It is important to see that we need a human philosophy which links the East and West, ethics and religion, science and humanity in this modern-toward-post-modern world. We need to see modernity as occasion and source for new consciousness of virtues and values as well as for conceptual changes of frameworks and reference points. It is because we have to confront the challenge of the deepening questions of the very purposefulness and meaningfulness of human life when human life is now threatened with ennui (weariness), scientist reductionism, technical control, external imposition and institutional regimentation and instrumentation. We seem to lose both primary experience of life and free vision of ourselves and others as members of humanity. We seem to become alienated from our cultural memories and our historical heritages. For this reason and before it is too late it is necessary that we return to roots of our being as a creative agent capable of doubting and yet believing, knowing and yet transforming. We should go back to the roots of our virtues and values and seek a re-identification and redefinition of human consciousness, morality, community and transcendence.

But this does not mean that we should or must cast off modernist machineries and mechanisms which service us and yet condition us. It is rather to develop a moral and autonomous freedom to make good use of instruments without being enthralled by them, to cultivate and treasure a creativity which is sourced and rooted in the cosmic origin and its boldness in creative development, which gives us sustainable forms of culture and forms of life, and which allow us to criticize, improve, and change our mechanist and materialist culture so that we become more independent and more self-fulfilling human persons. We should not become dependently conditioned by machines and scientific inventions on the one hand, and on the other hand, our freedom from such conditioning is not to use machines for whatever selfish purposes of ourselves. We need to develop a self-understanding and an understanding of morality which enables us to fulfill the goodness of life in the form of culture, philosophy and arts, and ensure that we will continue to remain morally free in our efforts to develop science and machines.

On this basis we could reevaluate modern knowledge, science and technology and even localized or globalized systems of understanding and moral action from different traditions for the purpose of retrieving human freedom and human creativity. This I take to be the position of classical Confucianism which Confucius has embraced and which we now rediscover. It is a position resulting from external cultural change which requires internal philosophical reflection and development just as we see in the development of classical Confucian philosophy in the Pre-Qin period of China. On this basis I wish to suggest the crucial relevance of benti-onto-cosmology as a basis for redefinition of ontology, onto-hermeneutics as a redefinition of inter-cultural understanding, onto-ethics as a basis for redefinition of global ethics, and onto-aesthetics as a basis of re-definition of human arts and aesthetic experiences. All of these will warrant our creativity and freedom as a human being.

The key points of this paper are 1) to develop science and technique only for moral and humane uses, 2) to cultivate morality for freedom of establishing a world community of human self-understanding with 3) cross-cultural mutual understanding, and finally 4) to build a interactive global-local culture in fulfilling creativities of humanity warranted in human freedom.