Rationality And Feelings

This thesis aims at a comparative research on the ethics between Socrates?and Confucius? Their different ethical thoughts originated from different historical backgrounds. Rationality and feelings, being the basic forms of man's exsistance, were emphasized at different degrees in their ethics. irtue is knowledge?covered main points of Socrates?ethics, in which rationality was considered as an ultimate reason of virtue, while feelings as a direct cause of vice, demonstrating a distinct trait of worshiping rationality and devaluing feelings, which initiated the rationalism ethics in the West.In the ethics of Confucius? enevolence?was an essential and leading concept that was based on ilial piety in which the importance of the blood ties played a key role, showing a striking tendency of attaching more attention to blood than to rationality . This feature promoted a start of Chinese ethics with a dominating spirit of feelings.The developments of the Western and Chinese ethics covered different courses after Socrates and Confucius, with different consequences. The overgrowth of rationality in the Western ethics resulted in the conflicts between rationality and irrationality, while over-enlightening on purifing feelings in Confucian ethics and the neglect of rationality brought about the twisting of feelings and lack of rationality.The thesis ends with an analysis of contemporary ethical state in China and some inspirations for ethical construction from an angle of rationality and feelings.