A Study On Sentimental Mechanism Of Mencius’ Theory Of Human Nature From The Perspective Of Virtue Ethics

The rise of virtue ethics is a major development of contemporary ethics,which is characterized by the concern about the quality of agents,taking virtue rather than obligation or consequence as the primary concept in the ethics.While Confucian ethics emphasizes the significance of humaneness,rightness,propriety and wisdom,as four virtues,for human“being”,which is intrinsically consistent with virtue ethics in research objectives and approaches,so it is often understood as a kind of virtue ethics.In the dialogue between Chinese and Western scholars on virtue ethics and Confucian ethics,Confucian ethics not only can be characterized by taking virtue as the center and attaching importance to personal psychological activities and life experience,but also contribute to responding to questioning of virtue ethics.It is remarkable that sentimental mechanism of Mencius’ theory of human nature is one important thought resource of such Confucian ethics.Emotion is a fundamental concept in Mencius ethics.In Mencius’ theory of human nature,feeling of pity and compassion,shame and aversion,modesty and compliance,and sense of right and wrong are regarded as the sprouts of humaneness,rightness,propriety and wisdom.The four sprouts are four natural feelings essentially,which have the characteristics of morality,reality,concreteness and purpose.So they are both the source and content of virtues,which laid the basis for the universality and standardization of morality in Mencius’ theory.Sentimentalist virtue ethics interprets morality through emotion,too.But the universality and morality of emotion can only be realized through the psychological mechanism of sympathy or empathy.By comparing and reflecting on the sentimental mechanism in Mencius’ ethics and Slote’s ethics from the perspective of nature,content and normative,the theoretical significance of the sentimental mechanism of Mencius theory of human nature can be concluded.For virtue ethics,it can response to the primary explanation problem,the right action problem and the justification problem.For normative ethics and meta-ethics,it can provide a defense for the judgements on the universality of moral norms.More importantly,the sentimental mechanism highlights the ethical life Mencius appeal to,and provides a possible path for rebuilding people’s common spiritual homeland when morality is out of order.Besides,the study points out the limitation of Mencius’ ethics that his sentimental logic lacks the belief of publicity of modern society.And justice is not confirmed in his integration of ethical life and political life.Therefore,it is required to improve and refine Mencius’ ethics based on the consideration of common goods when demonstrating its contemporary significance.