The Human Standards And Social Standards Of Good And Evil

The question of what are the standards or yardsticks of good and evil is the central question of the theories about good and evil. In the history of ideologies of both western and oriental, every theory has its standards about good and evil, which continues to compete between each other. And there are not finally unification standards about good and evil. In the traditional society, although the standards of good and evil are different between different countries,nations and religions, they are consistent in the same community. But from the modern society, it is hard to find consistent standards even in the same country or the same nation and the same religion.The moral crisis in the modern society has deteriorated the situation. In the western society, one of the important exhibitions of this moral crisis is the question of the validity of ethical knowledge. The formalism,non-rationalism and relativism of ethnics are the exhibitions of it. The characteristic of these theories is to restrict the object of ethnics in the moral language and expel the moral facts in the premise of the contradiction of the value and fact and moral and scientific knowledge. They hold the ideal that the judgments of ethnics only express the individual emotion,hobby and subjective experience and that all the moral values and standards are relative and they are changes in the different times,places and between different persons, so there is no objective foundation. The moral principles and standards in this theory lost its affirmations,stability and universality. The judge of good and evil also lost the universal standards. The finally result is that the moral judgments lost the objective foundations, and expel the moral rules out of the ethnic. The philosophers of post-modern philosophy declare"all the moralities have gone". They believe that the morality is not comes from objectivity but subjectivity so the universal standards of good and evil has been expelled. In our country, there have been great changes from the modern society especially in the moral existence. During the great changes of innovation and open to the outside word, and in the transition of system, there are denial of traditional morality and the blank of new morality. There are crisis of moral existence and the short of moral theory and the ultimate care of the moral content. There is demoralization and the abnormality of social estimate. Some good things are often being laughed, and some evil things become fashion.In the system of Marxism ethnics in our country, there are four standards of good and evil, they are benefit,class,history and productivity. The standards of benefit are the foundation one, and the others are subject to them. The standards of class are subject to the standards of history, which is subject to the standards productivity. This system of judgment aggrandizes the benefit of the whole society, and make the individual disappears in the society. According to above paragraphs, this paper opposes to the western theories of the standards of good and evil and disagrees to the standards of Marxism ethnics. On the foundation of the basic meaning of the standards of good and evil in the Marxism ethnic and the basic principle of materialistic history, this paper bring forward the standards of good and evil: the human standards and the social standards.In the history of ethnics, there are many ways to find the standards of good and evil, but the most important two are teleology and deontology. Teleology emphasizes the result of the act, and ignores the motive of the act, which has obvious incline to effect. In the opinion of teleology, the act is good just because it can result in the good effect, or else, it is evil. The deontology thinks that the act is good and internal justice just because it assort with some form of principle. Deontology concerns not only the rights and interests and purpose of individual moral subject but also the just distribute and the reasonable arrange between all the moral subjects. The standards of good and evil is whether the act accord with the social interest and whether it is just. Deontology bases on the human reason, and lays particular stress on the social standards. Teleology bases on the human sensibility, and lays particular stress on the human standards. Both of them are base on the abstract humanism and can rationally resolve the relative of the human standards and social standards.In the view of materialistic history, moral is the production of immanent need of human. Among many human needs, the need of existence is the basic one. When it is satisfied, other higher needs will come after them. Such as the social and spiritual needs, which are the needs of development. By this token, all the acts that can be propitious to the existence and development of human are good, or else, they are evil. Because the human need is the exhibition of human nature, we name these standards as human standards. Individual person is also the social existence, which is living in certain social relatives. Without these relatives there will be no conflict of benefit both between individuals and between individual and society, moral will not exist. Moral is the product of social relatives, the final purpose of which is to meet the need of existence and development of society. On the other words, all the acts that can be propitious to the existence and development of society are good, or else, they are evil. The standards of moral are whether the acts can satisfy the need of social existence and development. These are also the standards of good and evil, which are named as social standards.The final purpose of all the human acts is the existence and development of people, so they are the highest standards of moral and the highest standards of good and evil. Standards of humanity are the meta-standards and"standards of standards". Actually, all the acts and moral principles and rules and social systems that can maintain the existence and development of human are good, or else, they are evil. Human standards express the final purpose of moral object, which meet human needs realize human happiness perfect humanity, and incline to"the freedom and complete development". That is to say, the standards of human express the inevitability and idealities and transcendentalism of moral. Moral principles and rules are the idiographic exhibition of social standards and they are the direct standards of good and evil. They express the direct purposes of moral that ensure the community orders maintain social existence and accelerate social development. They are practical standards of good and evil, which are idiographic standards in different society. They are the exhibition of real moral nature.Standards of social keep up with the development of practice and changes of history. They bear the nature of history and can be replaced by new standards. Standards of human express the need of existence and development of human, and the pursuing of perfect humanity. Although the need of existence and development of human, and the pursuing of perfect humanity are changes according to the different ages, it only regards to the content but not to the forms. So the standards of human is unvarying. Social standards only apply to certain society otherwise they will be incomprehensible and even stupid. So the standards of human are the final criterion of good and evil. Social standards are the exhibition and outspread of human standards, the former always circumvolve surrounding the latter and serves it. The social standards are not simply subject to the human standards. They restrict human standards through the choice and confirm of acts and social system in certain society. The purposes of them are same, which run to"the freedom and complete development of human".According to this, we can easily understand why Marx and Engels continued to animadvert on the eternal moral. They hold the view that there is no eternal good and justice that can exceed all the historical condition. That is because the origin of moral is human need. They are principles and rules that can better meet the need of human and adjust the acts of individual and society. Every society has its practical relatives, which are the reasons of the principles and rules of this society. They maintain the existence of this society and accelerate the development of it. Social relatives vary according to the development of production and practice. After the new relatives appear, the new society takes place of the old one. And then the moral principles and rules that maintain the old social relatives cannot meet the need of the new society. If we still use the outdated standards of moral principles and rules to evaluate the good and evil, the good things will be regarded as the evil ones and the evil things will be regarded as good ones. The reason why we condemn the inhumanity and heartless of the slavery and the feudality is that we use the moral principles and rules which base on modern social relatives to weigh the society and acts of that time.Social standards and human standards are not always consistent. They are often in the conflict. In this situation, social standards should be subject to human standards. The reason is that social standards maintain the existence and development of society, which is not the final purpose of human. The final purpose of human is the existence and development of themselves. Social standards and human standards have complex relatives in the history. In the primeval society, individual and society are the all and the one. So the social standards and human standards are uniform. When the history came into the class societies, there are private properties and classes, such as servile society,feudal society and the former period of capitalistic society, when the capital has been accumulated rapidly, human standards were submerged by social standards. The relative between them are contorted. The interest of majority has been sacrificed, the purpose of which is to meet the needs of minority who are dominators. From the renaissance, human standards had been extruded. According to the development of Movement of Enlightenment, human standards bears the perfect academic form - - humanitarianism. Humanitarians uplifted the human flag, opposed deity by the humanity. Everything could only be justified in humanity. Humanity became the final standard of everything. Human is reasonable. So human was the standard of good and evil. But this is at the cost of the damage of social standards. Humanitarianism bases on the abstract humanism, in which human beings are born to incline to benefit and avoid the damage and love and maintain him. Everyone focuses on the private interest. Society is the instrument of realization of private interest. This abstract human will result in the social confusion. So the key of an orderly society is to build social standards that will rationally restrict and adjust the acts of human. This abstract humanism expels all the sociality and reality of human, and cannot rationally resolve the relative of human standards and social standards. On the base of criticism of capitalism, Marx thinks that only by the ruin of private property and the repeal of"illusive community", we can rationally deal with the relative between individual and social need and interest in the"real community", and resolve the contradiction between them, and finally unify the social standards and human standards.