The Study On Contemporary Western Thoughts Of Caring Ethics

As a theory that emphasizes the unique moral experience of women and pays close attention to the love relationship,love and love between people,the ethics of care has increasingly shown the transcending significance of women's liberation movement and women's problems themselves,representing the new trend of contemporary human morality and ethics development,which has aroused great concern in international ethics.This paper plans to trace the origin of the western caring ethics,put forward the background,theoretical origin,formation and development process of in-depth research,trying to do a classification and an analysis of western caring ethics thoughts,a systematic analysis and theory construction on the ethics of care about feminism and emotional virtue ethics theory.On this basis,the paper tries to make a fair and correct evaluation of the theoretical gain and loss of the ethics of care.The ethics of care is the typical theoretical form of contemporary western caring ethics thoughts,so this paper takes the ethics of care as the main research object to elaborate and evaluate contemporary western caring ethics thoughts.In addition to the introduction,this paper is divided into four chapters.The first chapter mainly discusses the background and thought resources of contemporary western caring ethics.The formation of contemporary western caring ethics has a complex background.The ethics of care is the product of feminist movement.It can be said that the rise and development of feminist movement gave birth to the ethics of care.The ethics of care is usually regarded as a branch or a school of modern moral ethics.The revival of western moral ethics in the1950 s not only laid a theoretical foundation for the emergence of the ethics of care,but also provided a macroscopic background.The development of female psychology theory and gender theory is also an important historical background for the emergence of the ethics of care.Although the ethics of care came into being in the 1980 s,its thought has a long history and abundant theoretical resources.In ancient Greece and Rome,Socrates,Plato,Aristotle and Epicurus made in-depth studies of love and fraternity.Cicero also wrote about friendship.Christianity is known as the “religion of love”,the godfather philosopher Augustine clearly regards “love” as one of the three Christian theological virtue,and regards it as one of the most important theological virtue to be honored.Thomas Aquinas highlights the theological virtue the moral meaning of“love”,turns them into “benevolence”,and the system of the theological virtue.Although the modern West was in an era of rationalism,there were also a number of thinkers concerned about emotional problems.In Britain,the school of moral emotionalism,which still has an important influence on western ethics,has put forward Shaftesbury's moral sense,Hutchison's theory of benevolence,Butler's theory of conscience,Hume's emotionalism and Adam Smith's theory of moral sentiment.In addition,French Rousseau also actively explored the emotional basis of morality.There are also many thoughts related to the ethics of care in modern and contemporary Western countries,such as Beauvoir's and Sartre's existentialist view of humanity,Scheele's thought of “human love”,Derrida's deconstruction,Maslow's humanistic psychology,moral development theory and so on.All these ideas laid the foundation for the formation and development of contemporary Western the ethics of care and provided inspiration and nourishment.The second chapter focuses on the formation and evolution of contemporary western care ethics.It is generally believed that In a Different Voice:Psychological Theory and Women's Development,published by American moral psychologist Carol Gilligan in 1982,is the symbol of the emergence of the ethics of care.After decades of development,the ethics of care has obtained an increasingly perfect theoretical form and deep academic foundation.In the process of the formation of the ethics of care,New Zealand-born American ethicist Arett Beyer made an important contribution.She emphatically criticized the “moral bias” existing in academic and social life since ancient times,and clearly proposed the ethical theory that women want.Nodding,an American ethicist,is the master of the ethics of care.She systematically expounds a series of basic issues of the ethics of care,such as why care ethics is needed,what is care,and the relationship between care and ethics,happiness,education,so as to complete the theoretical construction of the ethics of care.At the turn of the century,the American ethicist Michael was from attention to the problems of general character to in-depth discussion to the problems of love,with the greatest contribution of providing the ethics of care moral psychology,establishing modern emotionalism ethics system that is on the basis of carrying forward the modern British emotionalism.In the process of the development of the ethics of care,Tronto's “beyond gender” caring ethics thought,Salaradic's “maternal thinking” on caring ethics,Held's “practice” exploration on caring ethics also made certain contributions to the development of contemporary western caring ethics thought.The third chapter mainly summarizes and analyzes the main issues and viewpoints of contemporary Western care ethicists,trying to construct the contemporary Western the ethics of care from an overall basis.This paper argues that contemporary western care ethicists mainly focus on the following six issues:first,the meaning and types of care.Contemporary western care ethicists have studied and discussed the meaning and characteristics of care,natural care and ethical care,and the philosophical basis of care.The second is a caring relationship.Contemporary western caring ethicists have deeply revealed the nature of caring ethics,the caring person,the caring person,and the characteristics of caring relationship.The third is the relationship between caring ethics and justice.The relationship between caring ethics and justice is an issue that contemporary western caring ethicists attach great importance to.Held and Slote have made outstanding contributions to this issue,and other ethicists have also made some research achievements on this issue.The fourth is the relationship between care and morality.When Gilligan regarded caring as a virtue,he actually linked caring and morality.Later,Nodding discussed the relationship between caring and morality in a broader scope,and Slote discussed the relationship between the two based on empathy,thus greatly deepening the research on this issue.The fifth one is the relationship between caring ethics and education.In the contemporary western care ethics,Noddings was the first to advocate the implementation of caring ethics in education,and wrote books on caring ethics education,which not only highlighted the relationship between caring ethics and moral education,but also had a wide social impact.Slote discusses the relationship between caring and moral education based on empathy,deepening the research on the relationship between the two.The sixth one is the psychological basis of caring ethics.On this issue,contemporary western care ethicists have experienced a process from sympathy to empathy and then mutual empathy.Slote first rooted care in empathy and made a lot of in-depth discussions,which laid a solid psychological foundation for contemporary western the ethics of care.The fourth chapter evaluates the contemporary western caring ethics of thoughts.The contemporary western caring ethics of thoughts has made important contributions to the development of ethics: first,it surpasses the traditional ethics;second,it pushes the modern philosophy of moral emotion(semantic analysis and psychological description)from division to unification;thirdly,it promotes the academic dialogue of contemporary Chinese and Western moral emotion philosophy.The contemporary western ethical thought of caring has many aspects of value.It corrects the bias of the previous ethics,arouses the human attention to female virtue,enriches and deepens the research content of ethics,and provides ethical theoretical basis for renewing the concept of moral education.There are also some limitations and problems in contemporary western care ethics,such as empathy as the basis of care,emotion,the relationship between care and justice,and the moral origin of caring ethics.The contemporary western caring ethics of thoughts has a certain enlightenment and reference significance,which can help us correctly understand the law of individual development,establish harmonious interpersonal relationship,and promote the development of human individual morality more perfect.It also has a lot of enlightenment and reference significance for the study of ethics and the construction of civic morality in our country today.By strengthening the cultivation of empathy and care ability for our teenagers,we can improve the moral level of citizens as a whole.Contemporary western caring ethics can promote people to recognize the value of female ethics and regard these virtue with female characteristics as the excellent qualities of human beings.Today,carrying forward these excellent qualities is of great theoretical and practical significance for the elimination of gender discrimination in the society culturally and for the liberation of women with world significance.