Abstract

The dissertation project is a study of the rhetoric of "enlightenment" and the philosophy of modernity. It addresses two seemingly unrelated questions: "what is enlightenment?" and "what is May Fourth?" The investigation of these two questions is located in the contexts of Kant-Foucault-Habermas's dialogue on "what is enlightenment?" and Western sinology's re-presentation of Chinese modernity. One of the objectives of the present study is to critique modern sinology's re-presentation of Chinese modernity, which has reduced the latter into a latent statement of the Enlightenment and a derivative language of Reason, and hence, to seek to determine the conditions of possibility to address the question of "what is May Fourth?" ;The study attempts to identify the problematics in the Kant-Foucault-Habermas context, in which enlightenment was treated as an enterprise to bridge the gap between theoretical reason and practical intelligence, reason and unreason, and expert knowledge and everyday praxis. The study suggests that mediation of hermeneutic understanding of text/tradition with political commitment to organize an enlightened society was treated differently in Confucian and modern Chinese political philosophy and historiographical discourse. Examination of that treatment, the study points out, may help provide a framework to further reflect upon some unresolved problems and anticipate some pratical difficulties in the Western genealogy of enlightenment