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“Merit Sense of Morality” and its actual path–Commentary on “Merit Sense of Morality and Confucian Demonstration Ethics”
Author: Yi Hongze (speaker of the Nankai University of Philosophy)
Source: The author authorized the Confucian network to publish, original “Yuanhu” Volume 47, Issue 2 (General No. 554)
Sense is an emotional state in which the subject’s thinking and emotions are affected by external things and are moved. In ancient Chinese, “touching” first refers to the empathy generated by people’s listening to music, such as “making the sound of “Ya” and “Thu” to Tao… so that it is a melody, complex, honest, and rhythm that can move people’s kindness.” (Xunzi·Lecture Notes) In later generations, “touching” also generally refers to the mental touch formed by comforting ordinary things. “Human being born calm is the nature of heaven. Moving by things is the desire of nature.” (“Lecture Notes·Lecture Notes”) This kind of mental touch can be both not valuable and valuable. The emotions related to Confucianism generally refer to value-based mental touch, so they can be called “moral sentiment”. Regardless of moral sentiment, it is the main issue in Chinese philosophy, and there are many people in the academic community who conduct profound and systematic discussions and analysis on this emotional phenomenon from the perspective of ethics. In the book “Merit Sense and Confucian Model Ethics” (hereinafter referred to as “Merit Sense”), Wang Qingyue taught that for the first time he gave moral sentiment to philosophical attention and thought. He pointed out that as long as some people often feel and are constantly moved by things in their daily lives, they can be said that the existence of morality is a clear and unquestionable job. Because of this, moral sentiment can be used as a starting point for human moral consciousness and as a proof of the moral nature of the researcher [1]. Based on this, Wang Wei taught the picture to build a demonstration ethics that can confront the standard ethics with moral sentiment as the center. He believed that moral character and moral character that are related to human preservation and life are not manifested in standardized situations such as laws and teachings that are absolutely universal, but often presents the original human feelings focused on moral sentiment. The latter plays a demonstration or guiding effect in moral reality. Therefore, Wang Jie gave a future that should be able to understand the inherent dilemma of standard ethics: “Weaken our traditional ethics conceptual landscape with abstract and broad legal regulations as the model, seeking the basic planning world as the characteristics of standard ethics, and instead using concrete abstract model-oriented understanding of exemplary ethics with guidance, cultivation and cultivation of teaching as important characteristics.”[2]We believe that the goal of demonstrating ethics is to replace the regulations or contracts of standard ethics on moral career with a kind of moral sentiment that is always in the world, and thus create a social outreach with “empathy” or “putting one’s heart” as the background.
1. The logical thinking from “morality touch” to “demonstration ethics”
Wang Qingyue taught that the ethics value of moral sense established in the book “morality touch” and regarded it as the starting point of moral sense. In his opinion, emotion is a basic human emotion. People are moved and constantly supported by emotion in their daily lives by some things. In other words, moral sentiment itself may not be a specific moral behavior, but it is a testimony to moral virtue. The true energy of morality lies in touching people’s hearts. First, moral behaviors respond to and respond to the direction of life and life, and raise the movement and excitement of morality and life; secondly, moral behaviors occur in ordinary people around them, which make people feel familiar and familiar, so they can be entrusted and feasible [3]. It can be said that moral sentiment is the basic power of moral reality: based on the moral sentiment and constant touching, through sensory thinking and analysis, coupled with the continuous verification of moral reality, the moral career of human beings can be continuously accumulated in the long history and be “formed”.
In contrast to the conceptual connotation of “moral sentiment” and its ethical characteristics, Wang Jie listed its four basic characteristics as the main model of moral philosophy. First, “moral sentiment” has a certain kind of personal nature. The moral subject must be in the environment before there will be any emotion. Secondly, from the most basic point of view, moral sentiment is a sentimental state, not logical recommendations or theoretical recommendations. Again, moral sentiment is not a pure theoretical thinking behavior, but its essence must be related to moral actions. Finally, moral sentiment is both individual and common. In summary, moral sentiment is specific, self-real, and practical, and is displayed in all life worlds. It is contaminated by moral behaviors and condensed into moral morals with exemplary meanings.
Developed from the exemplary spirit of moral sentiment, Master Wang proposed the concept of demonstration ethics and criticized the standard ethics. The relationship between virtue ethics (virtue ethics) and standard ethics is the main topic that is concerned by the relevant theories of ethics. Moral ethics usually focus on moral behavior as the main body, and cultivate people’s moral quality as the center and direction; standardized ethics focus more on the specific behavior of the moral subject, and standardized people’s moral behavior as the center and direction. Based on this, demonstrating ethics focuses on the emotions arising from various moral affairs in humans’ social history career, as well as the common value civilization concept formed by “infection and inspiration of people’s hearts”. It is different from the standard ethics that emphasize moral conduct on moral laws, bottom lines, and principles, and therefore essentially belongs to virtue.The model of ethics short-term caresincere[4]. Since modern times, Oriental society has experienced a transformation from the moral ethics as the middle to the standard ethics as the middle. However, in Wang Jie’s view, the standard ethics has relied on morality and laws and slightly experiencing personal virtues, which has led to the modern moral career and ethics research and research on ethics. To solve this dilemma, Wang Jie taught him to replace the mandatory reasons in standard ethics by demonstrating some of the model ethics (such as touching hearts). [5] In short, the demonstration ethics emphasizes the concept and evidence of moral personality rather than behavioral norms, and emphasizes the cultivation of human virtue rather than behavioral norms, so it has a certain creative meaning in the weak situation of responding to and improving modern social morality.
The confrontation between model ethics and standard ethics also reveals a certain kind of tightness between Eastern and Eastern ethics. Professor Wang Qinglei proposed that moral sentiment is the basic feature of Confucian ethics, which is different from the oriental modern ethics learning mainstream thinking that uses standard moral laws as the basic quality of ethics. The theoretical cornerstone of Confucian moral philosophy and metaphysics is based on the mutual emotion between people. Whether it is the past, present or future, the vitality of Confucian ethics does not lie in the broad and powerful internal norms such as dictates and laws, but comes from the feelings, feelings of people in the life and life world. Because of this, she was stunned for a moment. It is not about “standard” but about “demonstration”. Wang Jie concluded that, first, Confucian ethics is not a standard ethics in nature, and the research path that specifies Confucianism’s theory lacks justice; second, the contribution that Confucian ethics can make in modern meanings for world ethics is precisely the construction of model ethics, and the moral dilemma faced by Eastern society can also be overcome, or at most, along this path, we can see the hope of breaking the dilemma. It is precisely in this meaning that we need to understand and interpret the original value and absolute connotation of Confucian ethics from “morality movement”.
2. Touching statement: The emphasis of Confucian ethics
Some scholars point out that emotionalism is a major perspective for contemporary scholars to emphasize Confucian traditions [6]. Wang Qinglei imparted the energy of morality to develop Confucian ethics, and was also based on this theoretical perspective. The basis of the book “Merit Sense” is that: first of all, people are not emotionally numb, and people can move each other; secondly, moral emotion has a main influence in the moral career, which includes cultivating people’s moral character; finally, through the emotions and constant emotions between people, society gradually forms a prominent moral atmosphere, affecting, educating and guiding those community members with the perspective of civilization, so that they can participate in the social construction focus.Value. According to this theory, Confucian ethics says that the concept of ethics can be surrounded by the ethics concept “inspir