The Moral Future of the Chinese People (Second Edition)

Author: Mao Yushi
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-03-01
Features: There are countless books discussing moral issues from ancient to modern times, and their content varies greatly. When you pick up one of these books, you can't quite grasp its main focus. Is it more inclined towards philosophy, psychology, theology, or simply a collection of slogans, or is it just a novel? The discussion of moral issues primarily focuses on two aspects. First, it involves rational analysis of moral issues, using simple logic that everyone agrees on to analyze the contradictions and consistencies of various moral claims, pointing out the underlying starting points of each claim, how far it can be generalized, and its boundaries. Moral preaching is ineffective precisely because it lacks rational analysis. Preachers with stern faces deliver a series of self-contradictory claims, making people find it ridiculous. The second is to conduct rational analysis extensively by combining various social phenomena that have emerged since China's economic reforms, rather than getting lost in pure formal logic. Not only interesting news reports from newspapers and magazines can serve as our material, but many commonplace phenomena are also starting points for our discussions. The more familiar an event is, the more it reveals commonly accepted rules. In-depth exploration of such phenomena will help us better understand and reflect on ourselves, and see the direction in which we are correcting our moral concepts.