Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.12, 2019

 

The Belief in Public Values and the Ideal of a Better Life—The Theoretical Connotations of Marx’s Philosophical Revolution

(Abstract)

 

Yuan Zushe

 

Marx’s philosophy, which regards changing the world and the final emancipation of all mankind as its fundamental purpose and sacred mission, insists on the transcendence of bourgeois civil society by means of “socialized humanity” in the senses of conceptual innovation, thematic transformation, and paradigm change. It thus establishes an analytical paradigm of “public values” and “the good life” which takes advanced systems as its carrier. Using this philosophical paradigm to undertake systematic critical reflection on the abstract theory of “rational freedom” in enlightenment modernity allows us to fundamentally realize a revolutionary transformation, i.e., the logical establishment of practical “public rationality” based on “the full and free development of every individual” in reality. It promises human civilization an underlying labor practice based on freedom, consciousness and autonomy and relies on a “community of free individuals” to continuously fulfill the ideal vision of a better life, i.e., the realization of public values. What this effort highlights is the way Marx’s philosophy has a distinctive theoretical and practical character, an assumption of history and a lofty spiritual realm, all of which are fundamentally different from all the old philosophies.