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Exploring the “original town” of Chinese ethics
——A revisiting the conceptual history of “emotion”
Author: Fu Changzhen (Professor of Huadong Master and PhD in the Department of Philosophy)
Source: “My Character and Civilization” 2019 Issue 5
Time: Confucius was in the 2570s Jiwei on the 23rd day of Jiwei
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Abstract:
After doing Chinese ethics, as long as you are rooted in the long-standing thinking tradition and contemporary social career of China and buy the world of conception and career, you are the “rear-headed water” that promotes the creation of Chinese ethics; as long as you use new concepts and problem frameworks to understand and present traditional ethics and analyze them in the theoretical scoop of contemporary ethics, you can write a vital contemporary Chinese ethics. From this perspective, the discussion and writing paradigm of contemporary Chinese ethics needs to be broken. We must not only reject the mentality of pure philosophical history, but also be wary of excessive theoretical traps; we should return to the “original land” of Chinese ethics, settle in the original Chinese ethics thinking, explore elementary problems and metaconcepts, and rebuild the ethics and energy homeland of Chinese people themselves. Taking the conceptual history of “emotion” as an example, we can control the innate creativity of “thick concepts” in Chinese ethics books and its exemplary meaning of innovation in ethics paradigm, and then return to a “hot” ethics.
Keywords: Doing Chinese ethics; writing paradigms; knowledge system; thick concepts; emotion
1. Doing Chinese ethics: a new ability?
The writing paradigm of Chinese ethics has greatly developed a transformation from “narrating” to “talking” to “doing”. At the beginning of the 20th century, Cai Yuanpei’s “History of Chinese Ethics” used the form and theory of Eastern Ethics to describe China’s inherent ethics thinking, which pioneered the study of ethics, and had a solid meaning for the innovation of Chinese ethics and the construction of knowledge system. In the world philosophy format dominated by Eastern academic vocabulary, how to “do” Chinese ethics well and build ethics and knowledge systems with Chinese characteristics and Chinese ethics is the main historical task that Chinese ethics learners in the new era. Of course, there are many ways to “do” philosophy or ethics. In recent years, the academic community has conducted a series of innovative major discussions on how to “write Chinese ethics again”, and will help us to think about “do Chinese ethics” in a step-by-step manner.The problem opens up the theoretical space.
The condition of the problem of “doing Chinese ethics” is logically related to the pursuit of “what is Chinese ethics”. The so-called Chinese ethics is the Chinese story and Chinese affairs of ethics. It cannot be limited to imitating or responding to the thinking methods and problems of Oriental ethics. It should focus on explaining its own connotation of ethics civilization, describing its own historical civilization experience, and responding to new problems and challenges raised by reality on ethics. At the same time, if Chinese ethics wants to go global and talk with diverse civilization forms and thinking traditions, it needs to further philosophize and theoretically, so as to make the conceptual connotation clear and the analysis and evidence detailed. However, in this process, we need to master the principle of suitability, and in conjunction with the “anti-theoretical” request proposed by Williams and others for Eastern traditions, we must fully recognize the lack of excessive theoretical theory in Eastern ethics. We must “make the thinking clear” and “give the clear boundary of thinking” under the conditions that guarantee that it will not lead to the dissolution of China’s own thinking traditions.
To do Chinese ethics, we must not only reject the mentality of single pure philosophical history research, break through the traditional path of replacing the argument with narrative, but also be wary of over-theoretical traps and self-reflect on the limitations of cross-civilization commentary. By conducting cross-civilization reviews with a more researched method, it is impossible to get rid of the realm of thinking and life, and suddenly the great reality of contemporary China. To this end, we need to discuss ethics theory on divergent situations and conduct survey research in a conscientious manner. This assessment is not only conceptual, but also problem-based. For example, Confucian ethics has its own problematics and verbal logic, which cannot be limited to using virtue ethics or Kantian politics to discuss the style; it must not only criticize innovation in cross-civilization comparisons, but also understand it in the confucianism context. On the one hand, we must respect and understand tradition, and at the same time we must carry out critical innovation and creative transformation. To do Chinese ethics, we must not only be rooted in the long-standing thinking and contemporary social career of China. As long as we buy a world of thought and career, we can promote the creation of Chinese ethics thinking. We also need to use new concepts and problem frameworks to understand and present traditional ethics words, and analyze them in the theoretical light of contemporary ethics, so that we can write a vital contemporary Chinese ethics.
Thinking about the problem of how to emphasize the knowledge system of Chinese ethics today. The important task is to emphasize the theoretical paradigm of Chinese ethics writing and research, and the basis of the emphasis lies in the understanding and analysis of the original points of Chinese ethics thinking, meta-questions, and meta-concepts. The main point of thinking in Chinese ethics is not only that Confucianism regards “learning to adulthood” as the middle “way to adulthood”, but also in the deep and profound preservation of Taoism’s profound wisdom. Teacher Zhu Fengting combined his knowledge into the “‘One of form and spirit’ civilized life structure”, and “morality” is a civilized life body with the same form and spirit.[1] To understand this structure, we need to clear the elementary problems of Chinese ethics, such as “the distinction between morality and ethics”, “the distinction between self-subject”, “the distinction between self-interest”, “the distinction between profit”, “the distinction between rationality and desire”, and “the distinction between personality”. The Chinese ethics answer to these questions is not a complete conceptual expression. It requires new understanding and presentation in the interaction of concepts. It requires the use of concept history to interpret related languages, verbal links, concept clusters and their certification methods through the restoration of thought history.
If the concept is said to be a “monument of problems” [2], it will give social debates a specific structure, and the concept should be the highest level of simple and concise understanding (Koserek)inclusive network, and the metaconcept is “a special expression in the years, which makes the application and content of popular experience and practical concepts clearbaoqingchu”[3]. The proposal of the “meta concept” is one of the main contributions of German classical philosophy. When criticizing French mechanical materialism, Marx pointed out that it is precisely the “meta concept” that makes understanding the “energy of the subject” become energy. [4] Kant regards the meta concept as a static prenatal structure, making the meta concept uncontent into content-free sensibility. Hegel refused to convey the ability of conceptual content by defining conceptual concepts. He believed that dynamic metaconcepts need to display and expand their rich connotations through the historical dimension of “retrospective” and the actual dimension of “participating in experience”. This makes the “metaconcept” have the characteristics of “thickConcept” with constant innate and changing connotations.
Of course, even in Hegel’s dynamic understanding of the concept of elements, the “thickness” of the concept of elements is still just a “single” self-certification development of sensibility. Bernard Williams, as the main member of the Hegel Campaign, proposed a “thick concept” concept that embraces moral diversity by emphasizing that “unless you pass through historical methods, you will not be able to see these things.” We can use a series of “thickConcepts” in Chinese ethics to propose a standard concept that highlights the characteristics of Chinese ethics, and use this as an advancement to revisit the problem areas of contemporary Chinese ethics.
2. Why is the concept of thickness the main one?
For Williams, the concept of ethics is not just about how we think about our ethics ca
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