Family And Ethic

The crisis of modern ethic is originated from the wilderment of ethical starting-point caused by modernity. But where is the ethical starting-point? Economy determines ethic only in the final analysis and if we make economy as the ethical starting-point it will inevitably get rid of the humanity nature of ethics and make the subject free of moral responsibility and bring about economical conciliarism. Although convention has same origins as ethics in etymon, content and function, it's difficult for it to qualify as the ethical starting-point for it lacks the spiritual essence that ethics has. Religious love-knot of ethics is just an artificial ultimate hypothesis of the rationality of value, but the religion's nature of inversion of man and God make it unable to be the ethical starting-point. The historical fact that Westerners made the religion as the ethical starting-point is the result of interaction of various elements at the beginning of the civilization and cannot justify the rationality of religion as the ethical starting-point.Only family can qualify the authentic ethical starting-point. This hypothesis can be justified from both the history and logic. In the historical dimension, the role of family as ethical starting-point is typically represented by Chinese history of civilization. Since Father Zhou established the family as the ethical starting-point, ethic has evolved from family in the following pre-Qin Dynasty, Xi Han and Dong Han Dynasty, Sui Dynasty, Tang Dynasty, Song Dynasty and Ming Dynasty and eventually brought up the traditional hierarchical structure encircling the core, that is, the vertical axis of consanguinity in traditional society. The role of family as the starting-point of traditional ethics was consistent with the nuclear role of family in traditional society and traditional Chinese people. In the logical dimension, family is the ethical mind in its natural or immediate phase, a typical primary social group, a constitutive conception of community and the initial ethical substance of human ethical relationships. Owing to a natural genesis and passing from generation to generation, kinship unique to the family produces holiness and eternity and due to its reality and self-organization family is superior to religion and is the optimal choice for the hypothesis of the rationality of value. The functioning way of the relationships in the family such as husband-and-wife, parent(s)-child (ren) and brother(s)-sister(s) embodies the functioning principle of ethics from the law of Gods to the law of man. Family, the first life area of ethical life, is the starting-point of individual socialization, conversion of different roles, moral enlightenment and ethical disciplining. Family becomes the model of ethical principle and ethical life.In modern times the repeated destruction of the role of family as ethical starting-point made by the sharp change of Chinese society gave rise to severe crises of ethic. Contemporary China should make an ethical construction in the"family-civil society-nation"system and finally accomplish the mutual integration of ethic of family, the ethic of civil society and ethic of the nation by activating the family, the rational gene in the traditional society, achieving the ethical return to family in the process of constructing the civil society and exerting the ethical function of the nation.