Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.5, 2018

 

The Crisis of Western Modernity and Philosophy

(Abstract)

 

Zhang Rulun

 

Discussing “the crisis of philosophy” is itself a striking feature of modern philosophy. The crisis of Western philosophy is closely related to modernist thinking. Among the series of dualisms that characterize such thinking, the central division is that between man and the world. This has brought to an end the world view of the ancients, who believed in the oneness of all things, and has undermined the philosophy that aimed to understand the universe and the world as a whole. The loss of its essential pursuit is the fundamental cause of the crisis of philosophy, splitting it off from real life and making it a purely theoretical ivory tower. Moral philosophy too suffers from the lack of a truly universal basis. Wittgenstein’s treatment of the disease of philosophy was not to abandon philosophy, but rather to rectify the mistaken orientation that modernist tradition has bestowed on it.