Heidegger And The Turning Of Modern Westen Ethics

This article inquiries the two turnings of modern western ethics from analyzing Heidegger's philosophy. One of the two major reasons is the two turnings of modern western ethics influenced greatly on western moral conception and ethical action, which deserve pondering deeply. The other is Heidegger who was in the conjunction of the two turnings affected them greatly. Therefore, we should arrange and excavate his theory.In his early stage, Heidegger carried on Kierkegaard's and Nietzsche's critique on traditional ethics. According to his ontology of phenomenology, Heidegger pointed out it separated itself from the life world and deviated human authentic existence. His many theories, such as the existence-priority, the guilty-being, the finite-human-life and the existence-mood, performed the function of deconstructing traditional philosophy and ethics, and influenced greatly on many existentialists and post-modernists, such as Sartre and Derrida. These theories promoted strongly the first turning of modern western ethics, which had the characteristic of morality-relativism, morality-non-rationalism and morality-nihilism.After the turning of his philosophy, Heidegger dedicated himself to rectify the morality-nihilism and reconstruct new values by criticizing humanism drastically and expecting poetical existence eagerly. These theories inspired many thinkers such as J.Haberrnas, H.Arendt, R.Rorty to reconstruct modern moral philosophy. His critique of technology and the advocating of the Fourfold also promoted the development in the ethics of environment and the ethics of science and technology, the second turning of modern western ethics is emerging obviously.The significance of Heidegger's philosophy on ethics is his affirmation and pursuit of life world, human authentic existence and...