Editor’s Note: This essay is based on the author’s original one in Chinese. It deals with the two contending ideologies of capitalism and communism from a metaphysical point of view. Western Christian advocates of capitalism usually label communism as “atheism”, which is synonymous with “evil” in their diction, while believers in the latter defend their ideology as “scientific socialism” and criticize all religions as “superstition” and “opium” serving to numb people’s mind. Confronted with the reality of today’s world plagued by wide-spread loss of faith, ideological confusion, and all sorts of crises, it is urgently necessary to examine and clarify such basic concepts as “faith”, “rationality”, and “ideology” and their relations with each other. The author hopes this essay can serve as a brick cast here to attract jade, as the Chinese saying goes, and initiate some meaningful discussion.


Abstract:

Faith and rationality are often regarded as mutually antagonistic and exclusive. As a matter of fact, however, faith can be distinguished between that in the ultimate reality, or termed “ultimate faith”, or that in a specific ideology, or termed “ideological faith”, and rationality, too, between that derived direct from a mature understanding of the ultimate metaphysical reality, or termed “ultimate rationality”, and that developed as a means to an end, i.e., to get to know about the human-perceived physical world and solving practical problems in day-to-day living, or termed “instrumental rationality”. Any faith not cognitively based on “ultimate rationality” can only be “ideological faith”, not in any way “ultimate faith”.

Instrumental rationality is necessary for the construction of ideologies. However, short of transcending the limit of sensual perceptions of the physical world in its application, instrumental rationality would not be able to play a lasting positive role unless it works under the guidance and regulation of mature “ultimate rationality”. For the same reason, only if constructed under such ultimately supreme guidance and regulation can an ideology bring about real benefits to the society.

When instrumental rationality is exalted to the ultimately supreme status as the chief source and test of knowledge, dismissing all other ways of knowing, it becomes rationalism. But instrumental rationalism would not lead to any mature ultimate faith; and without the latter, there would not possibly be developed any mature ideology and, then, human society would suffer under the rule of all sorts of coming and going inadequate ideologies.

Therefore, an ultimate faith based on mature ultimate rationality is the solid foundation for any society, which cannot be substituted by any ideology. For convenience’s sake, the discussion will start with “rationality”.


Outline:

I. Ultimate Rationality

I-1. Ultimate rationality: Source of all wisdom

I-2. Ultimate rationality vs. instrumental/scientific rationality

I-3. Intuitive rationality vs. conscientious rationality

I-4. Sensory intuition vs. integrated intuition

I-5. Rationality vs. rationalism

II. Ultimate Faith

II-1. Principled faith vs. contract faith

II-2. Mature vs. immature ultimate faith

II-3. Social functions of ultimate faith

II-4. Ultimate unverbalizability of the object of ultimate faith

II-5. Symbolic and intuitive nature of ultimate faith and justifiability of its pluralism

III. Ultimate Faith & Ultimate Rationality

III-1. Ultimate faith: Its object must be an undivided “One”

III-2. Ultimate Rationality: Seeing the human-perceived world as conditional unfolding of ultimate intangibility (缘起性空) in multi-dimensional balance

III-3.  Self-centeredness in immature faiths

III-3(1) Centered on human-perceived “matter” or on human “mind”, whether externalized or not: Idealism and materialism, whether “dialectical” or not

III-3(2) Anthropocentrism and ethnocentric religious intolerance: Judaism-Christianity-Islam

III-3(3)  “Mental existence” (心体) passing off as ultimate reality in Neo-Confucianism

IV. Ultimate Faith & Historical Fate of Ideologies

IV-1 Faith in ideology

IV-2 Eastern vs. Western ideological traditions

IV-2(1) Traditional Chinese ideology as represented by Daoism

IV-2(2) Inconsistencies in Christian Ideology

IV-3 Capitalism and scientific socialism

IV-3(1) Rivalry in the shared cause of exploiting Nature

IV-3(2) Capitalism: Total opposition to ultimate rationality

IV-3(3) Scientific socialism (see below: IV-4 Traditional socialism)

IV-4 Traditional socialism: violations of ultimate balance-seeking rationality

IV-4(1) Dualist philosophical worldview

IV-4(2) Anthropocentric and material-oriented interpretation of social history

IV-4(3) Ultimate confrontation-oriented way of thinking

a)       Absolutization of capital-vs.-labor antagonism

b)     “Class struggle as the key link” and “dictatorship of the proletariat”: “Leftist” in appearance but rightist in effect

IV-4(4) Dimension-lacking monolithic collectivism

a)       “People’s democracy” not realized

b)       “Big brother” self-centrism and great-nation chauvinism

IV-4(5) Dimension-lacking political economy

a)       Underassessment of capitalist exploitation of surplus value

b)       Underassessment of capitalist destruction of productive forces

IV-4(6) Undemocratic centralism: Dualist sophistry in the name of dialectics

V. Redemption of Humanity: By transcending exploitative way of thinking and restarting from awareness of ultimate intangibility

V-1. Spiritual insight from traditional Chinese thought tradition

V-1(1) Consistence between the physical and the metaphysical

V-1(2) Balance-oriented new political economy as the physical basis for all social theories

V-2. Two ideological impediments to renewed awareness of ultimate reality

V-2(1) Post-modern antifoundationalism in the West

V-2(2) U.S.-Eurocentric cultural hegemony

V-3. Coping strategy for followers of the Dao