ABSTRACT
This introductory chapter aims to provide a preliminary account of the intellectual connection between Green’s practical philosophy and the modernity issue. Section one indicates the complexity of modernity presenting in the texts and studies of multiple disciplines. Yet, these texts and studies all notice one important feature of the modernity, the individual alienation in the modern society. Section two discusses Green’s general attitude towards the modern society. As Green believed that the atomic view of the individual is the root for all the malign results of the modernity, he turned to German philosophy to look for possible solutions to improve the society. Section three indicates that Green’s solution represents in his ethical account of modern politics, according to which each individual person can only manifest the meaning and the worth of his or her existence by participating public affairs. And when China encountered with the challenges of the modernity, some Chinese scholars had introduced Green’s practical philosophy into China as they thought that Green’s ethical politics may assist them to respond to those challenges.
