The Comparative Study Of Confucius And Plato's Theory Of Social Ideals As The Field Of Ethics

Since China's modern history, the East-West culture clash and fusion is the Western and Asian scholars, in particular a hot issue for the study of Chinese scholars, while the East-West cultural conflict and integration, to a large extent is the ideal of social conflict and identity problems, so social issues in recent years has become a hot topic of philosophy. As a cultural comparison, we compare the Axial Age sages Confucius and Plato's two theories of the social ideal, from the perspective of ethics compare similarities and differences between Eastern and Western social ideals, for our development in today's society there are still a lot of inspiration.The social ideal is in a particular background, based on ideological predecessors and based on the community's future ahead of human understanding and the concept of construction. It is not only the result of knowledge, or the value of construction and evaluation of scale, it is a category of practice. Social ideal is the ideal future society of political, economic, ethical fashion and design argument, itself contains a good description of the relationship between ethics and expression, therefore, the ideal society is in Ethics Study.Social ideals'social and historical background of Confucius and Plato put forward is the disintegration of the old order while a new order not yet established. In the cultural heritage, the Wu Zhou revolution is an ethical revolution instead of political revolution, that is, all the political revolution and social revolution comes down to the ruler's personal morality. All this has made Confucian social ideal based on ethics of the whole nation, to restore "Zhou" as the ultimate goal. Plato faced with the decline of city-state system, he wants to build an ideal city-state, so city-state system, democratic institutions, as well as the Spartan city-state long-term implementation of the communist regime gave Plato's ideal state inspiration.Confucian social ideal is to create a society ruled by etiquette. Confucius live his whole life for the restoration of "Zhou" and run around, trying to achieve a society like Yao, Shun and Yu times as saints rule, the country's social courtesy. In order to achieve this kind of social ideal, Confucius make "rites" as the entity and "benevolence" as the core spirit while the "rectification of names" as a means and tireless pursuit it for a lifetime. Plato's social ideal is to create a country of justice of "catharsis". The perfection of justice in this country is a perfection of the city combined with the perfection of the individual. Plato through good public education, the communist system, training of Philosophy, etc, wanted to achieve his utopia.Compare the Confucius and Plato's social ideals, they get similarities: both based on individual differences in moral development stage and so the ideal society is divided into two stages; both have strongly advocated the establishment of a community of everyone is virtuous and Things for the People;at the same time, this society is divided by the different hierarchy of society based on the moral realm of the individual; there are still two essential differences: the requirements of the ruler, Confucius emphasized the "rule of man"is a virtue, Plato emphasized the" rule of man "is a wise rule; different social basis of an ideal society, China is a family oriented community, Community of Western society; the rule of an ideal society in different ways, the Chinese human society, the West isrational society, ultimately leading to the West in the history of "Etiquette," tradition and "legal" traditionThe comparison of the effects on Confucius and Plato's social ideal: each affects the social ideal model of East and West's the basic trend; in political ethics, the Confucius laid the later China's "deities", run the country with morality, sage ruling ideology, and Plato's idea of justice has always been one of the core themes of Western political ethics; in economic ethics, the Confucian "average" ideal for China strengthen the peasant economy, in modern times which even also made the effective capital intension failed, preventing the birth of capitalism while Plato's emphasis on rationality, and thus promote the Western rationalism, rationalism has a lot effects to the birth of modern Western capitalism.Confucian social ideal affects China two thousand years, creates a human community in China, the core of which is virtue, and an ethic-based society with family as the center, and a country community which is ruled by etiquette. Plato undertook Socrates' thoughts and opened the thoughts of Aristotle, has created the traditional theory of knowledge for two thousand years, which eventually led to the Western legal traditions.Culture is the crystallization of wisdom of all mankind, it should be for all services. Social ideal, as the common goal of all mankind, whether it is made by oriental philosophers, or the Western philosophers, it can offer us helps today, and thereby achieve the ideal state of human society really.