The challenge for the new millennium is to construct a world that is not only sustainable, but desirable because worthy of its persons and peoples. In this task philosophy and religion stand as partners.

In order to understand the present moment and its dramatic significance it is helpful to review briefly the previous millennia. The first millennium was the time of Christ and of Mohammed; people were concerned especially with the assimilation of their message. But where the first millennium was focused on God, the second, just ending, has been focused on humankind. In its first 500 years — 1000 to 1500 — philosophers were engaged in integrating reason as received from the Greeks at the time of the high Middle Ages. This was the work of Thomas Aquinas, Scotus and others, who in this depended extensively on such great Islamic thinkers as Al-Farabi, Avicenna and Averroes.

The change which took place in the middle of this last millennium at the beginning of the modern period was deep and radical. Previously, the philosophers had always built upon the work of their predecessors. In contrast, Bacon now called for smashing the idols which carried the traditions of the ancestors; John Locke spoke of reducing the mind to a blank tablet in order to be able to codify what would be written upon it; and, of course, Descartes began with a systematic doubt bracketing everything in the mind and then restored only what could be certified as clear and distinct.

As professors and students of philosophy undoubtedly you share the enthusiasm which I always had in teaching about this great experiment in which the mind was cleared and the philosophers reconstructed its content piece by piece according to the norms of scientific knowledge. Much was accomplished, but today, at this conclusion of the second millennium, we are conscious more of the limitations of that great experiment.

Where the 20th century began with high hopes that it could solve all human problems, it has concluded with a sense that this century has been a most disastrous period. Today, we remember Fascism and the Second World War it evoked, the reality of colonialism and its oppression of peoples, the holocaust and other instances of genocide.

In these last two decades the world has fallen back in dismay at what human reason has done and many philosophers have felt that the only way to protect the future from the continuation of these disasters is to criticize and even negate the competencies of reason. Often referred to as post modernism, this constitutes a ground clearing — or mind clearing — operation which is overly negative. But, in any case, it opens the way for a new and quite distinct positive human project for the third millennium just dawning.

We find today a truly new agenda for humanity. Whereas, before, the United Nations was focused on the Security Council debates of the Cold War conflict between economic and military ideologies, now its agenda is quite different. Its concerns are those of the great conferences of Rio de Janeiro about the environment, of Cairo about the family, of Beijing about women and about peace in the world.

Today the relation of philosophy and religion must be reconsidered in the context of this transformation of the human agenda. The issues now become how to broaden and deepen the human search, which has been too restricted to concerns of profit or power, to concern for the quality and dignity of human life. The resource for this is the cultures which each people has formed as its attempt to live in a worthy manner.

Since 1986, The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy (RVP) has had almost annual colloquia with teams from China — from Peking University, The Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, Fudan University, and the Chinese National Academy in Beijing. The evolution of the problematics which these scholars have suggested for discussion is striking, while proceeding always on the basis of China’s long search for modernization and its choice of a socialist path to that goal.

At first, the market was supposed to be a matter of vicious competition and conflict, devoid of any ethics. Nevertheless, China chose to open a socialist market to the great excitement of the people. This was necessary in order to engage more intensively the initiative of the people in support of the progress of so large a population. This required that the people, each with their own competencies and each in their own local or village situation, take initiative to develop the quality of their personal and social life. On the front page of People’s Daily on Jan. 12, 2000 an important article reported the decision of the government Ministry of Community Affairs to promote the responsibility of village and neighborhood councils, in part in order to engage the people more actively in such community efforts.

There is here a dilemma, however. It is not that a socialist government and culture is inviting and stimulating the participation and initiative of the people, for socialism was always intended to be a movement of the people. It is, rather, the danger that such initiative will become what had earlier been expected, namely, a process of vicious competition, marked by the corruption of the rich and the destruction of the poor and the weak. Personal initiative there must be, but it must be directed beyond self in order to be creative. How to do this is the issue for society today. Hence, our specific question regards how the relation of philosophy and religion can help to respond to that challenge.

A philosophy department, in expanding to become formally a Department of Philosophy and Religion, is taking on more than historical studies about practices of the past or cultural studies about other countries. It is engaging itself in this central challenge of China today. This is so in two precise ways: first, in convergence with socialism, attention to religion can help philosophy to counter the tendency of human initiative to degenerate into individualism and conflict; second and more distinctive, religion can suggest ways of doing this not by deadening, but by enlivening human initiative.

First, overcoming egoism. Both socialism and religion are centrally concerned with the effort to overcome the degeneration of human initiative into egoism and conflict. This is true of all three components of the culture of China: Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism. In a recent colloquium of scholars from China in India it was said that Confucianism focuses on the gentleman, whose concern is etiquette or the modes and customs of refined external behavior. Prof. Gu Weikang countered that Confucianism is not simply about the mode of action of the gentleman. Still more fundamental to Confucianism is the wisdom of the sage regarding the goal and foundation of human life. This illumines the values and virtues which inspire a worthy manner of personal and community life. This vision of the sage is the real heart of Confucianism.

Daoism also focuses on a transcendence of the individual’s possessions and competitive concerns. The Dao which can be described — it is noted famously — is not the Dao; if it has to do with objects that can be possessed, one in contrast to another, it is not the Dao. Daoist thinking goes beyond any particular individual or object to include the harmony and meaning of all.

In this way both Confucianism and Daoism open a most important dimension for the contemporary mind. Where Descartes sought only ideas which were clear enough to be distinguished from all else, Daoism seeks just the opposite. In talking of ‘this’ rather than ‘that’ one has not yet touched the roots and the meaning of human life. Only by transcending objects and individuals can their real meaning for human life be attained.

Finally, Buddhism has a similar message. Some have misinterpreted Buddhism to be a pattern of ritual superstition or an escape from society. In discussions in India with the professors from Shanghai and the Chinese National Academy, Profs. Nayak and Mishra suggested the contrary. What the Lord Buddha suggested was a middle way: neither the great asceticism of his earlier efforts nor the great indulgence of a consumer society, but a properly balanced life between both of these. This entails abandoning all clinging, that is, all seeking, grasping or holding onto things. As a result one’s consciousness is freed to direct the heart along a virtuous path; this is also the karma yoga of the Hindu roots of Chinese Buddhism.

It is set directly and purposively against the individualism and egoism, corruption and exploitation, which must be overcome for a healthy socialist market system. Instead, the Buddhist message provides a deep basis for a sense of justice, of compassion for the poor and the suffering, and of universal concern. In other words, it includes a deeply social ethics, which it vigorously supports philosophically with an elaborate epistemology and metaphysics.

It is the task of a department of philosophy and religion in China today, especially in Beijing, to enable these dimensions of the heritage of Chinese culture to be appreciated as more than superstition or flight. Their deep social wisdom is supported by a rich metaphysics which needs to be unfolded and applied by the tools of philosophy. This is needed for a broad social (and socialist) vision to guide the present process of transition.

Second, joining personal initiative with social concern. We come here to a difficult juncture. The challenge is not only to overcome the dynamics of clinging which is at the heart of consumerism, but at the same time to stimulate the initiative of the people of the country. All the competencies of the people in their many specializations and configurations must be mobilized in order to face the challenges of so great a population on the move into the new millennium. Initiative must be stimulated in a context that protects it against degenerating into egoism and exploitation. For all lose if the values of peace and harmony are abandoned in order to stimulate initiative, or, on the other hand, if harmony is stressed in such wise way that the initiative of the people is suppressed. The challenge is to join together both personal initiative and social harmony not in an isometric that paralyses both, but in a dynamic union which can undertake to build the future.

This is the point at which religion plays its special role in enabling social life. For it opens a transcendent dimension for a culture which frees one’s self-understanding from being reduced to one’s material conditions, as are rocks, plants and animals. Instead, it opens the mind to meaning and values according to which we judge and value the acceptability of concrete temporal options. Moreover, it provides a sense of the origin and dignity of ourselves and our fellow humans. It counters centripetal self-concern by love for others as brothers and sisters under the one Source and Goal of all. This provides a basis for real hope that people can be enlivened and mobilized for social goals, for it is the same vision which both assures the importance of the self and sets one in relation to others as well.

How does religion at once inspire both human initiative and its social relatedness? It does so by providing the culture with a sense of the human person — not reductively as the result of lesser physical forces as do the sciences — but by showing the person to be by nature an image of God and hence to transcend or open beyond itself. This it does in three steps, which the Hindus would summarize as existence, consciousness and bliss. First, the person is appreciated as self-sufficient in existence, that is, as existing, not of itself which is the character of the God as Absolute Being, but in its own right. Thomas Aquinas would use the term "autonomous", that is, possessed of all that is required in order to be fully human and to be able to act accordingly. The person then is active and a center of initiative. To use Heidegger’s term, this is the dasein, namely, being as emerging into time through the conscious reality which is the human person. As seen by a religious vision the person erupts or bursts into time and will not be suppressed. This is initiative indeed.

Moreover, as a creature and image of God the human person is a reflection of the All-wise, of knowledge itself or consciousness: cit as Hindu philosophy would say. The human, then, is not a blind, destructive force, but is conscious and creative.

Finally, religion points out that the person is not made as an object, tool or instrument to serve a need of the creator. Rather, because the Source is already all perfect, it creates out of a generous love or bliss (ananda), and hence, as image of God, the person’s freedom is not essentially self-centered or self-seeking, but open, sharing and social.

The Christian vision is centered on a parallel Trinity of Father, Son (Logos, was conscious expression), and Spirit when is love. This is of such great import for philosophy that classical Western philosophy began to codify the transcendental characteristics of being itself as unity, truth and goodness.

Religion, of course, is not philosophy, but rather a basic component element of the culture and civilization. But if it is true, as hermeneutic and scientific methods now insist, that it is possible to obtain answers only to questions which have been posed, then the religious elements in a culture enable philosophers to ask questions such as the nature and meaning of human life and to restate these questions when the answers thusfar do not suffice. Thus, when, as is now the case, a people gives new attention to their cultural roots the religious content of their culture enables their philosophers to pose new and deeper questions, to develop proportional philosophical tools and to achieve penetrating and properly philosophical insights about the nature and progress of human life. This is very much the case today and explains how we now face a quite new agenda.

In the case of modernization for China, where the paradigm tends to be the West as articulated in 1919 in terms of the two Misters, Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy, the relation of philosophy to religion is important for two quite special and specific reasons.

First, philosophy has always differed significantly according to cultures. It is often noted that the broadest ocean on the philosophical map lies between the Anglo-Saxon tradition of England and the Continental philosophy of France, though geographically the two are but 25 miles distant. In its search for a rational structure for life philosophy can stop at any level. If it takes life in a Humean manner as basically a matter of material survival then it can work out a reductive model based upon physical or economic relations, reducing thereto the human person and relations between peoples. All value theory is then substituted by value-free empirical sciences and ethics can be only utilitarian. This is the position of the positivist and analytic philosophies whose founders, Bertrand Russell and John Dewey were visiting China around the time of the 1919 movement.

Of itself and logically this is so individualistic and disaggregative that it is prone to orient human initiative into a socially destructive egoism. Hence in the socialist tradition personal initiative has been more feared than attractive. The West has been enabled to survive this threat of individualism by its religiously grounded social vision. This is indicated by the way Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and Adam Ferguson’s Civil Society (1767) provided a necessary context or safety net for Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776).

This suggests that a people opening a market economy with its dangers of individualism and of grasping has special need of renewing the religious roots of its culture. These enable their philosophers to go back to work in order to take account of additional dimensions of human life — of unity and harmony among persons and with nature, of truth and justice in human interchange, of love and service to others, — that is, of life as possessed of true dignity and beauty.

Human initiative must not be destroyed, for it is essential in order to respond to human needs. Rather it must be inspired and promoted, but in terms that at the same time lift one’s sights, open one’s concerns, and enable and guide one’s will along social paths. This is precisely the character of religion. It recalls to the human person that the great power by which it was created — the source and heritage of its initiative — is self-giving and love, that this extends to all peoples and things. Hence to exercise this initiative properly and fully is not to attack and subdue, but to live in harmony with others whose welfare is also one’s own. This vision continually inspires philosophy to seek ways to integrate both self and others within the fullness of life.

Secondly, this is not a matter only of speculative knowledge, for philosophy and religion are engaged in the life and struggles of society. China has long conceived modernization as a process of assimilating the products and productive processes developed in the West. This can be only partly true, however, for the West is not only a matter of possessions — and in any case, much of what one buys there is made in Asia and probably in China. It is more revealing to look not at what the West has, but at what it is, at its values and way of life. To do this properly would require a long history of the development of its culture. More immediately, however, we might focus on how the West rebuilt itself in the last half of this Century and achieved its own combination of self-initiative and social cooperation.

At the end of the Second World War Fascism had been eliminated, but everything was destroyed; there was chaos throughout Western Europe. When the people went to elect their leadership for rebuilding their lives from the very foundations they chose neither the liberal leadership that was offered nor its opposite. Rather, consistently, they chose the Christian Democratic Parties inspired by the Catholic religious vision: Adenauer in Germany, DeGasperi in Italy, DeGaul in France and Spaak in Belgium. This initial choice of a party that was explicitly religious in its inspiration and principles reflected their recognition of the need to rebuild their society on the foundations of the deep values of Western culture which, in turn, are grounded in its religious traditions.

Reaffirming these foundations meant that their countries would be marked by respect for persons and rule of law, openness of communication and dialogue, and dedication to human welfare broadly and richly conceived. Thus inspired, they developed a political process which enabled them to apply effectively the particular values needed for concrete forward progress in continually changing circumstances.

Paradoxically, however, this example of the West does not mean copying an alien culture. For its great lesson is not that of techniques of production or of policy which can be copied, but of building upon the deep religious foundations of one’s own culture. This means drawing upon those dimensions of transcendence which we saw above in Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism, and which are found also in Islamic, Hindu and Christian tradition. These provide the foundations upon which can be built a solid, humane and distinctively Chinese future. This is the proper task of a Department of Philosophy and Religion sponsored by and for the country.