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The “humanistic religion” in the perspective of civilization history: The discussion of the Momo Confucianism

Author: Wang Lu (Nanjing Marxist School of Major Academic Studies and the China Excellent Traditional Civilization Research)

Source: “World Religion Research” Issue 5, 2025

Abstract: With the development of religious dialogue in a diverse context, Chinese scholars have turned to focus on how to transcend the Eastern religious definition and construct religious views that are suitable for Chinese civilization traditions. In this regard, Master Mo Mu had already had unique understanding of this. He regarded religion as the foundation of human civilization and developed a study on the comparison of Chinese and Western religions based on the perspective of civilization history. First, he proposed that “human religion” combines Chinese religion represented by Confucianism, and uses “income-group-mono-native theory” and “birth-person-binary theory” as the coordinates for the distinction between Chinese and Western religious concepts; and, in turn, he extracted the “human heart-mono-native theory” from the Chinese humanistic spirit, using this as a logical starting point for the connotation of Confucian humanistic religion; on this basis, Mo Mu criticized the ills of Eastern religion and modernization to demonstrate the superiority and modern value of Confucianism. Its deep Osci-mindedness and unique vision not only provides borrowing mirrors for reflection on the Veber paradigm, but also provides precious ideological resources for the construction of Chinese religious conception.

Keywords: Money-Mu Humanistic Religion Confucianism Comparison of Chinese and Western civilizations

Can Confucianism be religion be a problem-based concept arises from the reference of Eastern civilization. After the “religious” baptism of Confucianism in the late Qing Dynasty, Confucian non-religious views became mainstream. (1) With the development of religious dialogue, recently students have gradually realized that “religion” itself is a concept that is constantly modified and evolved, and the definition needs to be diversified beyond the Oriental Monotheistic paradigm. (2) As early as 1940, Master Mo Mu began to compare Chinese and Western religious civilizations, and based on his historical view on the civilization of the people, he proposed that “human religion” and combined Chinese religion represented by Confucianism. He then conducted a profound discussion on its connotation, effectiveness and value. However, its statements have not been formed into a system and are easily overlooked by later scholars. In recent years, with the academic community’s attention to the academic thinking of Momo, the research on its religious views has gradually started and made certain progress, but there are still some shortcomings: First, although it is noticed that its religious views have strong historical consciousness, it lacks a systematic view of the religious views in the perspective of civilization history (3); Second, it focuses on analyzing its statement about “China is not religious” and its internal contradictions, and ignores the main value of its positive construction of Chinese humanistic religion (4); Third, the analysis of its internal logic of Confucianism is still not accurate, and it fails to remind it to learn the focus mechanism and in-depth concept of the dual orientation of Confucianism and the dual orientation of Confucianism. (5) As we know, the history of civilization is the main content of the academic thinking of Master Mo Mu. It regards religion as the basis of human civilization and reveals problematic ideas similar to Via Bo. Its unique characteristics and superiority of Confucian humanistic religion can not only provide ideological resources for the academic community to deeply reflect on the Via Bo paradigm and provide ideological resources for the academic community’s deep reflection on the Via Bo paradigm, it also provides thoughts for the modern society of “sacredness” (6) to construct religious views that are suitable for foreign civilization traditions. Its in-depth meaning and main revelation deserve our attention.

 

1. “Humanistics” and “Shidowism”: Civilization type discussion and religious characteristics between China and the West

There are many disputes among the Chinese and foreign academic circles on the definition of the concept of “religion”. According to the views of Eastern scholars, religion The definition of the 10th century can be divided into two categories: “essence theory” and “civilization/efficacy theory”: the former focuses on pursuing the essence of religion, emphasizing “extraordinary” or “sacredness” as the uncontracted nature of religion; the latter emphasizes the effectiveness of religion in historical civilization and regards religion as a human-constructed product. (7) Before the introduction of the concept of “religion” in Chinese traditional civilization, “education” refers to the main theme of education, which is a reconciliation concept of three dimensions: political politics, teaching and worship, and has strong secular tendencies and political connotations. (8) Since modern times, Chinese intellectuals have widely adopted the concept of Eastern religious concepts based on the Monodiac religion. Due to the gap between it and the religious phenomena in the foreign country, “China’s non-religious theory” represented by Liang Qichao, and Mo Mu was also believed to have turned to this stand in his twilight years. (9) But if you carefully sort out the statement, you can find that “China is not religious” is one of its thoughts and initiatives (10), but its language is a religious conception of the Eastern way. In Mo Mu’s view, religion is a kind of humanistic thinking that is widely combined with the inner humanistic mind (11). Differences in civilization breed different religious forms, while Chinese civilization has its own unique religious worship.

 

The first thing that Mo Mu understands religion is to be based on the comparison of Chinese and Western civilizations. The “War on the World Civilizations” around the May Fourth Movement had a profound impact on the academic community at that time, but the most fundamental dissonance between Momo and the Oriental Civilization School at that time was that he did not hinder the Oriental Science, but instead grafted its acceptance into traditional civilization to reaffirm the distinction of the civilization system of the living world of Chinese civilization, and to emphasize the importance of the energy and ethnicity of Chinese civilization on the basis of the theory and civilization in the East. (12) He proposed a civilization type based on the natural earth-shaping environment and economic form, believing that Chinese and Western civilizations are divided into agricultural civilization, business and nomadic civilization. The former gave birth to a method of thinking that Chinese civilization is inward and one-piece, while the latter made Eastern civilization structure an outward and opposite way of thinking. (13) According to the theoretical plan of civilization type, the money-mu called Chinese and Western religions “humanistic religion” and “Shidaoism” respectively (14):In the human world, the worship of those who respect the history and holy things of the real world have a strong meaning of “entering the world”; the latter respects the object of the inner God and has a strong “born” direction. (15)

 

“Entering the world” and “born” are just the apparent differences between Chinese and Western religions. Money Muxing once explored the essential characteristics of both sides. He pointed out that the birth direction of Eastern religions comes from the dual world view of the spirit and material, the physical world and the physical world. This world view is rooted in the dual life view of the spirit and flesh: “Only by worshiping the soul can we transcend the human life’s rapid career, we can repel the flesh and not seek long life.” (16) Mo Mu believes that this dual life view of the spiritual and flesh dualism is based on the pursuit of the immortality of the soul of the individual ego, and is actually a personal theory. Therefore, “birth” and “personalism” have become the two basic characteristics of the Eastern religion of Momo Ding. Viber believed that Protestantism aimed at the transcendence of the other world, focusing on personal salvation rather than admiration, and determined the personalism and tragic nature of the believer’s secular career. This goal in turn turned its religious precepts into a broad and constrained social ethics system, thus prompting the social career to develop towards the goal of sensory. (17) But Momo pointed out with his sensitive historical insight that the birth direction of Eastern religions led to an unconventional society in which politics and religion were separated, and personalism was to care about God and save oneself, not trust others, and form an enemy between people. Therefore, Eastern society must jointly reduce individual constraints into society by religious, legal and economic elements, but it is still difficult to avoid conflicts and reactions. (18)

 

Different from Eastern religions, the importance of Chinese religions is dominated by “big groups”. Jiu Mu pointed out that the strong concern for Chinese civilizati TC: