Virtue Or Utility:Moral Foundations Of Politics

The relationship between politics and morality------Whether the state should intervene and how to intervene in the moral life of citizens has always been one of the eternal themes of political philosophy. To explore the moral basis of human politics, this article tries to observe the history of western political thought from the two dimensions of virtue and utilitarianism.In the pre modern times, because the human culture has not yet appeared in the field of differentiation and people's understanding of the world is in a state of chaos,religious theology and metaphysics occupies the dominant position in the field of human culture and political theory and political virtue is a kind of mainstream ideology. The moral basis of virtue politics is a kind of obligation theory which requires the members of the political community to believe in a priori, absolute, certain, non-individual moral ethics and values, the whole political community has some kind of common good. In order to maintain a certain set of values or the common good, the state should intervene the citizen's moral life with the state's public power and sanction against violation of such a moral or common good. In order to realize this kind of common good, the state requires the members of the political community to make the sacrifice unconditionally.In modern times, the field of human culture is divided into three fields of science, morality and aesthetics. There is persistent tension and conflict between science and morality. The scientific positivism replaces the religious theology as the dominant value and the utilitarian politics has become a mainstream political theory and ideology. Utilitarian politics is a kind of political realism and pragmatism which is closely connected with modernity, which is a kind of political thought and practice when classical moral collapse and human morality moves towards pluralism and relativism day by day. This kind of political thought and practice takes a kind of ethics of teleology as its moral foundation. It advocates the separation of church and state and state shall not interfere with the moral life of citizens. It was produced on the context of modern scientism and positivism.Under the specific political and cultural context, the necessity of the existence of virtue politics and utility cannot overcome its inherent drawbacks and historical limitations. The future of human politics is bound to be a reflection on politics, which takes utilitarian politics as the main development path. But it will avoid the historical limitations of political utilitarianism, trying to reconciliate between virtue and political utilitarian, and ultimately to the moderatism.This paper is divided into five chapters to elaborate. In order to avoid influencing the reading and understanding of the paper for the ambiguity of the concept, the first chapter is the theoretical part of this paper, which introduces and defines the core concepts involved, such as utility, virtue, virtue politics, utilitarianism, politics, utilitarianism and rights as well as utilitarianism and freedom.The second chapter mainly elaborates the virtue political theory and its limitation. First of all, this chapter elaborates Platon, Aristotle, and the moral political theory of the Middle Ages.Secondly, the author analyzes the evolution logic of virtue political theory:.According to the political theory of virtue, the gods created man and nature and the development of man and nature should obey the will of the gods. Because the gods are good, those who are created by God must be good, which is human nature is good. Because human nature is good, we have reason to believe that as long as in political life and give full play to the good of humanity, mankind is likely to create a good political order. However, it is difficult for us to resist the proliferation of sexual passion, and if there is no external force of the intervention, people will eventually go to evil. In order to avoid people going to evil, we must introduce a kind of external authority and coercive power.The external authority is a country, which advocated theocracy. Countries in a mandatory way to intervene in the political life of citizens, the state, higher than the individual represents the good and justice; the individual,a kind of negative power, advocated nationalism and collectivism.On this basis, this chapter expounds the historical limitations of virtue politics: Virtue politics is possible because the ancient society provides the appropriate cultural soil and social context for virtue politics. The social and cultural context of virtue politics is that there is no differentiation in the field of human knowledge and the knowledge of nature and science is in a state of chaos; there is a unified and unique religion or universal religious belief, which is the only source of morality. The state and the government have the ability to monopoly the right to speak in the name of religion or universal religion; it is legal for the state to intervene in the moral by the public power.In modern society, the reason why the virtue politics is not possible is that the social and cultural context and the premise of virtue politics have been completely overturned: The field of human knowledge has been divided into three fields of science, morality and aesthetics and There is persistent tension and conflict between science and morality; Due to the openness of the modern society, a society has not been possible to maintain a single religious or universal religious belief.; Due to the mobility of the modern information system, the state and the government have not been able to have the right to the moral discourse in the name of religion or universal religion; In a democratic country, it is considered illegal to take public power to intervene the moral.The emergence of utilitarian politics comes from the arrival of modernity. It is due to the arrival of modernity; human culture has increasingly been divided into three areas of science, ethics and aesthetics, and causes the conflict between science and morality. The conflict eventually led to the victory of scientism. According to scientific positivism, the political ideal of human being is always perfect and optimistic, but the reality of politics is often cruel and pessimistic. It is based on a kind of political reality and the human nature of pessimism, utilitarian politics thought that human nature is evil, which is the basic assumption and premise of the utility of politics to human nature.Since the human nature is evil, the country which is composed of people also must be evil. If we believe the country is evil, so virtue advocated by the national political leadership of its citizens to achieve a good political ideal is impossible. In addition, if the state is evil, it is very dangerous for an evil country using public power to intervene in the moral life of citizens. Therefore, the utilitarian political thought the state cannot interfere with the public power of the moral life of citizens, which is the implementation of the separation of church and state. Because the utilitarian political views of secularism, the state not to interfere in moral matters, the state no longer lead its citizens to pursue a perfect morality, but merely create a stable social environment and the increasingly abundant material conditions, which let people live a happy life. This political goal, which the modern state has pointed to, is"the greatest happiness of most people" hold by the utilitarian?It is based on the distrust on the country, utilitarian political ideas advocates use various means to constrain the country's evil. It opposes nationalism and collectivism, but advocates individualism and personal freedom.On this basis, this chapter expounds the historical limitations of the utilitarian politics:The emergence of the utility of politics comes from a kind of modernity, the symbol of which is the comprehensive victory and substitution of scientific positivism to religious theology and metaphysics. It is undoubtedly a kind of historical progress for scientism to overcome religious theology. However, it is not perfect to its own. Modern science can create good material conditions for human beings, and then realize "the largest majority of the greatest happiness" advocated by the utilitarianism. However, happiness and joy this scientism do bring us, its essence is a kind of utilitarian happiness rather than virtue happiness. If human politics takes matter and utility as the goal, it will inevitably lead to the loss of the political ideal.In addition, because the modern politics adhere to the separation of church and state, this will lead to the collapse of classical moral building and bring the human moral relativism to us. Moral nihilism is the extreme form. Once people lose the moral and spiritual pursuit, people lose the purpose of existence, which only being a tool of existence, this is what Marx called alienation, and the western Marx doctrine called it materialization.The fourth chapter mainly discusses the dialogue and reconciliation between virtue and utility. In the first part of this chapter, the author criticizes two kinds of political views and historical views that are historical progress doctrine and historical conservatism. In this chapter, we point out that the utility of politics is the main path of the postmodern social and political development. In the postmodern society, although the human material production has become increasingly rich, so far, the greatest happiness of the majority of the utilitarian goal has not been achieved. In this context, a kind of Aristotle's virtue life---a kind of contemplation of the spiritual life--- is still the luxury only the social elite can achieve. In postmodern society, scientism and rationalism is still the spirit and value of a universal. Utilitarian political and scientism are highly fit, but virtue politics is the opposite.On the basis of this, this chapter advocates the reconciliation between morality and utility. Utilitarian politics is the main path of postmodern social and political development. It does not mean that utility is the only path to the development of postmodern society and politics. Utilitarian politics is content with a minimum of political goals-the greatest happiness of most people. This happiness is a kind of joy which can be understood as material happiness. That is to say, the utility of politics unilaterally emphasizes the material needs of mankind, but ignores the spiritual needs of human beings. This is the limit of the utility of politics-----building a country of "pig". If we hope to overcome this limitation, human politics will need to return to the virtue tradition, and finally realize the reconciliation between virtue and utility.The fifth chapter mainly elaborates the morality and politics in the context of China. The author, from two dimensions of virtue and utility, analyzes the Communist Party of China's political party ethics and points out that Chinese Communist Party Ethics finally should tend to the moderatism ethics. Secondly, the author analyzes the contemporary China's politics of happiness based on the view of virtue and utilitarianism. Finally, this chapter points out that the essence of the people's politics is a kind of virtue politics, but the people oriented politics is a kind of utility, and the future of Chinese politics should be the combination of the two.