The Construction of Modernity and Three Main Modern Cultural Trends of Thought

Although conservatism,liberalism and radicalism constitute a tripartite value system,they all belong to the modern trend of thought,sharing common grounds on cognizing whether to realize modernization and accepting modernity,and on the four dimensions of immediacy,universality,individuality and secularity that embody modernity.However,they differ from each other in their approaches to modernization and their expressive resorts to modernization,which are exhibited as the conservative resort to modernization,i.e.the mode of Confucian capitalist modernization or the mode of East Asian modernization,the moderate resort to modernization,i.e.the mode of European and American capitalist modernization,and the radical resort to modernization,i.e.the mode of New Democratic and Socialistic modernization.The dissimilarities of the three main trends of thought can be also analyzed in the coordinate of modernization vs anti-modernization and that of pre-modernity,modernity and post-modernity.While cultural conservatism contrasts the happiness of pre-modernity with the abuses of modernity,the thought train of radicalism can be regarded as the creativity of modernization or post-modernity.