Fan Hao

　　School of Humanities, Southeast University

　　Abstract:Surveys have shown that popular ideology has tended to move from pluralism to clustering around dualism at this sensitive and critical moment for the formation of value consensus in contemporary China. The formation of a “value consensus” or “common values” must answer three questions: “What is ‘common’ about this consensus?” How can ‘consensus’ be reached?” “How can ‘values’ be legitimated?” On the basis of survey information, this paper presents the basic argument that what is common lies in ethics; consensus in spirit; and value legitimacy in our national cultural home. Ordinary people have three major ideological expectations of value consensus in contemporary China: expectation of ethical enlightenment with the theme of turning “I” into “we”; expectation of a spiritual baptism with the value “unity of the individual and the universal” and expectation of the endeavor to “return home.” Specifically, their content is as follows: to protect ethical existence and undertake the re- enlightenment of ethical consciousness at the national, family and group levels; to sublate “atomistic exploration” of the theory and mode of rationalistic ethics and carry out the “spiritual’ construction of the three great ethical entities of society, state and family; and to “go back home” to national cultural traditions and ethics and build value legitimacy. These three major expectations can be condensed into three ideas: protecting ethics, reviving “spirit” and going back “home.”

　　Keywords:value consensus, ideology, ethics, spirit, tradition