The Comparison And Integration Of The Eastern Confucian Ethics And The Western Right Ethics

The eastern Confucian ethics and the western right ethics, as the tradition of eastern and western ethics and culture, have played a significant role in history and exerted great influence on the eastern and western social development. Mankind are going forward into 21st century and confronted with the background of globalization age and the modern moral crisis, which requires us to look through the tendency and destiny of the eastern Confucian ethics and the western right ethics, think over their modern value, criticize their epoch limitations and integrate their reasonable thought resources, thus we can seek after the ethical and cultural assistance and motivation for the development of modern society.The eastern Confucian ethics, being important ingredients of Chinese tradition culture, has come to form its theory system accompanying with the development of more than twenty-thousand-year feudal society. The system mainly includes three levels: the mind nature ethics of Confucianism, the politics ethics of Confucianism and the convention ethics of Confucianism. The eastern Confucian ethics has generally experienced five stages during its historic development process: (1) the Confucian ethics of pre-Quinn dynasty; (2) the classic Confucius ethics from Han dynasty to Tang dynasty; (3) the ideal Confucian ethics from Song dynasty to Ding dynasty; (4) the modern Confucian ethics during the period from the Opium War to "the May Fourth Movement"; (5) thecontemporary Confucian ethics. The eastern Confucian ethics insists on the responsibility-oriented value mode, its value mode mainly lies in the following aspects: (1) the responsibility-oriented politic view; (2) the responsibility-oriented social ethics view; (3) the responsibility-oriented morality self-cultivation view.The development of western right ethics has experienced long history and exerted extensive and profound influence on the western society. The right ethics is the confirmation of righteousness and the behavior regulation that regulates people's legal right. In order to master the essence of right ethics profoundly, we should make the relation of right and morality, right and interest, right and responsibility clear. The development process of western right ethics roughly underwent three stages: (1) the sprouting stage of right thought in Ancient Greece; (2) the preliminary originality stage of the western modern social right ethics; (3) the maturity stage of the contemporary western right ethics. The western right ethics persists in right-oriented value mode, which has such contemporary value as: the moral value, the freedom value and the justice value.When we inspect the eastern Confucian ethics and the western right ethics from the historical, realistic and future multi-aspects, we can find their difference just as the following: Firstly, the different philosophy basis. The eastern Confucian ethics is based on "the unity between heaven and human beings ", while the western right ethics is based on "the separation between heaven and human beings". Secondly, they are different from each other in the hypothesis of humane nature. The former stems from the benevolent human nature and maintains social order mainly by the moral education, the public opinion and the way of being loyal and generous. The latter derives from the vicious human nature, regulates individual rights and solves the interest conflict through the strict legal system. Thirdly, they are different from each other in the justification of moral legitimacy. Theformer is a kind of virtue ethics; its moral legitimacy just depends on the individual relative responsibility toward the family, the country and the society, while the moral legitimacy of the latter exactly lies in the respect and protection of individual right from the country and society. Fourthly, they are different from each other in the social administration pattern. The eastern Confucian ethics regard the just society as ideal society, which advocates administrating society by ceremony and morality. The western right e...