Congrs Marx International VI, septembre 2010, Section Philosophie, Zhang Shuangli

----- Religion and Modernity On Their intertwinement in the Context of Chinese Modernization Dr. Zhang Shuangli School of Philosophy Fudan University, Shanghai, PRC, 200433 shuangli@fudan.edu.cn86-21-55665105 Abstract Apparently, religion has not been an important issue in China. The Chinese society seems to be an irreligious society and we can find multiple reasons for this judgment. Firstly, many Chinese scholars have argued that the Chinese culture (especially the Chinese Confucian culture) is an irreligious culture; secondly, when Marxism has been believed as the only scientific worldview, religion has been criticized as superstitious and reactionary. This has made the Chinese culture more irreligious; thirdly, with the breakdown of the former Soviet Union, Marxism as the scientific world view has been doubted and it itself has been criticized as a kind of religious belief. In this way, with the disenchantment of Marxism in the eyes of Chinese people, the Chinese culture seems to be even more irreligious; fourthly, with the development of the market economy in the Chinese society, the religious value has been challenged again and as the result, the Chinese society is now believed as a totally secularized society. However, in this paper, it will be argued that religion has always been a very important issue in China within its process of modernization. Religion and modernity has been intertwined in the context of Chinese modernization. Based on the historical investigation of the four different dimensions of the relationship between religion and modernity in the Chinese context of modernization, it will then be argued that the issue of religion in the context of Chinese modernization is actually the problems about the destiny of both the Chinese traditional culture and Marxism in China. In the first part of the paper, it will be argued that the issue of religion has become one of the key issues at the very beginning of the process of modernization in China (early 20th century). There have been three important aspects of it: firstly, the idea of the freedom of religious belief has been an innate part of the Chinese understanding of modernization. Thus, with the establishment of the old republic in China in 1911, there has been the policy about the freedom of religious belief. As the result of this policy, the Christian missionaries had become very active in China; Secondly, as the response to this new change, some of the conservative Chinese thinkers and politicians (especially Kang Youwei) had argued that to save China, Confucianism need to be established as the national religion in China. They have put forward sophisticated argumentation for this claim; Thirdly, as the response to both of the above two trends, there has been the widespread anti-religion currents in China during the New Culture movement. As the result of these anti-religion currents, religion was then believed as an unnecessary part of Chinese life. This

Congrs Marx International VI, septembre 2010, Section Philosophie, Zhang Shuangli

has resulted in the apathy of the later Chinese intellectuals toward the issue of religion. In the second part of the paper, it will be argued that in the Mao-era in the new Republic, with the dictatorship of ideology, religions have been taken as the enemy of Marxism, which has been believed as the militant atheism. But at the same time, it is also pointed out that the condition for religion in this period is very complicated: on the one hand, even though religion has been bitterly criticized and fiercely destroyed as the enemy of Marxism, religion itself has not been recognized as a kind of spiritual reality; on the other hand, connected with the negation of religion as the spiritual reality, in China Marxism has not been really understood as the transcendence of religions. On the contrary, in the Mao-era, Marxism itself has been unself-consciously taken as a religion. In the third part of the paper, it will be argued that in the post-Mao era, the issue of religion has become one of the hot issues again. On the one hand, as the reaction to the dictatorship of ideology in the Mao-era, the importance of the freedom of religious belief is emphasized again. It is emphasized as an essential part of modernization. But at the same time, it is required that all of the efforts for the freedom of religious belief must be within the framework of the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party; On the other hand, religion has become especially important again when more and more Chinese scholars have got the insight about the crisis of modernity in China. The fourth part of the paper will focus on the relationship between the consciousness of the crisis of modernity and religion again. It will be pointed out that religion (or religious thinking ) has been very important for the present Chinese scholars to deal with the crisis of modernity in China in four different ways: Some of the liberal scholars have tried to rethink the relationship between religion and the origin of modernity in the western world again. Through this effort, they have tried to show that the religious dimension have been very important for the modern society; Some other liberal scholars have tried to highlight the theological dimension of the continental philosophy (like Heideggers philosophy) in order to emphasize that the religious thinking maybe would be the direction to save us from the crisis of modernity; Some of the left-wing scholars have tried to reinterpret the relationship between Western Marxism and Religion in order to make clear that the relationship between Marxism and religion can not be reduced to that of simple opposition; some of the scholars of cultural nationalism have tried very hard to argue that the only way to save the Chinese people from the present crisis is to establish Confucianism as the national religion. What is interesting is that some of these scholars of cultural nationalism have been strongly influenced by Leo Strausss thoughts. Finally, in the fifth part of the paper, it will be argued that the issue of religion in the context of Chinese modernization has always been intertwined with the problems about the destiny of traditional Chinese culture and that of

Congrs Marx International VI, septembre 2010, Section Philosophie, Zhang Shuangli

Marxism in China.