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 a rational analysis of moral issues, using simple logic that everyone agrees on to examine 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. The weakness of moral sermons lies in the lack of rational analysis. Preachers with stern faces deliver a series of self-contradictory claims, making people find it ridiculous. The second aspect is to extensively combine various social phenomena that have emerged since China's economic reform for rational analysis, 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 a thing is, the more it reveals the rules that everyone tacitly agrees on. 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.