关键词: 启蒙, 启蒙运动, 现代性

Abstract: How to achieve modernization is essential to the social transformation in China since the modern times. Since the Enlightenment is the premise and the starting point of modernization, how to understand and evaluate the significance and limit of enlightenment is the key to understand modernity. France, Germany, Italy, Scotland and other Western societies of modernization—all of them were baptized by the Enlightenment. In the West, enlightenment firstly means that people apply the power of reason to emancipate themselves from the obscuration of religion. Reason is regarded as the first principle in the world. The timeless legacies from the Enlightenment include the self-criticism with reason, the public application of reason, and liberal and just legal order. In China, the Enlightenment can function as an important intellectual resource to promote China's modernization and the construction of Chinese thought. Since the Revolution of 1911, the ways concerning religious faith and social political order in China's society have been impacted by the Enlightenment discourse. However, we still want a comprehensive theoretical study of the Enlightenment from the perspectives of space, intellectual history, society and culture. keywords: enlightenment, the Enlightenment, modernity, China

Key words: enlightenment, the Enlightenment, modernity, China