As early as 1920, Liang Qichao made a preliminary study on the relationship and difference between the history of thought and the history of ideological trend. He said: "In a culturally developed country, its citizens are moving in the same direction because of the changes in the environment and the inspiration of their husbands' psychology, so they respond violently, like the tide ... they can become' trendsetters', and their' thoughts' must be of considerable value and suitable for the requirements of their times." Liang's words are really enlightening to the image description of this trend of thought. The author of the History of Modern Western Social Thought also believes that once thought appears on the stage of human history, it gives life and vitality to history, so there is a history of civilization. It is precisely because of thinking that human civilization is possible, and it is indeed constantly progressing and innovating. At the same time, the ideological activities of an era are always manifested in many aspects, but in many aspects, we often find some general trends or tendencies, which can be called trends or mainstream thoughts, that is, to integrate different cultures into a whole, we must have an ideological cohesion. When this cohesion forms a powerful force, we call it ideological trend. It is from this perspective that this book makes an in-depth study of modern western social thoughts, including Renaissance and humanism, modern natural science, liberalism, enlightenment and rationalism, revolution and conservatism, positivism and socialism.
For the Renaissance and humanism, there may be many people looking for business in literature, but in fact, they have their own connotations related to contemporary development. One of the obvious advantages of this book is that it quotes the views of different scholars to explain the essence of the problem, thus highlighting the extensive and profound characteristics of the material. For example, Voltaire, a French enlightenment thinker, believes that the spirit of the Renaissance is not retro, but innovation; Swiss scholar Buckhart pointed out that the Renaissance marked a new beginning of modern European culture. Of course, some western scholars only understand the Renaissance literally as "rebirth" and deny that it is the beginning of modern European society. Similarly, the same is true of how to treat humanism. Only through comprehensive analysis and research can we find the basis for taking humanism as the trend of European Renaissance. The book takes Renaissance and Humanism as the first chapter, which has explained the significance and influence of this trend of thought as the first trend of thought in modern western society.
Humanism is accompanied by the rise of modern natural science. As pointed out in the book,15 ~16th century humanism movement and natural science trend of thought are the great beginning of modern rationality. This book discusses the scientific trend of thought marked by Copernicus Revolution, expounds that Bacon's knowledge is power, analyzes Hobbes' and Locke's knowledge from sensory experience, comments on the perfect combination of Newton's experiment and mathematics, expounds the characteristics of Descartes, Leibniz and Kant's scientific thoughts, and links the scientific trend of thought with the great development of science, thus pointing out the important value of modern natural science trend of thought.
The bourgeois revolutionary movement in modern western countries is related to liberalism, enlightenment and rationalism, revolution and conservatism. Combined with the struggle against feudal autocracy and the twists and turns of the revolutionary process of the emerging bourgeoisie in Europe, the book is divided into three chapters to make a solid study of it. Among them, the comparative study of revolutionary thought and conservative thought not only shows the ideological connotation of Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau in revolutionary thought, but also analyzes the historical position of American Declaration of Independence and French Declaration of Human Rights. In the conservative thought, it also focuses on the ideological content of the book "French Revolution" written by British conservative Burke against the French Revolution, and analyzes the characteristics of conservative thinkers. Of course, the Republic established after the French Revolution did not change its political power because of the criticism of British constitutional monarchy thinkers. In addition, the book also expounds positivism, a school of philosophy and social sciences that rose in France and Britain.
The book also discusses the socialist ideological trend as the mainstream political thought in the19th century.
How to treat western culture and western thoughts is a problem that we must face squarely. In modern times, facing the "Western learning spreading to the east", China put forward the ideas of "adapting Chinese style to the west" or "totally westernizing", which became historical relics with the development of the times. We should absorb the essence of China's traditional culture, discard its dross and learn the advantages of western culture instead of copying it. Most modern people already have such a cultural view. Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish which components are of universal significance to the ideological trend of modern western society, which is worth learning and learning from other nationalities; What are the products of western specific historical conditions, which are not of universal significance; What is wrong in theory should be criticized and discarded, which is exactly the correct attitude we should have when we understand and examine the ideological trend of modern western society.