Passion Rational Belief,

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) is the greatest thinker, litterateur and critic in Britain in the 18th century. The middle of the 18th century is known as the Age of Johnson. His works, criticism and thoughts in ethics and morality have a great influence on the later generation.The thesis makes a preliminary exploration of Johnson's political, religious thought and main works from the following parts.The"introduction"offers an outline introduction to Johnson including his life, representative works and his position in literary history, and makes an overview of research on him both at home and abroad.Chapter one introduces Johnson in the crevice of the age. This part analyses the contradiction of his political, religious and moral thought by considering the background of the age. The first section gives an overview of the 18th century, in which Johnson lives. It is a changing age. With the great change in the fields of economy, politics and religion, people in the transforming age witness the impact of the new trend of thought on the traditional ideology. Seeking wealth and other materials has become"the spirit of time", leaving people's morality and ethics decline universally. The rapid development of economy forms a striking comparison with the iceberg- like progress of the spiritual level of people. In this transitional period of the old and new thought, on the one hand, influenced by Neoclassicism, Johnson, sticks to the traditional ideology; on the other hand, he unconsciously and critically absorbs the new thought. These factors engender complexity and indistinctness of his thoughts. The second section explores Johnson's political, religious and moral thoughts. Through the analysis of Johnson's ambiguous attitude towards Jacobite, his steadfast piety towards Anglican and his zealousness and wariness towards the moral problems, this section brings forth the specious contradiction of his thoughts and his persistence in bewilderment.The second part discusses Johnson's morality writing. The good wish to reconstruct morality value and the prosperity of printing and publishing are the two important reasons for the bloom of the morality style."Advocating morality by writing"has become the feature of the literature at that time."It is the right way for writers to meditate upon and deal with current social and ideological problems, and even for intervening with the political affairs."The morality style, which is concerned with humanity and ethnics, is not only the feature of literature but also the demand of the age at that time. As an important morality writer, John explores"happiness", the modern topic in the 18th century, in a series of his works. In his The Vanity of Human, with slight pessimism, he admonishes people that the secular life could not provide people with real and eternal happiness. Instead, he emphasizes that people need to search for safety and happiness in religion and eternity, which expresses his weariness of the secular life and reverence to eternity, and demonstrates his morality admonition and religious passion. In The Rambler, he continues to lay stress on constraining desire and random pursuit. Meanwhile, he does not, however, deny the reasonability of desire and pursuit of humankind definitely. Furthermore, there are many other ambivalent ideas appearing in the work. This flatly reflects the contradictory psychology of Johnson in the particular age.The third part mainly analyses Johnson's morality fable Rasselas. The first section explains Johnson's discourse upon desire in this work. His analysis about humanity still bases on the conclusion that"humanity is greedy and the desire of mankind could not be satisfied", and thus denies the existence of eternal happiness. The second section tries to sum up the latent mould of"hope, attempt, failure"in the text by intensive reading. The third section proves that he does not follow his pessimistic tone in this work as he did in The Vanity of Human. On the contrary, he stresses that the happiness of life lies in the ceaseless selections, pursuit and setting goals for oneself. Whether it is persistent pursuit or taking things as they come, there is no difference in nature. As long as one has an incessant feeling of happiness, this kind of selection is advisable in life. This positive conclusion puts a satisfactory end to his ten years'morality exploration and morality writing.