The Study For Credit Ethics And Its Moral Philosophy Tradition

In the daily life or the theory, the word of"credit"is usually regarded as a economic concept. Credit has gone away from ethics, tradition and also non-personality. Therefore, we must make the concept of credit go back to its ethical meaning. After giving credit a ethical concept, we can compare and review two basic moral philosophy traditions of it, one is the theory based on the man's internal merit or quality, the other is the theory based on the external institutions or rules. Credit, as a ethics concept, a particular setting whilst a man expresses his honesty, makes a solemn promise and undertakes it truthfully, and meanwhile, another man trusts or gives him a positive reaction. Depending upon the merit or principle, credit can be generally distinguished two essential traditional types, merit-objective tradition and right-rule tradition. There are three main types of merit-objective tradition, such as Confucian sincerity ethics, only as an extent meaning, Kant's moral responsibility tradition and theological objective tradition of Christianity. Otherwise, there are two main types of right-rule ethics tradition, Utilitarianism credit ethics and modern contract credit ethics. But, in the first place, merit is generally fragile, not only rising from itself but from the weakness of binding the power of merit during the process of traditional society changing into modern society. Thus internal merit needs external rules to strengthen and make up for its defection. And in the second place, it is equally true that external is limited, and then needs internal merit or virtuous character to breed and support. Finally, it is also a merit to highly esteem the law, including the moral law and external legal. The previous three factors form the key connection between the merit and rule. However this kind of key connection has been destroyed, as it has been said, during the transition from the traditional society to the modern society. Because of the disintegration of the traditional communities and the abstract of social relationship, the external rule starts to deviate from the internal merit, and then, for such reason, person in the modern time has being had the crisis of epistemology, such as the crisis of personality, community or social relationship and culture or tradition identity, especially the social credit or trust crisis. So it is very necessary to reconstruct or reestablish the foundation of the personality identity, community identity and culture identity, the foundation of the social credit and trust. In a sense, it may be an essential way to rebuild the key relation between the merit and the rule through the integration of the modern social institutions. In a word, it would be a clear conclusion to strengthen the practical power of merit by rebuilding the personality, community and culture identity, avoid the limitations of the rules by integrating the modern institutions, and increase the key relation between the merit and the rule by general moral education to arouse the person in the modern time to highly esteem the rules or institutions.