Research On The Ethics Thought In Freud's Personality Theory

The main aim of this article is to elaborate Freud's personality theory and its ethics thought. Freud's psychoanalysis theory not only pays attention to the realm of psychoanalysis, but sets foot in the macroscopic territory of morality and civilization of mankind. In his ethics thought, personality theory is the core. At first this article introduces the main contents of personality theory, then comments on its explanation of the ethics questions, thereby reflects the special position of Freud's thought in the history of Western ethics.The main argument of this article is that, at that ages, contacting with various ideas in science, philosophy and ethics, personality theory is constructed. Freud thinks, the personality is the system which includes id,ego and superego, the three parts interconnect and interact, and abide by different moral principles, namely, pleasure principle,reality principle and ideal principle. When discussing these moral principles, Freud mentions of natural character of mankind and points out the man has the tendency of hedonism,utilitarianism and egoism. Basing on that, he interprets the basic problems of morality: inducing the origin of morality to inborn and unconscious instinct of living creature, namely, the desire of sex instinct; confirming the essence of morality to a kind of mental process, namely, the mental function of individual; proofing the basis of morality to guilty feeling; indicating the function of morality to repress instinct,demand,desire and motion of the man and limit him to choose his behavior freely. The ethics significance in personality theory is that, according to the new scientific method of psychoanalysis, finding the new realm of individual research and making the antenna of the research on the man own extend to the unconscious mental state for the first time, providing a key to understand the profound mental mystery of the unconscious layer of mankind and enter the inside territory of the individual, such as human nature,personality,instincts and so on, thereby opening up a new path and scope for the research on social moral phenomenon, especially individual moral.In the final part, this article comments Freud's severe critique to the traditional moral concepts of western, and the assertion to establish a new kind of morality. It is viewed as the greatest enlightenment possibly obtained from personality theory: not continually negate and reject the instincts and desires of mankind so as to maintain the old perfect and dissociated morality, but face up to and admit the instincts and desires so as to build a new complete and united morality based on science and rationality according to the rational comprehension about the natural character of mankind and the practical request to the civilization, and this is a new mission of mankind. In the meantime, personality theory not only challenge the method, but enriches the academic contents of ethics, thus announces the birth of psychoanalysis ethics, and exerts active and profound influence on the modern history of western ethics.