Integration Of Sacred And Secular: The Ritual And Value Of Life

Value of life is a matter of religion, and this research could be regarded as a researchof “peasants’ religion”. Differ from the bible-Prophetic faith in west world, the superiorexperience of value that Chinese peasants get in their secular and moral daily, that is theintegration of the sacred and the secular. Specifically, the scared value is intrinsic in one’shistorical experience and the secular life contains the “ultimate and upmost concern”.Unlike the contemporary new Confucianism that trying to explain the “internaltranscendence” in traditional China culture from the perspective of the classics. As asociological study, this paper is an empirical research on peasants’ real moral life on baseof extensive rural surveys. The ethical living way that integrated the sacred and the secular,reflects the humanist tradition of “moral instead of religion” in China. Actually, thereligiosity embodies in peasants’ moral life,“Godless religiosity” reflects the feature of“extremely wise but medium” in China culture.“The ritual” is a cultural symbol that links society, oneself and the mind. The ritual ismainly characterized by historical experience and the value beyond that. Shaped by theritual, the experiences of community life, personality and mind have sacred value thatbeyond their historical experience. For peasants,“ritual” means an “individual-family”structure, which is resulted from family institutions and rules. Under the framework of“procreation”, it has special religious meaning that beyond sociology. Namely, peasantsparticipate in family life to realize interpersonal self. The process to take the responsibilityof family morality is also the stretch of moral life. Peasants rely on physical body tocomplete their moral life so as to realize their value of life.“The ritual” is not only the social ethics that constraint interpersonal relations within afamily, but also the bioethics to build up an “individual-lineage” system. Because of theethics of life, individuals realize their value of life, meanwhile the value basis of familyethics formulated. In other words, it is the source of the legitimacy of family institution.The most important characteristics of “the ritual” is individual negation. Specifically, itemphasizes intimacy relationships within a family while rejecting individual and personal emotional expression. Actually, family ethics is ethicized from natural relationships. Thesociological characters of “non-individualism” formulate the exercise basis for traditionalpeasants’ living ethics, yet contradicts with that of individual-oriented modern liberalism.In the context of modern society, the living ethics of the ritual has long been neglectedwhile the traditional “manner and order” becomes the target of ethics revolution.Political and social revolutions in modern period, referring to modern liberalism,mainly focus on modifications of traditional social institution and ideology. The integratedritual leads to transformation that breaks up the political and social category and evenbecomes a “religious revolution”. In other words, to change the traditional sociologicalforms of peasants’ moral life is to destroy their belief of bioethics.Peasants’ moral is turning to “daily application” with highly practicality. Under theparticipation of different powers such as political, cultural, economic and so on, twoimportant sociological foundation collapse increasingly, namely the traditional familyinstitution and the rural acquaintances community. Admittedly, they are of equallyimportance with ethnics transformation at ideological level.Having experienced the democratic revolution of family and transformation withinacquaintances community, China was heading to an “individualized” society. It means abroken traditional organization structure instead of a super-individual entity, hence anysocial organization could be turned into individuals. In peasants’ new moral life,individualism is adored in faith while legislations are used to protect individual “rights” inpractice. Admittedly, this new moral life is on the way to realize social freedom.In the context of China, a godless society, absolute freedom might lead to the plight oflife value decline. In other words, liberal ethics could solve the problem of freedom well,however, it is far from settling the issue of value loss which is resulted from the destroy oftraditional bioethics. For peasants, as the traditional “individual-family” structure as wellas the “individual-lineage” bioethics system disrupt, the new marriage and family lifebecomes a simple accumulation of temporal matters, losing its value basis. Specifically,“the religious revolution in China” performs as the secularization of family life, which,however, formulates the essential confliction for China peasants who regard family as theultimate and upmost concern. Both so-called “individual life” and “public political life” are secular issues, therefore could not meet peasants’ religious desire.Ever since the new culture movement, after nearly100years, efforts aiming to realizesocial freedom have achieved some success to a certain extent. The spiritual freedom,however, becomes worse as the sacred of traditional symbols weakens in the value of life.Therefore, the social construction of China in the future should not only focus on issues atsocial level, but also (or even more importantly) try to solve the problem of religious.Theoretically, the essential is to endow new cultural symbols with sacred valueconnotation.