On The Civic Consciousness Of Political Ethics

No matter how we interpret contemporary China, the fact of her moving towards civil society has already formed the social scenes of our theoretical and practical research .The flattening world has put the growth of Chinese citizens into a broader macro background, the gradual deepening process of modernization in the market-oriented way has been preparing the most fundamental and important systematic supply for the birth of Chinese civic consciousness. To cultivate the Chinese civic consciousness, both the change of the spiritual values and the appeals of civil ethics caused by social transformation have been providing a full cultural nourishment. Based on the above reasons, scholars in each subject are very interested in civic consciousness and have carried out fruitful research.Positive results will be drawn out from studying civic consciousness in the field of Political Ethics, say, Citizens'ethic characteristics would be much easier to analyze, and ethics-related problems we encountered during the formation of civic consciousness would be also, much easier to solve. As a kind of ideology, the essential part of civic consciousness is citizens'understanding of the individual relationship between their country and themselves. This paper will be focusing on civic consciousness in two major areas, Liberalism and Republicanism. Liberalism, as we all know, is a theory based on individual value, so it attaches great importance to rights and freedom. On the other hand, Republicanism itself has both eyes on group value, and common good. Their differences in value orientations and logical methodologies generate obvious distinctions on the formation of civic consciousness.Bringing it directly into China and applying it on everything would cause a lot of problems considering the situation here in China, no matter it is Liberalism or Republicanism. With the support of John Rawls's Reflective Equilibrium, the writer started from Wirklichen Individuen and tried to merge the civic consciousness of these two, then he constructed civic consciousness ethically. Balancing rights and responsibilities, Public participation and Negotiations, these three together form the ethical sequence of civic consciousness. In order to achieve a civic consciousness with Chinese characteristics, we need to look at the absence and misplacement in civic consciousness related problems, deal with those problems from the whole civic life system, including citizenship education, civil culture and civic practices, cultivate a mature, rational modern citizen theoretically and practically,will become the contemporary issue and the historical mission of modern China keeps harmony.