A Research Of The German Ideology’s Moral Thoughts

Moral construction, from the most remote past on, has always been pursued by human society. The reflection on moral phenomenon, as it is recorded in existent literature, extends also over a period of thousands of years.However, until today, moral and moral construction is still an important issue facing human society. While it is certain that history of ideas provides us with a variety of moral theories, none of them is totally satisfactory. These theories either limit themselves within the world of ideas or regard moral issues as concerning only idea and ideology. There are very few moral theories linking the personal moral issues with social reality and taking moral issue as the reflection and refraction of the real social world. In this respect, there are no significant differences among all non-Marxist moral and ethical thoughts, both before and after Marx and Engels.Given these prevailing non-Marxist moral thoughts or theories, it follows that, in order to construct morality and to change people’s moral behavior, we need only substitute one existent moral idea with another new idea and it is unnecessary to go beyond the world of abstract thinking.But this speculation is not correct. From history we learn that moral propaganda and abstract deduction, as the main forms of past moral construction, are not enough for addressing effectively the moral issues facing human society, and a new way must be found out.Fortunately, we are spared from that effort. In fact, a new way of constructing morality has been there since the publication of Marx and Engels’ The German Ideology and as such demands rightly our full attention to it.What at issue is that we have not complied with the demand and the moral thoughts of The German Ideology is generally ignored by us, even by students whose researches focus on Marx and Engels’ ethical and moral thoughts. The very scarcity of the studies that take the moral thoughts of The German Ideology as their subject can testify this situation. Further more, even those studies that deal with the moral thoughts of The German Ideology, have also no awareness of the fact that Marx and Engels have put forward a new way of constructing morality in that book.Therefore, first of all, we need to make clear simply that Marx and Engels have outlined a new way of constructing morality in The German Ideology.Secondly and more importantly, in this dissertation, the theoretical grounds for this new type of moral constructing reasoning, i.e. Marx and Engels’ deep-rooted thoughts about morality in The German Ideology, will be investigated and exhibited. For this purpose, a whole chapter is devoted to early Marx and Engels’moral thoughts, namely, their moral thoughts before the writing of The German Ideology. This will provide us with a necessary preparation for understanding and grasping the moral thoughts of The German Ideology in the perspective of Marx and Engels’intellectual development.Thirdly, taking the above discussion as a base, we try to indicate and enumerate Marx and Engels’basic thoughts about morality in The German Ideology, including: that morality as a form of social consciousness belongs to the realized social existences; that morality emerges as a product of the development of human society to a certain stage and again change itself constantly with the further developments of human society---in another word, morality is a historical and not eternal existence; that morality has the character of class-depending, so each moral system reflects in itself the social status of each particular social class and cannot be generally justified---any attempt of universalizing the morality of a particular social class is deemed to separate that morality from its original real ground, make it abstract, hollow and becoming "moralizing". It is not, of course, denying that different social classes, while looking from each different social status, can nevertheless accept or reject jointly a particular moral idea or ground. In The German Ideology, all these above ideas run through also Marx and Engels’criticism of some other moral thoughts.Fourthly, according to another important idea of The German Ideology, morality and moral idea are not themselves subjects, and are unable to evolve themselves actively. Because of this, we can say that morality has no its own history. Morality results from human activities and reflects human social developments. It takes real human existence as the starting point and vehicle of its development, and the driving force behind social development as the basic driving force behind its development, and the future of human society as its future. Besides human real activities and social developments, morality has no other independent sources and grounds.Thought, no matter what kind of thought it is, is always the fruit of its own time. In respect, it need not to say that the moral thoughts of The German Ideology are no exception. But this time-binding character of all thoughts does not mean that all past thoughts is inevitably always outdated and has no value for contemporary society. As for the moral thoughts of The German Ideology, we should inherit and develop it at the same time. The thoughts about morality of The German Ideology, such as that morality results from human activities, that morality reflects human existence, and that morality has historicity, are correct, still applicable to contemporary society and therefore should be inherited and insisted. Some other moral thoughts of The German Ideology, such as that morality is class-based, nevertheless, need to be reformulated. Viewed as a whole, Marx and Engels’ thoughts about morality in The German n Ideology, is a kind of "moral sociology". They are also the integral parts of the materialist outlook of history that Marx and Engels present in The German Ideology. In the course of constructing contemporary social morality, we should take this moral sociology as our theoretical guide and put it into practice.