The Enlightenment movement of Europeans was mainly to get rid of excessive reliance on belief in other forces, that is, to advocate seeking the root of all good things from human rationality. In reality, it is to get rid of dependence on the rule of church ideology and turn to self-reliance. From this point of view, the admiration of Chinese culture during the European Enlightenment period originated from the humanistic needs of Europeans in a specific period. Chinese culture is at the other extreme, with secularism and self-reliance religion as its main characteristics, and actually requires a certain degree of enlightenment of belief in other forces.
This enlightenment can also be called modernization enlightenment at the level of secular life, which is mainly manifested in the shift from reliance on the will of power to reliance on the legal system. Because under the influence of 5,000 years of traditional culture, the default setting in the minds of Chinese people has the characteristics of power dependence, but lacks the nurturing of legal dependence, which is not in harmony with the operating structure of modern society. This is of course derived from China’s long-standing cultural traditions and collective unconsciousness.
The premise of Western liberalism is Socrates’ teleology, that is, the invisible hand can lead to the purposefulness of the evolution of history and nature, that is, to the ultimate beauty. This is a kind of heteronomous theodicy.
But does history really not need human rational planning to create order out of disorder? Even so, does it not need human guidance and control in the process? Negative exploration of the above questions can enable the theory of the sacred meaning of self-reliance belief to unfold.
Therefore, the combination of belief in other power and belief in self-reliance is one of the important cornerstones of the theory of combining Chinese and Western cultures, whether from the perspective of religious sacredness or secular humanities.