The Principles of New Ethics IV

Virtue Ethics

Wang Haiming

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429823930
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

From Descartes to Spinoza, Western philosophers have attempted to propose an axiomatic systemization of ethics. However, without consensus on the contents and objects of ethics, the system remains incomplete. This four-volume set presents a model that highlights a Chinese philosopher's insights into ethics after a 22-year study. Three essential components of ethics are examined: meta-ethics, normative ethics, and virtue ethics.

In this volume, the author analyzes the relationship between people's sense of reputation, the political and economic status of a nation, and the observation of virtue ethics, and he argues that reputation can encourage people to conform to virtue ethics. In addition, a nation's political and economic status is closely connected to people's virtue ethics. That is, people will have higher virtue ethics when constitutional democracy, a market economy without government control, freedom of speech, and the moral system of liberalism and egalitarianism are established in a nation.

This title is an essential read for students and scholars of ethics and philosophy in general.

1Conscience and reputation

Ways of realizing excellent morality

Because conscience originates from everyone’s moral need to be a good person and has the nature of seeking virtue for virtue’s sake, it not only has the effect of making it possible for a person to achieve the highest moral realm of selflessly benefiting others, but also has the great effect of making everyone conform to morality: before taking action, through the need and purpose of the pursuit of being a good person, it gives impetus to everyone to follow moral norms and do good deeds in order to become a good person; after any action, through its satisfaction, arising from conformity with moral norms, conscience will make the agent continue his conformity with them, and through the pain of condemnation from conscience for violating morality, it will prevent the agent from violating moral norms later.

Both conscience and reputation are great forces pushing people to observe morality: “reputation” means people’s external fame, being the external force which makes people conform to morality; while “conscience” is people’s inner faith, being the inner strength for people’s conformity with morality. The power of conscience to make people follow morality is totally positive, without any negative effect: it will only make people conform to morality and will not make people deviate from morality. However, the power of reputation to make people conform to morality is not necessarily positive but may have a negative effect: it will often lead to observance of morality at the price of sinking into vice, that is, hypocrisy and self-alienation. This negative effect can only be dispelled by conscience: a person should not pursue vanity without conscience, but should pursue glory with conscience; he should not pursue glory with self-alienation and following the mass without his own opinion, but should pursue glory by means of self-realization, that is, by realization of his creative potential.

Concepts of conscience and reputation

Specific moral evaluation: Conscience and reputation

It is clear that moral evaluation can be classified into two types on the basis of the nature of the objects of moral evaluation, that is, the action and the moral character of the agent: the abstract and universal moral evaluation, and the particular and specific moral evaluation. The so-called abstract moral evaluation is the moral evaluation of the abstract, universal, and general action regardless of its agent. The so-called particular and specific moral evaluation is the moral evaluation of a particular, specific, and individual action performed by an agent in real life, that is, the moral evaluation of a particular, specific, and individual action and the agent’s moral character embodied in the action. Let’s take an example for explanation.

Yue Fei, as a famous hero and patriot of the Song dynasty in ancient China, has been regarded as having noble moral character, because he did what he ought to do: repaying the Song dynasty with supreme loyalty. In contrast, Qin Hui, as a famous treacherous court official of the Song dynasty in ancient China, making a false charge against Yue Fei and then killing him, has been considered as a person with very evil moral character, because he did what he ought not to do: making false charges against loyal and honest officials. These are the moral evaluations of the actions and moral characters of specific agents—Yue Fei and Qin Hui—so they are both specific moral evaluations. On the other hand, if we say in general terms that repaying the country with supreme loyalty and selfless dedication is what we ought to do, while making false charges against loyal and honest people and harming others for self-interest are what we ought not to do, then what we are making is an abstract moral evaluation, because the objects of these moral evaluations are abstract, universal, and general actions, that is, universal and general actions regardless of particular agents.

It is of great significance for ethical studies to distinguish abstract and universal moral evaluation from particular and specific moral evaluation. As mentioned in chapters in previous volumes in this set, ethics, so-called, is the science concerned with excellent morality, and concerned with the method of making, process of making, and way of realizing excellent moral norms. The ethics concerned with the method of making excellent moral norms is called meta-ethics; the ethics concerned with the process of making excellent moral norms is called normative ethics; the ethics concerned with the ways of realizing excellent moral norms is called virtue ethics. It is clear that the function or value of abstract moral evaluation lies in the making or establishing of excellent moral norms, because all moral norms, whether moral principles or moral rules, are the norms that tell what abstract, universal, and general actions ought to be, that is, what moral actions separated from, or regardless of, the particular and specific agents ought to be.

Therefore, the process of making or establishing excellent moral norms is the process of moral evaluation of abstract, universal, and general actions, that is, the so-called process of abstract moral evaluation. Thence the so-called normative ethics, in the final analysis, is a system of abstract moral evaluation. The first part of this system is what the fact of universal, abstract, and general actions is, namely the so-called substance of moral value; the second part of the system is the standard of moral evaluation, namely the goal of morality and ultimate standard of morality; and the third part is the moral value of what the universal, abstract, and general actions ought to be and the excellent moral norms conforming to that value, such as good, justice, equality, humanity, freedom, happiness, life-cherishing, honesty, self-respect, temperance, modesty, courage, the doctrine of mean, wisdom, etc. Therefore, the universal evaluation of morality is the whole object of research of normative ethics.

In contrast, particular and specific moral evaluation is the response to whether the excellent moral norms made by the abstract moral evaluation are complied with by specific agents, namely oneself or others: if actions of oneself or others conform to these moral norms, they will be appreciated and will receive a positive moral evaluation; if not, they will be condemned and will receive a negative moral evaluation. It goes without saying that positive moral evaluations will encourage the agent and others to continue to conform to these moral norms, while negative moral evaluations will prevent them from violating moral norms: specific moral evaluations are the ways to realize excellent moral norms. Therefore, the function or value of the particular moral evaluation is to make people conform to excellent moral norms and thus realize the excellent moral norms. Thence the singleness of moral evaluation is the research object of virtue ethics—virtue ethics is the ethics concerned with the ways of realizing excellent moral norms. Therefore, moral evaluation is not the research object of any single branch of ethics but the research object of the whole ethics: abstract moral evaluation is the research object of normative ethics, while specific moral evaluation is the research object of virtue ethics. That’s why we think that “ethics is an evaluative science instead of a descriptive science,” and that “ethics is the knowledge system of moral evaluation.”

However, some people tend to neglect abstract moral evaluation but think that the object of moral evaluation is only the actions of specific agents—oneself or others. In The Dictionary of Values it is said that:

Moral evaluation refers to people in a certain social environment, directly based on the moral standards of a certain society or social class, through public opinion or personal psychological activities to make the judgment of good and bad of others’ or their own actions, and to show their attitudes of approval or disapproval.¹

This is the reason that today’s ethicists only regard moral evaluation as the object of virtue ethical study.

As a matter of fact, there is also a more important type of moral evaluation, namely the abstract moral evaluation as the object of normative ethics, while virtue ethics only studies the specific moral evaluation, namely the moral evaluation of the particular, special, and single action by the specific agent. This specific moral evaluation studied by virtue ethics is nothing other than the aforementioned conscience and reputation, which belong to the category of specific moral evaluation, being two ways to realize excellent moral norms, and thus are the research object of virtue ethics: virtue ethics is just the science concerned with the ways of realizing excellent morality. Therefore, truly speaking, virtue ethics does not study moral evaluation in general but only studies the two main types of specific moral evaluation: conscience and reputation. Then, why are conscience and reputation called the two main types of specific moral evaluation? What are conscience and reputation after all?

Conscience: Definition, structure, and types

Definition of conscience

As is well known, conscience is a very complex concept. In Chinese, “良” (pronounced liang) means good, fine or nice,² and “心” (meaning heart, pronounced xin) means the organ of thinking and its psychology, ideology, or consciousness: “The ancient Chinese thought that the heart was the organ of thought, therefore they called the organ of thinking, conditions of thought, feelings and so on as heart.”³ Conscience is the combination of the two Chinese characters “good” and “heart” (“良心”), meaning the psychology, thought, and consciousness of fineness, good, or value, namely the consciousness of moral value, and in the final analysis, it means moral evaluation. In Western languages, words for it are “conscience” (English), “conscience morale” (French), “Gewissen” (German), “conscientia” (Latin). The meaning of their prefix con- or Ge- is “common” and “together,” and the last part of the word, -science, -‍‍wissen and -scientia means “know” and “knowledge”; in combination it means “consensus” and “common knowledge,” which are also extended as special common view, that is, consciousness of moral value or moral evaluation. In view of this, Feuerbach said:

Conscience originates from knowledge, or is closely related to knowledge, it does not mean the general knowledge but the special knowledge of special types, namely the knowledge related to our moral actions, our good or evil moods and actions.⁴

Therefore, etymologically speaking, conscience has the meaning of consciousness of moral value and moral evaluation whether in Chinese or Western languages. Then, can this be taken as the definition of the concept of conscience? Many people regard this etymological meaning of conscience as its definition. Frank Thilly wrote that “We put all these facts down to one sentence, saying that people are making moral evaluations, distinguishing between rightful or not, saying that people have a kind of moral consciousness or the conscience.”⁵ Although Friedrich Paulsen did not completely equate conscience with moral evaluation and consciousness of moral value, he equated conscience with personal moral evaluation and personal moral consciousness, and stated that “We define conscience as the consciousness of custom or the existence of custom in the consciousness of the individual”⁶ and “Conscience is originally the manifestation of custom or objective morality in the consciousness of the individual.”⁷ So he completely equates conscience with the personal consciousness of moral value or personal moral evaluation.

It is certainly true that the definition of conscience as personal moral consciousness is much better than that of conscience as the consciousness of moral value, but it is still not wholly correct. That is because, despite conscience being the personal consciousness of moral value or personal moral evaluation, not all personal consciousness of moral value or personal moral evaluation is conscience. For example, a person knows that stealing is an evil, and thus condemns and hates someone for stealing, which is a kind of personal moral evaluation and personal consciousness of moral value. But we can’t say that he is conscience-stricken and he has conscience just because of that; only when he knows that his own stealing is an evil and condemns himself and hates himself, can we say that he is conscience-stricken and has conscience. Therefore Locke said that conscience is nothing more than our own opinion or judgment of the rightness or evilness of our own actions.⁸ And Mark Stephen Pestana further defined conscience as “the self-consciousness of the moral nature of one’s behavior according to the moral norms that he agrees to,” for which he explained that the command of conscience is directed only at one’s own conduct but does not involve moral evaluation of others’ actions.⁹

Therefore, conscience is a kind of personal, special and specific moral evaluation, and its differences of species, that is, the fundamental features of its distinction from other moral evaluations, are self-evaluation and self-consciousness. In other words, conscience is everyone’s own internal moral evaluation, the self-moral evaluation, one’s moral evaluation of one’s own behaviors, and one’s reaction to one’s own moral value of behaviors. This is the definition of conscience. Thus, in terms of meaning of the word, “conscience” in Chinese is closer to the definition of conscience than in Western languages. It is because, in Chinese, “good” and “heart” are combined into the word “conscience,” meaning good psychology, good thought and good consciousness: conscience is the good heart or sense. In Western languages, however, conscience is not so clear, for it has not the meaning of “good” but only has the meaning of “common knowledge.” Indeed, the meaning of the Chinese character “conscience” wonderfully suggests that “conscience” is a good heart, which is the etymological meaning of conscience, and, generally speaking, is also the definition of conscience.

It is true that not all good hearts are conscience, but conscience certainly is a good heart, belonging to the category of good heart, and is a special kind of good heart. Then, what kind of good heart is conscience? If a person did a good thing that he knew was a good thing, being happy and proud of it, or if he did a bad thing that he knew was a bad thing, having the sense of guilt, this kind of psychology undoubtedly is good, being a kind of good heart. Although the psychology to do bad things is not good, the psychology of knowing that what he did is a bad thing and feeling guilty is a good heart. This kind of good heart of being happy for doing good things and being pained by doing bad things is conscience. In other words, conscience is the psychology to be happy for doing good things and to be pained by doing bad things. More exactly speaking, it is everyone’s moral self-evaluation, that is, everyone’s moral evaluation of his own behaviors, or everyone’s response to the moral value of his own behaviors.

Structure of conscience

Because conscience is a kind of moral self-evaluation belonging to the category of evaluation, the subject–object structure of evaluation is the most basic structure of conscience: the most basic elements of conscience are the subject of conscience and the object of consci...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgement
• 1 Conscience and reputation: Ways of realizing excellent morality
• 2 Moral character: The realization of excellent morality
• Index