Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No. 8, 2023

The Predicament of Modernity and Its Transcendence from the Perspective of Species-Philosophy

(Abstract)

Yan Hui

Species-consciousness, species-practice and species-essence are the immanent basis for the formation of species-philosophy, which derives from the starting point of man as a special entity and active subject; this is what man is. However, for man to be what he is is only a possibility; if man is to be realized as what he is in the sense of the meta-philosophy of ontology, epistemology and axiology, he must make himself a universal being in consciousness as well as in practice. He must make himself a universal agent of practice through production and communication, and a discoverer, legislator and practitioner of universal principles and the laws of practice through consciousness and cognition. Species-philosophy is the theoretical self-awareness of man’s inner nature of human species-consciousness and species-practice. As a product of the world operational logic of capital, globalization has turned human species-consciousness, species-practice and species-essence into a cosmopolitan being with a philosophical nature. The existence of Anderssein as a result of the objectification activities of species-practice has placed humanity in a crisis from which a reflexive modernity is gradually emerging. Under such circumstances, species-philosophy, a kind of philosophical thinking and practical wisdom, is a theoretical way of deeply understanding and grasping modernity and transcending its predicament in terms of disciplinary heights and problem depths. As a theoretical way of grasping modernity, the predicament of modernity, and transcendence of the predicament of modernity, species-philosophy will manifest itself along the evolutionary path of meta-philosophy, problem philosophy and practical philosophy.