Bauman's Post-Modern Moral Thoughts And Its Enlightenment To Moral Education

Nowadays, Chinese society is being in a transitional period from the traditional to the modern, so morality and moral education are experiencing an unprecedented crisis and confusion under the influence of the development trend of economic globalization and culture diversification. At the mercy of mechanistic world outlook and scientific and technological reason, social ethics characterizes as an objective system of moral standards. School moral education is confined to the teaching of general moral standards, students are regarded as someone who are the same and have mature senses, and lively moral education in school is reduced to the empty theories and moral instillation, eventually resulting in inefficient moral education in schools and decline of students'moral quality.Zygmunt Bauman insists that morality of modernity is the convey of the universal values of the universal moral norms underpinned by universal rationalism and progressive values, and that ignoring the complex multiple moral situation and the individual non-rational emotional experience will finally result in that individual's independent moral is replaced by his obedience to moral norms. On the basis of criticism to modernistic morality, Bauman takes the postmodernism as his theoretical perspective, opposing mandatory ethics, promoting moral self-control, requiring each person to assume unlimited liability to others. "For the others" and other moral thoughts should be able to provide a new opportunity for the development of the theories and practice moral education. Therefore, this article aims to a preliminary study based on Bauman's post-modern moral thoughts, for opening up the special value and significance of moral education which is demonstrated in Bauman's post-modern moral thoughts, so as to provide us a useful insight to ponder the moral education in China.This paper is divided into four parts. The first part emphasizes on the background of the formation of Bauman's post-modern moral thoughts. First of all, Bauman's special life experience is introduced briefly, prying into the track of his thought changes from Bauman's life experience; secondly, the writer explores the historical background Bauman's was in; finally, comes the theoretical foundation of the formation of Bauman's post-modern moral thoughts. The second part elaborates the mainly content of Bauman's post-modern moral thoughts. It discusses Bauman's post-modern criticism to morality of modernity firstly; Based on the criticism, it explores his basic concepts about post-modern moral thoughts (the basic concepts is illustrated from source of morality, nature of morality and feature of morality); and Bauman's concerns on the situation of post-modern moral thoughts lastly. A discussion in the third part is about the contributions and limitations of Bauman's post-modern moral thoughts. By analyzing the problem existing currently in moral education of China, we can gain a great deal of enlightenment from Bauman's post-modern moral thoughts. Firstly, reconsider the purpose of moral education; secondly, advocate moral education with the method of concern and dialogue; thirdly, establish the democratic and equal teacher-student relationship; lastly, open the process of moral education, respect others and accept differences.