Out Of The Moral Predicament

The moral predicament is a routine phenomenon in the process of moral development. From the angle of moral consciousness, it refers to fuzzy in moral realization and confused in moral evaluation;from the angle of moral behavior, it refers to un-united moral norms and lacking motive force to behave morality. In the whole, the moral predicament is reflected as some kind of disordered moral state and difficult condition in moral construction.After China's reform and opening-up, the great change in the field of economic system of China and economic institutions has not merely brought great change to economic field, but also brought out great influence to social morality because it has changed the interests' pattern in the Chinese society. The debate of "Climbing-up" and "coming-down" in morality and the theory of "moral costs" is the reflection of moral value in theory, and in the end such kind of argument reflects individual's moral puzzle and predicament in moral construction under this background. This predicament is mainly shown as the contradiction between efficiency and fair, the conflicts between justice and profits and entanglements between common and private. The choice of the system of market economy is a kind of economy choice, and is also a kind of politics choice, and moral choice even more, therefore, to get out of the moral predicament cannot rely only on morality itself. All we should do is to fix reasonable and moral relationships among production, exchange and distribution in the form of compulsory, then on this base, guide people pursue self-perfection and care of others.What the system reform in politics changed is the relationship between power and power, but in essence, is the relationships among interests. Because politics relates with morality, the reform in political system must have moral demands, while conversely the democratization,opening-up and socialization of politics which resulted from political reform becomes motive force to promote morality get progress. In our country, the subject or the leading strength of the political reform is the government. Reform is relatively slow process that is systematically carried on, and it goes on by way of peace, with the purpose of safeguarding and consolidating the socialist basic system. So, the political reform not only contains the moral ideal of those who mobilizes reform but also take the people and those who is led and governed into account, so as to regulate the existing interests relationships, relieve the social interests contradiction, promote the social economy, politics and culture into development, strengthen the legitimacy foundation of politics, safeguard the position of the social basic system. As a kind of social relationship, politics essentially contains interests, power and right. The values contained among all kinds of social relationships which are established around interests, power and rights must be reflected into moral field, and have influence on individual's morals consciousness, moral evaluation and moral behavior. Because the political reform is carried on in the original structure of "power-rights", the individual and different social levels must demonstrate different attitudes to the political reform, which must lead to some kind of predicament in reality. To get out of the predicament is a process of combing relationships, establishing the country's and individual's position in the political field, and handling the problem between power and rights. From the angle of the country or society, coordinating the relationships between individual and political society is to correctly set up the moral image of the country or the government, and to lead individuals to form the political morals in conformity with democratic politics;and from the angle of individual, it refers to how to form correct political conviction, and participate in the political management with the positive ethical attitude.The culture essentially is the person's spirit and value idea system. The cultural spirit and the value idea may be realized into individual's orcommunity's life attitude and life style, namely, the cultural life is a kind of self-confirmation in the practice, is an expression of person's practical ability and the reflection of the subject consciousness. The value contained in cultural have essential relationships with morality. Culture is the nutrition source of moral construction, and moral also directly shown as a kind of cultural state. The contemporary China's culture is experiencing a process, in which culture is not only colorful but also conflicted;not only demonstrates a kind of cultural transition tendency, but also demonstrates a kind of relative equilibrium among different cultures. In the whole, the culture presents a kind of evolution. The culture phenomena it brings to our society cannot be compared with that of before. The value predicament which is caused by cultural and moral contradiction becomes the difficult point in the current cultural and moral construction.But the culture cannot be far away from the morality, moreover in certain significance, it contains morality in itself. Any society's morals construction, especially the individual's morals construction, cannot neglect the culture's function. Certainly, culture is not equal to moral preach, but it also not merely the game and the entertainment, it has the significance to confirm the person's existence. Even the popular culture cannot get rid of moral request, cannot give up moral responsibility. Discussing the relationships between cultural change and moral construction in the environment of reform and opening-up is regarding the direction of our cultural development and its moral orientation from the viewpoint of modernization and globalization, is exploring the way of how to promote moral construction as the same time of promoting cultural construction, specially when culture already becomes an important part in the individual's consumption life, thinking about culture is an inevitably choice.An obvious characteristic of social change is that people's life style has greatly changed. From the form, it is shown as the change of thepeople's common behavior manner, but from the intention, it is shown as the change of the people's life value. Since the implement of reform and opening-up policy, the people gradually are familiar with choosing suitable way to consume and to associate with others. From the value yardstick of measuring life style, this kind of change embodies the transformation from taking the collective request as the criterion to taking individual subjective likes and dislikes as the criterion.At the same time, the life style's political color, ideology color and the moral color get desalinated, while its individualistic meaning get more and more strong. But, no matter how the society develop, the collective and the common request never can be neglected, and the moral request to life style also throughout exists, therefore, between private life and public life and between individual life and collective life, there must exists difference in values, so that to initiate moral predicament. Talking about individual's perfection in morality, means to thinking about individual's moral construction under the circumstance of individual life. Under the circumstance of modern society, individual's life is already different from that of traditional society in life style, life content and the life idea. Their life is three-dimensional, the contact is comprehensive. In this kind of individual life pattern, the individual morality should become the production of life, it is based on life, and for life.