The Ethical Perspective Of Power's Corruption During The Transitional Period In China

The corruption of power is a serious social problem in ancient or modern times, in China or elsewhere. Thinkers point out three kinds of statements if power is bound to corrupt in face of this problem. They are "good" statement, "bad" statement, and "neutral" statement. We think that power is neither good nor bad for itself, Though it is a kind of tool, it is not sheerly neutral, but is loaded with some kind of moral mission. This kind of moral mission ensures safety (individual life safety, property safety and country safety) and to keep country order (including the contents of freedom and equality) which is shown by the function of power. The feature of power (publicity, standardization, responsibility and compulsion) includes that power should bear this kind of moral mission. Just the latter showing the connection of power and morals, means that power should not corrupt and that there are internal basis and reasonable argument for condemning and opposing the corruption of power.The corruption of power is a kind of violation of moral mission that power should bear. The moral essence lies in private ownership of power. The private ownership of power includes two kinds of meaning, the first is individual owning power, the second is looking power as the tool of seeking individual interest. The particularly social and historical condition makes the corruption of power easy to appear during the period of transition. From the aspect of ethics, the reason why corruption of power appears is humanity degenerates in the individual morals and pluralism of moral idea in the aspect of social morals. These reasons determine that strengthening the construction of social morals and the training of individual morals is just the way to prevent and control the corruption of power. Opposing the corruption is a systematic project, which can not be solved only by morals.z...