Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.12, 2015

 

The Laws of the Philosophy of Spirit in the Development of Ethics and Morality in Contemporary China

(Abstract)

 

Fan Hao

 

Surveys show that the development of ethics and morality in contemporary China exhibits the following features: the “transformation track” of ethical culture in which ethics and morality travel the same road but in different circumstances; the “problem track” going from economic polarization to ethical polarization; and the “interaction track” between ethics and morality. As a whole, the three display an oval-shaped figure of a spiritual world centered around ethics and morality, whence one may deduce the track of the philosophy of spirit which integrates ethics and morality but centers around ethics. Accordingly, one can issue two important warnings to do with the philosophy of spirit: a warning over ethical culture; and a warning over ethical differentiation. The former engenders the “civilization consciousness” of the development of ethics and morality, while the latter displays “problem consciousness.” The development of ethics and morality in contemporary China follows the laws of ethical culture, and is manifested as the threefold relationship of ethics and culture, ethics and morality, and ethics and spirit. Exploration of the nature of the above laws drives our problem consciousness to undergo a transformation from the moral question of “How should one live?” to the ethical question of “How can we be together?”