Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.8, 2019

A Cultural Consensus on Ethical and Moral Development among the Masses in Chinese Society—A Sustained Survey Data Based on Forty Years of Reform and Opening Up

(Abstract)

Fan Hao

The data flows and information chains furnished by three rounds of nationwide surveys and four of surveys in Jiangsu span the ten years from 2007 to 2017. Their analysis from the point of view of philosophy of mind indicates that the forty years of reform and opening up have produced a cultural consensus on ethical and moral development among the masses in Chinese society. The essence of it can be encapsulated as an ethical cultural consensus. At the heart of this consensus is the consensus on the modern form of the Chinese tradition of philosophy of mind, which views the ethical and the moral as indivisible and gives primacy to ethics. This cultural consensus is manifest in three dimensions. The first involves cultural consciousness and self-confidence with regard to ethics and morality: cultural identification with and expectations for a return to ethical and moral tradition; cultural upholding with regard to ethical and moral primacy; and cultural confidence in ethical and moral development. These present the consensus on ethical culture from the three dimensions of tradition, present realities and the future. The second dimension is the cultural consensus on the modern transformation of ethics and morality in the form of the “new five bonds” and the “new five constant virtues.” The term “new five bonds” refers to relations between parents and children, husband and wife, brother and sister, the individual and society and the individual and the state, and the “new five constant virtues” are love, integrity, responsibility, justice, and tolerance. Both show a transformative trajectory seen in “in ethics, hold fast to tradition; in morality, march toward modernity.” The third dimension is the collective rationality of ethical entities and the consensus on an ethical spirit. The problem consciousness of adherence to familial ethics has seen a shift in cultural consensus from moral quality to ethical capacity: the cultural identification of distributive justice with society’s ethical entities; and the identification of cadre’s morality with state ethical entities. The cultural consensus on the three ethical entities of family—society—state reflects the spiritual lineage of “identity—transformation—development” in China’s ethical culture.