Abstract：As a logical extension of The Middle Ages and the Meta-Principles of European Chilisation, this article aims at tracing the generative path of the civilisational ‘ought’ (for example, the meta-principles) from the perspective of social ‘is’ (for example, empirical reality). The article conceptualises and explicates for the first time the five ‘meta-modes’ of the medieval society, namely: the Germanic tradition, the village community, the feudal contract, Christian religion, and empirical logic. Characterised by their primordial and spontaneous nature, while simultaneously embodying foundational, exemplary, and structurally continuous qualities, the meta-modes profoundly permeated the public sphere of the Middle Ages. In the historical process where knowledge and practice align, and theory and reality converge, the modes systematically constituted the logical starting point for the genesis of the European civilisation, thereby reinforcing the distinctive benchmarks that distinguish it from both Classical antiquity and other civilisational paradigms. Finally, the article reflects upon the intrinsic challenges confronting contemporary Western civilisation: once civilisational meta-principles divest themselves of specific historical contexts and behavioural boundaries, their function may deteriorate, mutating from an engine of development into a source of structural anomie.

Published on World History, No.3, 2026.