"First wave" (The cultural revolution of Western liberalism)

Author: Ma Lintao
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-02-01
Features: The Western liberal new cultural movement is divided into two critical, systematic developmental periods and a subsequent critical deconstructive period. This book, with substantial evidence, sorts out the cultural critique and theoretical development from the Renaissance, the Reformation, to empiricism and rationalism philosophy from the complex historical and cultural landscape, elaborating on the developmental logic of Western thought and culture during this intellectual cycle. Philosophy is believed to have emerged when ancient Greeks pondered the metaphysical questions "after physics." Subsequently, when Socrates asked "How should we live, what is most important?" and raised the question "What is justice," philosophy became an ethical issue concerning the value and purpose of life. However, from the late Roman period, with the establishment of the Christian Church's theological political domination for over a thousand years in the Middle Ages, all philosophical questions were reduced to a set of scholastic philosophy that completely negated the meaning and value of human existence in this world, focusing solely on the existence and proof of an infinitely perfect God (deity). Philosophy became the handmaiden of theology. In the 14th to 16th centuries, since the Western liberal new cultural movement, different periods of liberalist philosophers began to criticize culture in the form of cultural philosophy, no longer through religion or under the authority of the ruling class, but appealing to reason to understand the world and explain the ancient cultural tradition of thinking about the value of life. Regarding the intellectual development of modern liberal philosophy, different representatives of liberalism in the Western world at various periods proposed their ideas and theoretical doctrines in their respective philosophical forms.