Research On Gu Hong-ming's Ethical Thoughts

Gu Hong-ming is a pioneer in the field of critique of modernity and interpretation of the modern value of Confucian in the period of modern China. Although his thoughts are controversial, they are profound, which should be an ideological resource and critique of ideological resource in reconstruction of Chinese moral ethical culture today.In Gu Hong-ming's era, not only the disadvantages of the West modernity exposed, but also the Confucian encountered difficulty and its influence declined gradually. The difficulties faced by Eastern and Western civilizations were the background of Gu Hong-ming'ethical thoughts. Because of the Western educational background and identity difficulty through his life, Gu Hong-ming formed an cultural values with some extreme tendency. In the19th Century, the Western Romanticism and the British Conservative political thoughts were Gu Hong-ming'enthical thoughts of western origin. The experience in Zhang zhi-tong'official more than20years helped him falling in faith of Confucian deeply.On the basis of criticism about the Western Center view, Gu Hong-ming pointed out that civilization was an "Ethical standard". His purpose was to emphasis on the control of moral civilization to material civilization. Based on the view of moral civilization, Gu Hong-ming compared the relationship between Confucian civilization with Western civilization, then he got a conclusion that the former is superior to the latter.Gu Hong-ming criticized west modern civilization from religion, military, newspaper, and education from an ethical view. The first, he thought Christian ethic was irrational and not practical, which was the religion culture root of the First World War; and he condemned hypocrisy of Church of Christ and Missionaries. The second, he criticized the immorality of militarism and the missing moral responsibility of modern soldiers. The third, he criticized the west newspaper's business tendency and the damage of commercial transaction thoughts to the field of mankind's moral life. The fourth, he criticized the phenomenon of stress on intellectual education much more than moral education, quantity rather than quality in modern education, and criticized the west patriotic education in which the national egoism misled people. The fifth, Gu Hong-ming criticized the phenomenon of moral relativism in modern society, and proposed a solution by "moral extension" to resolve it.By interpretting Confucian's social moral educational function, Gu Hong-ming attempted to show the value of Confucian. In his opinion, Confucian was a religion in broad universial sense. From the beginning of revealing the truth of religious belief, Gu Hong-ming analyzed the factors step by step, which was why Confucian could instead of religion becoming Chinese pepole'religious belief. In his eyes, Confucian was a "Religion of Good-citizenship", which could help Europe get rid of the disadvantage of modenity.The criticism of the ideas about democracy and democracy political of the West, the defence of Chinese Monarchy, and the view about Manchu Nobility, all of that showed Gu Hong-ming's political value tendency of conservatism. Although there are a lot of depth and valuable views, but it exposed the biased feathure of his political ideas in overall.Gu Hong-ming's female ethics was the most controversial view. I think his female views not only have obvious limitation, but also have some reasonable ideas. The limitations are that he emphasized the independence of country but neglected women's personal independence; emphasized on women's duties but denied women's dominant position in marriage. His female thoughts'ethical rationality as follows:his ideas about women's social value is different from the Confucian's "patriarchal"; he focused on social responsibility of marriage has ethical rationality.Gu Hong-ming's ethical thoughts was based on critique about the drawbacks about the west modernity, showed great importance to the ethical values orientation of morality, responsibility, authority and order. To some extent, his ideas were in order to resolve the expansion of instrumental rationality and the decline of value rationality. Moral parochialism is the most obvious theory limitation of his ethical thoughts. The mainly contemporary value of Gu Hong-ming's ethical thoughts is that, firstly, the critiques to modernity by moral traditional, which was the beginning of critique to modernity in modern China; secondly, he interpreted the contemporary value of Confucianism from religion, emotion and spirit, which provided a new view and method to the successors.