验的实在性为基本指向，它们以相信、想象、比喻、象征、类比、联想、虚构等方式在实在的物性世界中营建超越实在的意义空间和价值空间，将世界从物性的实在世界中提升为超越的属人世界。在超越实在性的信仰、仁爱和领悟中，实证性没有也不可能成为根本原则。相反，思辨、启示和感受具有重要的地位，因此充满了神秘、德性和诗意。到了现代，人从超验的世界中解放出来，以物性的眼光看待世界并且看待自身，实证精神因此成为现代主体性精神的基本原则。实证性不仅要求实验的认识方式，而且要求有可验证的认识结果。实证科学成了绝对的意识形态。不仅迷信与愚昧在实证性的要求中被瓦解，神圣性、神秘性、趣味性和诗意也不同程度地失去了价值，世界日益被理解为按照必然性原则组织起来的物性世界。意识的本质被规定为实证性的认识，精神也片面化为反映和再现对象的实证能力。行为和认识符合不符合客观规律、科学不科学成为基本的尺度，人被看作能够科学地认识世界并且有效利用科学成果的认识主体。现代是以实证科学为主导的科学主义时代，科学和技术成为构成现代意识形态的核心要素。因此，对工具理性的批判成为西方现代性批判的基本主题。

Secularity, individuality, creativity, practicality, and positivity have become the dominant principles of the spirit of Western modernity. The achievements and dilemmas of Western modernity unfold mainly around these five aspects at the spiritual level, and the critique of modernity is primarily an examination and reflection on these fundamental spirits of modernity and their consequences. Of course, whether in interpreting or criticizing modernity, one cannot stop at this level of spiritual concepts; one must delve into the existential foundation of social history. In our view, Marx’s critique of capital modernity has laid the existential foundation of historical materialism for the critique of modernity. Through the dissection and critique of the socio-economic base, historical materialism profoundly reveals the historical conditions under which the spirit of Western modernity emerged, the historical achievements it has attained, and its own historical limitations. Through this dialectical critique, historical materialism has laid the ideological foundation for us to open up the path of Chinese-path modernization and to construct a new form of human civilization, and has indicated the basic direction for sublating Western modernity.

世俗性、个体性、创造性、实用性和实证性成了西方现代性精神的主导原则。西方现代性的成就和困境在精神层面主要是围绕着这五个方面展开的，现代性批判也主要是检讨和反思这些现代性基本精神及其后果。当然，无论对现代的阐释还是批判，都不能停留于此种精神观念的层面，而是要深入社会历史的存在基础。在我们看来，马克思的资本现代性批判为现代性批判奠定了历史唯物主义的存在论基础。通过对社会经济基础的解剖和批判，历史唯物主义深刻揭示了西方现代性精神产生的历史条件、取得的历史成就以及本身的历史限度。通过这种辩证的批判，历史唯物主义为我们开启中国式现代化道路和建构人类文明新形态奠定了思想基础，并且指明了扬弃西方现代性的基本方向。

Online editor: Paul

网络编辑：保罗