The Internal Practice Of The Moral And Rational Cognition - The Moral Education Of Confucius And Socrates Compared

As a basic means of spiritual civilization transmission from one generation to the next, morality education is always the important subject-matter concerned by the society and explored by scholars. The two greatest philosophers in the civilization history of the East and West, Confucius and Socrates, devoted their whole life to the morality construction. They regarded the morality education as the foundation of teaching people and ruling the country, and they respectively formed morality education methodological system. Until today, these ideas still has profound cogency, and today抯 morality education can learn much from them. Basing on the reality of our country抯 morality education, the author of this thesis analyzes and studies the morality education methods of Confucius and Socrates, explores their value in today抯 world and thus contributes some ideas to the morality construction for the next century.After studying the materials from Confucius and Socrates, the author thinks that the character of these two people抯 morality education methods is that Confucius stressed the formation of morality lay in the inner practice of the subjects; whereas Socrates emphasized to improve the subjects?reasoned cognition of their morality. Centering round this, this study mainly explores the following questions as the similarity and difference of their morality education methods and their influence to the later generations. Through the above analysis, the author thinks that these two people抯 ideas have the following advantageous enlightenment to the modern morality education: 1. Moral construction of the subjects should be emphasized. 2. The morality education methods to develop individual moral cognitive ability should be created. 3. The flexible and various morality education forms should be developed. 4. The practical principle of morality education should be stuck to.Concerning research methodology, the author firstly takes the comparative methodology. In the process of using this method, the author attaches great importance to master the special environment of cultural globalization, especially consider the morality education ideas of Confucius and Socrates in the conflict and merging of eastern and western morality education. It can be said in some sense that this study carries on the detailed comparative analysis and explanation of eastern and western culture, taking the morality education methods of Confucius and Socrates as a case. The second research methodology is adopting literature review. One of the evidence of this argument is the related works of his students, and the other is the research material of the later researchers. Besides making use of the basic theories of thinking and political education, the author pays attention to absorb the relative theories and methods for analysis and study, such as pedagogy, ethics, Chinese and foreign thought history and philosophical history.