The Road To Freedom

“Freedom” is the core of Bertrand Russell’s philosophy,as well as his lifelong pursuit and the very goal that he devoted to.In Russell’s point of view,in the new stage of modernity,“freedom” has not only evolved into an utterly different meaning from “liberalism” which originated form the Enlightenment,but also has altered into a false discourse used to cover up the ambition of power politics and economic expansion by imperialists and racists.It was not until the 1920 s that Russell found the essence of freedom in the image of China when he came to China with the disappointment at modern Western civilization and the desire to resolve it.Unlike the “backward,barbaric and authoritarian” Oriental Empires which had formed through Western free speech in the Post-Enlightenment Era,Russell’s view of China presented a different meaning from the past in material,spiritual,institutional and behavioral aspects,and it also divided into different dimensions of Enlightening modernity such as self-reflection,self-criticism and self-transcendence.Like a road to freedom,this new image of China has not only pointed out new directions for the development of Western society,but also offered practical pathways for the prosperity of human civilization.Russell has occupied a special position in seven centuries’ Chinese-English cultural exchange and in Chinese-English bidirectional dialogue in early 20 th Century,reflecting the differences from as well as the similarities to the features of historical development and the context of the times.At the same time,his view of Chinese culture reflected dual position which affirmed Western rationalism,science,technology and material civilization and meanwhile denied the rationalism,science supremacy and fetishism in modernity—these contradictions inevitably highlighted the equivocalness and ambiguity within the aesthetic modernity as well as the independence and skepticism of Russell as the subject of aesthetic modernity.In addition,Russell’s view of Chinese culture not only has theoretical values of “redemption”,“rejection of mediocrity”,“tolerance of ambiguity” and “reflectiveness”,but also guides the civilization progress and development of Britain,China and even the whole world.