Discussed the connection between abolitionist literature and Enlightenment modernity, analyzing anti-slavery thought and dimensions of modernity such as reason and freedom.

1　Reflections on Motivation: Reason and Emotion

Explored the complex interaction between reason and emotion in American abolitionist literature and its profound impact on shaping modernity. The article first analyzed how Enlightenment reason took root during the secularization process of American modernity, with economic instrumental rationality permeating social life, pointing out the extreme rational logic of slavery that quantified and commodified human bodies, using the slave trading scenes in Uncle Tom's Cabin as an example to reveal the fundamental conflict between economic rationality and ethical consideration. Subsequently, the chapter turned to abolitionist literature's appeal to the power of emotion, through the discourses of thinkers such as Sarah Grimké and Emerson, clarifying the role of compassion as the foundation of social justice and the basis of moral judgment. Using the death narratives of Eva and Tom in Uncle Tom's Cabin as an example, the analysis examined how the work stimulated moral action through cultivating sympathetic relationships, and demonstrated the intertwined influence of reason and emotion in extreme situations. Finally, the article traced the emotional strategies of abolitionist literature back to the 18th-century moral sentimentalism tradition, emphasizing sympathy as the bond connecting individual bodily experience with mental cognition and constructing social moral order, reflecting the Enlightenment exploration of subjectivity and the corrective power of emotion over modern civilization.

2　Consideration of Approaches: Science and Progress

Explored how American abolitionist literature examined the complex relationship between technological progress and modernity. First revealed the pseudo-scientific nature of "scientific racism," pointing out that from the late 18th to the 19th century, Blumenbach, Morton and others constructed theories of racial hierarchy through craniometry and racial taxonomy, which were actually erroneous theories serving colonial domination needs, yet were used to legitimize the slave system. Subsequently analyzed the paradox of technological innovation: inventions such as Whitney's cotton gin and steamships, though regarded as symbols of progress, unexpectedly facilitated the expansion of the cotton industry and the surge in slave population. Through interpreting the racial prejudice of Captain Delano in Melville's Benito Cereno, and Douglass's complex emotions toward the Chesapeake Bay sailboats in his Narrative, the analysis demonstrated how abolitionist literature exposed racism disguised as science, and reflected on whether technology automatically brings universal welfare. Ultimately pointed out that abolitionist literature questioned the simplistic notion that science equals progress, emphasizing that technological development must maintain balance with social justice and respect for human rights, providing historical reference for the ethical dilemmas faced by contemporary frontier technologies such as artificial intelligence.

3　Prospects of Goals: Freedom and Liberation

Discussed the dual dimensions of freedom and liberation in abolitionist literature. First reviewed the doctrines of free will by Kant, Spinoza and others, pointing out that Enlightenment thinkers such as Washington, Emerson, Garrison, and Franklin reflected on the paradox of slavery within the framework of reason, combining natural rights with the concept of freedom to construct basic institutions ensuring social justice. Simultaneously analyzed the characteristic of Black abolitionist literature's emphasis on revolutionary liberation, such as David Walker, William Wells Brown and others demonstrating consciousness of resistance through slave narratives, echoing the tradition of resistance in early American political civilization. The chapter finally used Babo's image in Melville's Benito Cereno to argue that rational freedom and liberation struggle are not binary oppositions, but rather two sides of one coin interwoven and fused in abolitionist literature, opposing the simplistic labeling of the thoughts of abolitionists from different ethnic groups.

4　Conclusion

Explored American abolitionist literature's reflection on the concepts of reason, science, and freedom in Enlightenment modernity, pointing out that it reconstructed modernity through emotional narrative, scientific anti-racial prejudice, and memory of slavery, revealing its role in shaping American concepts of freedom and human rights and multidimensional modernity along three axes.