The Freedom And Liberation Of Human Beings-Research On Marx’s Ethical Theory

Marx’s theory of ethics is one of the most important parts of Marx’s system, andit also makes a revolutionary impact in the history of ethics theory. Traditionalwestern ethics as well as modern western ethics often start to build their ethicssystem based on abstract people while Marx was so inventive that he used themethod of historical materialism to put people into the specific social and historicalrelations and viewed them. In addition, he associated people’s morality with thesocial and historical environment that they were in. By doing that, he put forwardthat by changing the fundamental social political and economic system to improvethe level of individual morality and social morality and also proposed communismmoral vision. This paper uses "people issues" as the main line, from the sight of thehistory of ethics to analyze the true essence of Marxist ethics and its transformationalimpact on the history of ethics.Introduction: This section is to introduce the issue and preliminary interpretsMarxist revolutionary change on the question of human ethics. This articleresearches Marx’s theory of ethics from the perspective of human, and alsointroduces the results of related researches in and abroad on Marx’s theory of ethics.Chapter1: This part systematically summarizes of the contents of the traditionalwestern ethical ideas, from the ancient Greece, the middle Ages to the ethicalconcept of German classical ethics and the Utopian socialism, are all listed. Thepurpose of this chapter is to prepare to interpret the traditional western ethics fromthe prospective of historical materialism, and elaborate the difference betweenMarx’s theory and the western traditional ethics. This chapter comprehensively andconcisely narratives ethics of various genres, and mainly highlights western traditionethicists’ view on "the issue of people". Chapter2: A complete retrospect of the development course of Marx’s ethicalconcepts. The process is divided into four phases: The first stage was thehumanitarian under the influence of the early enlightenment thought, includingMarx’s high school, college days until he became the editor of "Rheinische Zeitung";In the second stage, he began to focus on the political issues which involved materialinterests and wrote the book "Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right", and laterwrote "On the Jewish Question", a book that discusses the links and differencesbetween political liberation and social emancipation. Marx’s new worldview andethics was close to maturity when writing "Economic and Philosophical Manuscriptsof1844"; In the third stage, the thoughts and ethics of historical materialism of Marxwere very mature and the works of this period included "The Holy Family, or forcriticism by criticism of the criticism","Outline on Feuerbach","The GermanIdeology ", etc. Marx mainly explained his own thinking by criticizing a variety ofspeculative philosophy in Germany and various kinds of reactionary socialist theory.The fourth stage mainly explained Marx’s communist moral ideal and mainlyincluded the book "The Poverty of Philosophy", as well as the "CommunistManifesto" drafted jointly by Marx and Engels in1847. And the publication of "TheCommunist Manifesto" is the sign of the birth of Marxist scientific world view.Chapter3: This part makes a interpretation on traditional western ethic byhistorical materialism and summarized Marx’s criticism on the old moral and histreatise of historical materialism morality. Western traditional ethics established theethical system based on "abstract man" as a whole and "man" was in the obscurestate either in history or in the community or in their minds; while Marx realized thesteering of practice humanistic:"person" in Marx’s ideology was realistic andspecific. What Marxism pursued was people’s returning to true people and gettingthe full freedom and liberation.Chapter4: This chapter mainly interprets the moral connotations of thecommunist ideal. The basic features of communism moral ideal include practical,property of institutional ethics, real equality and for the benefit of all humanity, andthe essence of communism moral ideals is the pursuit of human freedom and liberation; To achieve the ideal communist morality must have certain conditions:the objective material basis are the highly developed productive forces, theinstitutional conditions are material wealth and righteous social and the culturecondition is humanism culture. In addition, the bourgeoisie will not automaticallyexit the stage of history, so the proletarian revolution ought to realize the ideals ofcommunism through fighting with the capitalist class.Chapter5: This chapter mainly makes a comparison between Marx’s theory ofethics and modern western genre-including existentialism, psychoanalysis, JohnRawls’ theory and the western Marxism especially on their stance on “the issue ofpeople”, in order to highlight the epochmaking influence of Marx’s ethics conceptsand its profound impact on modern western history.