Rebuilding The Integrity Of Modern Ethical Life

Ethical life is an important dimension of human life,and it is the fundamental characteristic that distinguishes human beings from other beings.In ancient society,ethical life showed characteristics of entity and integrity.The Athenian city-state life was the highest good and the collective life of the polis was treated as the essence and the true meaning of their life.However,as human history moved from the ancient times to modernity,the picture of ethical life changed fundamentally.In modern society,the disintegration of natural ethics becomes inevitable,the ethical life of integrity ceases to exist,the loyalty of ethical life is lost.This era is full of individuality and freedom,with all proclivity,all endowments and all contingency freely active.Individuality becomes the distinctive feature of modern ethical life.The publicity of individuality not only brings freedom and liberation to us,but also brings about the division of life and the conflict of society.Division is the unbearable weight of modern ethical life.Therefore,how to transcend the dilemma of modern ethical life and rebuild the integrity of modern ethical life becomes a subject of the times that we must solve.Hegel was not the first modern philosopher,but he was the first one to realize the problem of modernity.He was acutely aware of the divisive issue of modern ethical life and established reshaping the integrity of modern ethical life as the mission of his practical philosophy.Hegel's thoughts on religion,natural law,political economy and other issues,all stemmed from his mission of practical philosophy.After the exploration in the youth,Hegel realized that many events which marked modernity had grown in the soil of civil society.So,in this sense,civil society constituted the essential stipulation of modern society,and it is the core force to shape the picture of modern ethical life.Therefore,for Hegel,only by criticizing and transcending the civil society itself is it possible to rebuild the integrity of modern ethical life.Hegel summed up the civil society in two principles and three links.The two principles were the particularity and the universality,in which the particularity was the purpose and the universality was the form.The three links were "systems of need","public administration" and "justice and association." They constituted the inner structure of civil society together,and every link contained the double principles.Through the structural analysis of civil society,Hegel recognized that particularity as a purpose would cause modern people to fall into the rut of private interests,and the whole civil society became "the battlefield of private interests." In form,modern ethical life was a "set juxtaposition," which is based on the private needs,and its essence was the mutual rupture and conflict between atomic individuals.At the same time,Hegel also captured that the force that transcended the dilemma of modern ethical life lurked in civil society.There was a seed of universality in the civil society itself,but this universality was only potential and formal.If universality is made realistic,it can dissolve the pain of division caused by particularity.The process of universality moving from potential to reality was the process of civil society progressing to the state.The state is the reality of ethical spirit.In the ethical state,the "two strong desires" of universality and particularity achieved inner unity.We can relive the ethical sense of being home in the world,and thus the integrity of ethical life was reshaped.We can say,based on the criticism of civil society,Hegel unified the consciousness structure,mode of production,spiritual structure and social political structure of human existence,reestablished the public order and moral of modern society,and responded to the splitting pain of modern civil society with an integrated and substantial picture of ethical life.Marx shared the problem of modernity that Hegel had grasped,but he did not agree with the way Hegel solved the problem,because the ethic state which Hegel used to solve the problem of division was only an idea design,and the solution of the dilemma need go deep into the reality of civil society.In Marx's view,"capital" was the "shining light" of civil society,and it was the core shaping power of modernity.There was an essential relationship between "the fate of Modernity" and "the fate of Capital".Therefore,dissecting civil society from the perspective of capital constituted the unique way that Marx used to realize the modernity.Disintegrating the logic of capital and reconstructing the new form of human civilization were the new way that Marx provided for the divisive crisis of modernity.In the face of the splitting dilemma of civil society,Hegel and Marx provided different outlets,but we cannot ignore or dilute the ideological relevance and acceptance of them on this subject.To Marx,Hegel was not only his teacher on Dialectics,but also on the criticism of civil society.