This turn of the millennia promises to be not only a change in numbers or even an incremental development along familiar paths. Far beyond this, we are living a profound vertical deepening of human awareness to new levels of human life and sacred meaning. This, in turn, enables us to engage horizontally a broadened, even global, diversity of peoples and cultures. This expansion of the dynamism of human awareness both in depth and in breadth opens new dimensions and creates new challenges for the work of philosophy.

To appreciate the extent to which this is true it is important to keep in mind the history of the last millenium. If we turn to Western philosophy we find it to be characterized by the emergence of human reflection and its logical systematization, traced archetypically from Plato and his student, Aristotle. Philosophy in the first half of the present millenium was characterized above all by the rediscovery of the work of Aristotle and its elaboration into the great medieval systems of Aquinas and Scotus, Avicenna and Averroes, Moses Mamonides and others. There, one finds reason in the service of humankind, clarifying and systematically coordinating ideas and relating them to the sources, goals and virtues of human life.

But the history of humankind and of philosophy is also tragic in its destiny, for the capabilities of reason can be the key to progress which bears the needs of its own frustration. Thus, at the end of the Renaissance in a series of delimiting strokes reason was wrenched out of the pattern of integral human life. Francis Bacon went about destroying the "idols" which bore the symbols of cultural traditions as the accumulation of creative human freedom; John Locke would erase the content of the mind and reduce it to a blank tablet, Descartes would bracket by doubt all but clear and distinct ideas — which meant all but the self and what could be built thereupon. This radicalization of reason and philosophy made it possible to work with clearly defined ideas and to develop correspondingly clear structures for science and philosophy. Most thinkers were fascinated by the new achievements made possible by this radical surgery. Only a few, such as Pascal and J.B. Vico, noted from the beginning the costs to be paid for this reductionist approach of rationalism.

What characterizes the depth of the transformation now taking place is the new recognition of how restrictive, and indeed destructive, this reductionism has been. This awareness is made possible negatively by the experience of the violent tragedies of the recent century, the wars hot and cold, the pogroms and holocausts, and the rise of nationalist ideologies. In the first chapter, "The Contemporary Transformation of Chinese Marxist Philosophy," Professor Liu Fangtong magisterially delineates this situation by contrasting modern with contemporary thought. In the former, reason as restricted to clear ideas is apt for attending to what is universal, i.e. to the natures or essences of things. But these are abstracted from what is unique and especially from the freedom of human persons and peoples. Corresponding to this is the restriction of reason to what is distinct; indeed the criterion of clarity is the ability to distinguish one idea as distinct from all others. This entailed, however, a decided turn to analysis which progressed precisely by dividing realities for purposes of conceptual clarity.

What was left unattended was the synthetic appreciation of the unity and integrity of reality. There resulted a pattern of dualisms between mind and matter, subject and object, individual and community. This has constituted the destabilizing fault line of modern thought and generated not only continual tremors, but the vicious extremes expressed in exploitation, oppression and war. Moreover, marked by this fascination with reason, modern thought neglected the practical and the aesthetic.

This attempt to restrict human awareness to the sciences suggests the extent of the constructive project which lies ahead if philosophy is to retain modern achievements while expanding the structure of reason, recognizing additional dimensions of the person, and making possible authentic growth.

The modern-contemporary schema of Professor Liu Fangtong allows him to rethink the fate of Marxism, to see its humane concerns and to project their retention and development. Indeed he sees Marx primarily as attempting to transcend modernity and its rationalism in order to free the subject from oppression. In that sense Liu Fangtong interprets Marx essentially as a contemporary philosopher.

Unfortunately his efforts became bogged down in the very rationalism he intended to transcend. He was entrapped by the scientistic overlays of Engels who, in attempting to make this thought into a science like others, subjected it to universal and necessary laws which suppressed the freedom and creativity of people. Hence, in the late 70s and 80s in central Europe the great battle was to free the younger humanistic Marx from the later Marx. This is the great shared enterprise of most peoples today. The central importance of the paper of Professor Liu Fangtong to this volume and indeed to our times is to raise the question of just what developments in epistemology, metaphysics and philosophical anthropology are required in order for such a project to succeed and hence to allow for a progressive and transformative view of values in a time of change.

Before undertaking these questions, however, there are some cautionary notes. It may be that even Professor Liu Fangtong’s analysis is not entirely free from modern rationalism, for he tends to depict traditional metaphysics as a supremely abstract system which loses touch with reality. This was true of the modern rationalist philosophy, which he rightly criticizes. But the classical metaphysics of the Middle Ages and the phenomenological metaphysics of today provide the major study of existence and hence of the nature and reality of human freedom. To discard metaphysics would be to cut off serious investigation into this basic humane dimension of reality, thereby leaving philosophy to be built upon prejudices. For this reason metaphysics, though always discarded by those who would concentrate on some particular facet of philosophy, always has had to be taken up again on new and hopefully more adequate bases. Professor Liu Fangtong points this out in criticizing those contemporary philosophers who confuse "reasonable inquiry into metaphysics with their absolute actions and then simply negate those inquiries."

A similar attempt is recounted by Professor Warayutha Sriewarakul in Chapter II, "Process as a Basis for Philosophy in a Time of Change". He objects not only to the static character of rationalism, but to the substantialist vision of classical philosophy reaching back to the Greeks. In its place he would suggest a process philosophy after the manner of Alfred North Whitehead. Beginning from his joint work with Bertrand Russell, Whitehead took a metaphysical rather than an analytic turn in recognizing the reality of essences. Eventually he developed a full fledged metaphysical system in which the flow of change was seen as the primary nature of reality. This reflected well the nature of the physical or changing universe; the challenge was to extend this to all of being, to being as such, and to Being itself. In any case, Charles Hartshorne and others insisted that the striving and sufferings of humankind had to count or make a difference for God and in God. In this they gave voice to the importance of the human person and the exercise of freedom as prime elements of contemporary thought.

But a philosophy of process must face the issue of what is abiding or perduring in value. This is required in order to know and be attracted/guided toward human good, rather than evil. An abrupt break with past experience means not a decisive step ahead, but rather confusion as to the direction in which human progress can lie and a long period during which this is sorted out.

However, if progress cannot exist either in simple value disjunctions or in standing still, then one encounters here the issue of the nature of change in the human and social order, and beneath this the question of the nature and principles of reality itself. Where these issues have been ignored or suppressed progress is bound to be a tragic effort. Thus, if the chapter of Liu Fangtong referred often to the need to surpass the static and defective metaphysical systems of modern times, the key to the present transformation of values can be expected to lie above all in a renewal of metaphysics integrating the more recent existential awareness with the pre-modern traditions as traced in the chapter of James Loiacono.

The key to this lies in breaking beyond the strictures of modern rationalism, for one can expect that if one undertakes the project in the same terms as a Descartes, Spinoza or Leibniz, one will arrive at the same conclusion. These were great minds, yet, as in the case of Leibniz, they were unsuccessful in their effort to justify human freedom. To avoid the reductionism of modernity while retaining its advances requires a new epistemological dimension. Marx suggested that this be a turn to praxis, which made its own contribution. But Professor Liu Fangtong points out that this has not been unambiguous. Indeed its attempts to achieve control over all by developing a scientific view of history, based upon necessary principles and implemented through an inexorable dialectic, has come generally to be seen to need revision in order to leave room for the authentic humanism of the early Marx. This suggests that modern ideologies are built on inadequate foundations. The contemporary mind stands in need of a whole new dimension of human awareness capable of making room for subjectivity along with objectivity, uniqueness along with universality, and the existential along with the essential.

This is attempted in the Chapter III by George F. McLean, "Freedom and Cultural Traditions as the Basis of Values in a Time of Change". He sees the aesthetic level of awareness suggested by Kant as transcending, but in order to integrate the universal and necessary dimensions of science treated in the first Critique (Mr. Science) with the ethical and political dimensions of the second Critique (Mr. Democracy). This implies not only that there is room for Confucius, but that his role is necessary in order to enable Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy to live together in a way that is complimentary, humanizing, and hence truly progressive.

For this project to be truly successful, however, one would need to move beyond the formalism of Kant to engage the existential order. Hence Chapter III focuses on freedom as the new center and norm of life. This pioneers new philosophical terrain which consists not merely of patterns of necessary deduction, but of free creativity in working out the manifestation of being at its point of its entrance into time.

Chapter IV by Professor Chen Chaonan, "Aesthetic Culture: from Tradition to Modernity," shows this to have been central in the Chinese tradition, illustrating this by the role of music and poetry in the rituals through which life classically was ordered and lived.

Part II "The Material Basis of Values" looks for the way in which this is rooted in the concrete life of the people. This brings home, in turn, the character of the aesthetic as described above. It is not an esoteric departure from life, but an harmonious ordering and integrating of life in all its aspects. In the material order this has the form of ethics and a number of chapters are devoted especially to the values in the economic realm.

Professor Yu Wujin in Chapter V, "The Loss of the Subject and the Disorder of Values: Critical Reflections on Present Cultural Research," opens this issue in response to those who would attempt to respond to the difficulties of modernity by suggesting a return to the past. For Yu Wujin there is need not only of permanent values which can be learned from the past, but of economic and social developments. These were achieved centuries ago in the West and need now to be implemented in the East as a basis for substantive progress. To those who would say that we need to learn from the past, he would add the need to grasp the historicity and the essence of the life-world in which we are now situated.

He adds other cautionary notes, pointing out that the whole world does not move forward at the same pace, although modern commerce and communication spread styles and ideas at lightening speed. This has two implications for developing nations. Negatively, there is danger of a loss of the subject, either by forgetting the present and returning simply to the past, or by a subjective eclecticism in which one selects at random from a broad pattern of possibilities, thereby destroying one’s personal and cultural identity. To this might be added a more common phenomenon, namely, simply replacing one’s own identity by a pattern of external behavior tailored to another culture and clime. As a result, one lacks a value foundation for one’s life and undertakes an unprincipled pursuit of means for unexamined ends, or with no end or purpose at all.

On the positive side, however, Professor Yu Wujin notes that while it may be time to mount a critique of reason in developed Western cultures, in other parts of the world greater rationalization of life is a requirement of progress. In particular he cites the need to bring forward such positive values of modernity as democracy and freedom, creativity and social justice, and truth in its scientific dimensions.

This, however, raises a number of questions. The development of a market economy may well be a major or even the major task of our times, but should this goal be made absolute so that all is subjected to it as means? If one adds to the exercise of political power the pursuit of profit under the control of the blind hand of the market, can it be hoped that the result will be humanizing? Or was not Marx correct in identifying the tragic costs of such a development in his times, as was Marcuse in his One Dimensional Man? If it be agreed that humans must be ends and not just means, then the "market" is not an adequate formula and there is need for a third dimension, namely civil society, in order to bring forward responsible personal and group action for the human quality of life.

Professor Lu Xiaohe in Chapter VI "Economic and Ethical Values" would want to insist that this is not merely to identify the mechanics or even the economics of the material order, but must integrate as well the ethical ordering of human behavior. This would not be seen as an external superposition upon business and other economic activities, but rather a more wholistic view of life which integrates the economic order within a larger frame of reference.

Chapter VII by Professor Charn Mayot, "An Approach to Business Ethics: Fact-based Value for Fair Trade," would broaden Adam Smith’s suggestion that business is directed simply to profit in order to include not only the internal and external set of stakeholders properly speaking, but the social responsibilities of business in the broader social life.

Chapter VIII by Professor Wang Miaoyang, "Sustainability and a New Civilization," extends these concerns to the environmental order with special attention to the evolving sense of the need to maintain physical nature at least at its present level for future generations. This requires a sense of environmental and ecological values. Beyond this there is need for a development and extension of the sense of fairness, which in turn can take place only within a broad social renewal. All of this would seem to be beyond our hopes for human perfectibility were it not for the fact that the present attention to the environment is unintelligible unless substantial human progress already was taking pace.

Chapter IX by Professor Xu Hongxing, "The Basis of Economic Values in Chinese Traditional Culture," grounds this value structure in the history of economic development in China. But on the question of which is cause and which effect, Professor Wang Miaoyang would seem to have the stronger position by urging not that the material order is externally ordered by ideal values, but that the effort of humanity to perfect its life reaches out to include not only the human body, but the physical universe. This is not to subject the human to the material in pursuit of purely physical or economic goals as would classical materialism. Rather, he would unite both in a broader, more historical vision characteristic of our times.

Part III on "The Spiritual Basis of Values" turns the issue around. Rather than beginning from the material dimension of reality which has been so strongly advocated in both positivist and Marxist contexts, this section reflects the spiritual dimension which both is found in the ancient traditions and presently is being revivified as the dynamic force of renovation and new life. It is the "step back" of Heidegger to what was forgotten or left undeveloped during the valiant effort to develop the mechanical instruments of modern life and which now promises to be most transforming and innovative for the future.

James Loiacono begins this exploration in Chapter X, "The Dignity of the Human Person as the Basis for Community: Pope John Paul II’s Contemporary Catholic Anthropology." He shows how on an existential basis it becomes possible to overcome the series of dualism which long have bedeviled philosophy and which Professor Liu Fangtong identified as characteristic of the modern mind. In this light J. Loiacono analyzes the anthropology of John Paul II. This is an existential evolution of the classical Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition integrating the new subjectivity with objectivity to heal modern dualisms. In a series of deft strokes Loiacono shows how multiple and changing things depend in their entirety upon — and hence reflect — their Creator; how this source is one rather than a dualism of good and evil; and hence how the creatures which derive therefrom are in principle good rather than evil. Further, he emphasizes the unity of human nature in contrast to the modern dualisms of spirit and matter which imposed a choice of one in contrast to the other, leading thereby to idealism or materialism. In contrast, John Paul II would stress the unity of human nature so that all that is material about the human person has the dignity of a free and self responsible being, while all that is spiritual about the human person is realized in time and space.

Central to this is a new phenomemologically developed sense of the human person which reanimates the classical and more objective sense of the person as an existing substance of a rational nature. Phenomenology makes it possible to intensify and extend the notion of rational nature to a broader sense of human subjectivity and intentionality. In this way the human life, classically stated as existing in its own right by the terms substance and supposit, can now be seen more explicitly as free and responsible self-affirmation with others in this world.

The chapter proceeds further to show how the transcendence of the human person reflects the creative power of the infinite Source and the enlivening love of the divine Goal. One can begin to appreciate the true dignity and exciting vocation of human freedom situated between these two. Moreover, in this context there appears the true significance of ethics, not as limitation, but as orientation calling persons and peoples beyond self-interest to a positive and cooperative harmony.

Chapter XI by Professor Andrew Woznicki, "Being and Values," continues this project at once mining and developing the philosophy of the human person by examining in depth the themes of subjectivity, participation and transcendence in modern thought. Together Chapters X and XI explain in depth the new contemporary sense which Professor Liu Fangtong identified in his opening chapter. There he saw these elements as constituting a distant utopia for Marx which was blocked and even subverted by the scientistic approach of modernity. Elsewhere Professor Woznicki has shown how these were given full play in the writings of John Paul II and bespeak a deep renewal of human life for the millennium now beginning. If so then these two major modern thinkers — Marx and John Paul — were much less opposed than is generally thought; more deeply understood they are amazingly complimentary within the broader human effort.

Chapter XII by Huang Songjie, "Making Religion Ethical: The Value Orientation of Religion in Contemporary Society," relates this more explicitly to religion which he describes well. From the ethical perspective of Chinese culture he is able to bring out with special sensibility the contribution of the moral role of religion to public and private life. As he proceeds in this direction he sees this ethical contribution as supplanting the ascetic and contemplative elements in religion which predominated in the past. It might be asked, however, whether it is not precisely these transcending elements of religion which enable the human person to overcome self-absorption as is required for the realization of an ethical life and for taking up the wholistic outlook indicated by Professor Wang Miaoyang as both characteristic and required for social life today.

Chapter XIII by Professor R. Balasubramanian, "The Basis of Values in a Time of Change," is a magnificent analysis of the great riches of the ancient Hindu tradition on these very topics. Perhaps nowhere is the spiritual character of human life and its foundation in the Absolute plenitude of being more firmly advanced or more intensely analyzed.

Professor Balasubramanian begins by responding to the dualisms or tensions in life from the classical advaita (nondual) position of Shankara. This roots all in the Self, which in order to operate in space and time employs the lower self. The latter is rooted in the higher Absolute Self. This is not a distant reality after the manner of Plato, but the deeper, foundational reality reflected in Paul Tillich’s notion of the Divine as "Ground of being." In turn, it enables Professor Balasubramanian to stress the permanence or perdurance of values as grounded in, and expressing, non-temporal Being. But as the temporal cannot create the eternal, it is necessary to read the former in terms of the latter, rather than vice versa.

Grounding this in the sense of the self Professor Balasubramanian strikingly echoes themes presented by the chapters of Loiacono and Woznicki as characteristic of the work of the present Pope. Moreover, he takes up carefully the ontological, axiological and epistemological work called for by Liu Fangtong in his opening chapter of the present work. On that firm basis the chapter proceeds to the issue of values in order to identify and reconcile their permanent and developmental aspects.

Chapter XIV by Professor Veerachart Nimanong, "Renewal of Thai Buddhist Belief in Kamma and Rebirth," is parallel to the previous chapter, but written in terms of the Buddhist tradition. Chapters XIII and XIV thus constitute an outstanding review of the rich resources of the Asian spiritual traditions.

Part IV "Values and Asian Cultural Traditions" continues their study of Asian cultures as the complexes of values and virtues which emerge from the life experience of peoples. At the same time these constitute the context within which people find the modes of their human interaction and progressively develop thereby the life of their human communities. The first four chapters of this Part concern the distinctive cultures of various East and South East Asian cultures, to which should be added the above Chapters XIII and XIV on Hindu and Buddhist culture. The remaining chapters concern the possibility of diverse cultures for living together.

The issue of Thai philosophy is treated in Chapter XV by Professor Kirti Bunchua, "Is There a Thai Philosophy?", and in Chapter XVI by Professor Soraj Hongladarom, "The Prospects and Justification of Thai Philosophy." Chapter XV illustrates some distinctive content in the Thai understanding of the principles of life and meaning which need to be thematized on a more formal philosophical structure. Chapter XVI suggests moreover that a Thai philosophy needs to be done from within a culture and for a culture, even when done by someone who is not a legal Thai citizen or by a Thai studying the philosophies of other cultures.

Chapter XVII by Professor Nguyen Trong Chuan, "Changes of Values during the Renovation Period in Vietnam," identifies specific values and virtues in Vietnamese culture such as patriotism and respect for scholarship and social rank. It also discusses the present transformations rooted in the emergence of market values.

Chapter XVIII by Professor Fang Songhua "The Modern Significance of Chinese Traditional Culture," reflects the critique of tradition which was characteristic of the May 4th Movement. This should be balanced by the critique of modernity described in Chapter I by Liu Fangtong as the root of Marx’s humanism and now broadly accepted as contemporary thought.

Chapter XIX by Professor Vincent Shen, "Existential Relationships and Optimal Harmony: Philosophical Foundations for Values in a Time of Change," goes most deeply into the Chinese tradition to draw forward the elements for its contemporary renewal. This focuses on three basic values of the culture, namely, society or one’s fellow humans, the physical universe and the transcendent. The analysis of each of these identifies its classical Chinese charac-teristics and its relevance for present and ongoing development.

Through a Confucian ethics of virtue, an individual could realize harmony with his fellowmen; through Taoist life praxis, human beings eventually could achieve harmony with nature; through multiple Christian ways in everyday life, religious rites or mystic grace, an individual could return to his original harmony with God. In thus deepening these three levels of existential relations, keeping each free and in peace, together they could form a maximum degree of harmony. Upon the existential relationship and the inner dynamism towards this ultimate harmony can be based a viable value system suitable for this time of rapid change and radical social conflict.

Part V of this volume concerns the possibility of relations between cultures. In Chapter XX, "The Change of Society and the Exchange of Values," Professor Zhang Qingxiong begins this study by pointing out the importance of transcending self-interest and illustrates the possibility of so doing. He notes perspicaciously, however, that the level of communication and interaction between cultures now requires corresponding developments in epistemology and metaphysics.

Chapter XXI by Professor Zhang Rulun, "The Lifeworld and the Possibility of Intercultural Understanding," draws especially upon Edmand Husserl’s phenomenology of life worlds and stresses their incommencurability. He sees, but rejects rightly, two ways out of this. One is Husserl’s move to a transcendental ego which would surpass the distinctive subjectivities from which this incommen-surability emerges, the other is the simple imposition by the more powerful culture of its life style upon others as if it were universal rather than particular. If neither of these is justified or ethical then there remains the need to recognize the distinctiveness of the other and to employ the imagination to grasp it positively and to appreciate its relations to others.

Chapter XXII by Professor Yu Xuanmeng, "On the Unity of Pluralistic Values," recognizes this pluralism as a fact, but also notes how it can lead to conflict, especially in a world of increasing com-munication and interaction between peoples. He sees then the need for common and universal values. But he notes that these cannot be the limited self-interests of the economic or political order because these are divided between peoples, and left to themselves would generate conflict. Instead the commonly shared values which are needed are not relative, but absolute and hence able to be shared by all. By a phenomenological analysis he points to the need for an absolute foundation in order to relate not only to oneself but, beyond oneself to others and to the environment. With Vincent Shen and indeed as a recurrent theme since Chapter I above he would point then to the need for developments in metaphysics and epistemology if such values are to be understood and lived.

This is the challenge to philosophers of values in this time of change.

George F. McLean