On The Creativity Of Ethics

This dissertation focuses on the essence and nature of the outlook of Marxist ethics. Carl Marx terminates the ontological thinking of traditional philosophy by his historical materialist thinking and thus fulfills the revolutionary transformation in the field of philosophy. Following the transforming of the thinking of philosophical theories, Marx achieves a revolutionary transformation in ethical outlook. Within the system of traditional ontological thinking, human nature and ethics are approached from the perspective of the preexistent and fixed noumenon and are thus given fixed characteristics. The ethical regulations are made according to the unchangeable human nature and function as restricting and regulating people's thoughts and behaviour, making people comply with them. This kind of ethics takes regulations as its standard and it has compressed the three parts of the theoretical system of ethics, namely, meta-ethics, regulating ethics and virtue ethics, into a one-sided regulating ethics, which is characterized by its regularity and restrictiveness. Within the system of Marx's historical materialist thinking, however, people are thought to have no fixed nature. Human nature is thought to be derived from man's historical practice and creation, with which it will constantly develop and enrich its contents. Therefore, Marx always makes the critical analysis of ethical regulations through a historical thinking which mingles and connects the past, the present and the future, advocating the promotion of the updating of ethical regulations through people's self creation and the realization of people's self creation through the updating of ethical regulations. Basing on a historical understanding of human nature and ethics, Marx has established the ethical outlook with creation as its nucleus. Marx's ethical view based on creation indirectly finds its way, on the one hand, in his criticism of capital society, and on the other hand, directly in his theory about human beings and societal development. Marx regards capital society as a non-ethical, inhuman dissimilated society, which displays in three specific aspects. First, the manufacturing materials are privately owned, market and price are the regulating means, and the operators pursue an ultimate profit and interest. These have caused the inhumanity of the system. Or in other words this kind of system leads to the isolation, indifference and monetary quality of human beings. Second, the manufacturing way, and the fixed and forced division of work dissimilate production. This way of production has dissimilated human beings into deformed and fallen existence. Third, human relationships are largely materialized and commercialized, which causes a non-ethical human relationship. That is to say the materialized human relationship leads to the isolation, obturation, and opposition. In his criticism and reveal of the capital society, Marx longs for an ethical society. To Marx, a real ethical and human society must be founded on the system of publicly-owned manufacturing material. Each individual has the opportunity to fulfill his gifts and talents; the means and conception of operation, the ways of production must be under a free control of human, and subjected to and serve human's self-creation. Human relationship must be interrelated, reciprocal, free and abundant. Marx's theory of human and societal development directly speaks for his views about humanity and ethics. Therefore the first chapter and the third chapter respectively state Marx's ethical thoughts. Mars holds that human beings have no inborn nature, and nature is the production of human's self-creation and a result of history. Creativity is the most fundamental humanity. Ethics, as a practicing theory of human's self-creation, suit and promote self-creation. Ethic's active meaning and function to human's self-creation are focused in two taches: creation of consciousness and creation of activities; in two fields: creation of human relationships and creation in producing activities; in two layers: creation of internal spiritual quality and creation of external conducting ways. The reason why Marx is able to reveal the creative nature of ethics lies in the fact that Marx's historical materialist thinking accords with human being'screativity. Hence in the second chapter of this paper, against man's and ethics'apotheosizing by rationalism and their materializing by naturalism, I have made an in-depth demonstration of the agreement between historical thinking and human being's creative existence. Rationalism is based on man's spiritual life and spiritual pursuits, which are isolated, made one-sided and absolutized. Human beings are taken as the apotheosized existence beyond the limitation of living environment and socio-historical conditions, resulting in the replacing of human self by the shapeless rationalism, which becomes the main body of legislation for moral codes, enjoying absolute freedom in willing and behaviour without any basis or conditions. As a concrete physical being, nevertheless, man is unable to perform the holy regulations made by pure rationalism. And the holy regulations cannot find an actual object among the living things. Naturalism takes as its premise the isolated, one-sided understanding of man's physical life and physical desires, taking human beings as the materialized existence completed controlled by biological instinct and natural laws of cause and effect. Man's living world is taken as the unitary materialistic world. The creative significance of human beings toward the world and toward themselves is denied. Therefore ethics becomes the instinctive behaviours limited by physical desires and natural laws. Marx's historical materialism takes human nature's creative-generation as its promise and believes that human beings are living as the creative main boy of the world and themselves. The world a in which man's creative activities are included, is an ethical world embodying the unity between purpose and laws. Relations and products, as human nature's objectivatations, are the products which embody the unity between morality and happiness and correspond to ethics and humanity. And ethical regulations as the notions and blue prints for people's creative activities are the regulations in reality which embodies the unity between the subject and the object. The theory of social development is both the theoretical platform on which Marx expounds his ethical outlook and the most special part of his thoughts on ethics. Marx's theory of social development and his understanding of the individual behaviour mechanisms have directly presented the historicaltransition of ethical modes and the dynamic variation of ethical regulations. From the perspective of macro-history, with the development of human existent state, the ethical modes of human beings have experienced a historical transition from the unconscious natural ethics to the conscious utilitarian ethics and then to the superconscious free ethics. The historical transition of ethical modes has presented the three inevitable different life pursuits in the course of human beings'development. The first pursuit is the one with surviving as its ultimate objective; the next is the one with development as its ultimate objective; the third is the one with freedom as its ultimate objective. The infinity of human beings'development requires ethical regulations to keep an ever changing state as to fully realize the interaction between ethical regulations and individual self consciousness. In this way, On the one hand, the advanced and rational ethical regulations can be accepted by an individual in time and generated by individual consciousness, in the meantime they will be assimilated by an individual's deliberate behaviour and internalized as the inner spiritual qualities with the regulated external compelling removed and in the end become part of one's individual nature. On the other hand, an individual's self-consciousness should be improved and the updating and improving of ethical regulations should be promoted. The dynamics of ethical regulations have from the microcosmic aspect reflected the creative-generation and historical variation of human nature. Human exists in the history; historicism is the existential nature of human beings. Without a historic understanding of humanity and ethic, human life will be a meaningless repetition, ethic will reduce to a rigescent regulations. Thus the human's self-creation will fall into difficulty, and the only way out is to treat human life with a historic and dialectic view, and guide the ethic of human life with the same view. Specifically speaking, that is to say the relations of four aspects must be dealt with properly. First, we must meditate and criticize the relatively fixed ethical regulations with a historical thinking, break the tie of the rigid ethic to human's creativity, and maintain the mobility of ethical regulations together with its guidance and promotion to human's creativity. Second, we must handle well the relationship between the generalethical rules and the specific individual existence so that the former one will not reduce to the arbitrary common thoughts, and the general requirements of the ethic and the specific existence of the individual existence get a good interactive translation in the practice, and achieve a laminar unity. In this way we can both realize the general requirements of the ethic and maintain the independent personality of individual; third, we must deal well with the unity of the society and the initialtiveness of individual. The whole society is the main body of the ethical regulations, which represents the will of the whole society, and on the other hand, individual plays an active role in the practice, and human being should get rid of a substantial understanding of the society. Human practice walk out of the block and isolation of the self, and root in the whole society, reveal his nature as a subject; Four, we should handle well the relationship between real life and ideal life, the material life and spiritual life. We should, not only deepen into reality, undergo a full life creation, but also live above the ordinary life, straighten life aspirations, seek to live beyond the form, and keep the internal tension of the life. According to Marx's historical materialism, humanity is the product of human practice, is historically born. As a way of activities under certain historical conditions, practice also has a historical nature. For a quite long period of time after the generation of human beings, restricted by the existential conditions and self-development of human beings, practice is not the way to create human nature, but the means to survive. Therefore it is not the practice in its real sense. And Marx calls this period of time "pre-historical". Marx thinks that, a real ethical society, which fully realize each individual's free development, and is the unity of free human beings, is founded on the present prosperous world therefore it needs certain historical preconditions, which concern not only the reform of social system and way of production, but also the enrichment of material treasures and elevation of consciousness. All these conditions have one main point, that is to say people have acquired adequate free time, and pursue a full and various freedom to a degree that each individual's free development has become the condition of all community's free development. Abundant free time and the general pursuit of...