Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.12, 2014

The Construction of Citizen Morality: A National Identity Perspective

(Abstract)

Li Lanfen

We aim to examine citizen morality from the perspective of national identity with a view to establishing the basic ethical relationships involved,the rationality and legitimacy of the construction of such morality, and the methodology and values of its present path. From the viewpoint of the historical starting point of the modernization of national governance, citizen morality can be understood as the value isomorphism and collaborative innovation of the “inter-morality” of the relationship between state and citizen and as a generative morality embedded in citizens’ identity and public life. Examining basic concepts and cognitive paradigms through the state/citizen relationship; providing norms for the construction of citizen morality through the rational perceptions, emotional experience, and moral behavior involved in national identity; and using socialist core values to provide norms and guidance for citizens' identity and public life as the formative areas for citizen morality, constitutes the basic theoretical perspective and disciplinary focus of deepening research on the construction of citizen morality under the conditions of the socialist market economy.