Hazards And Beyond, Of The University Of Moral Utilitarianism

Influenced by traditional culture, social environment and education itself, college moral education has an increasingly strong tendency of utility. Utility in moral education refers to people's overemphasis of moral education as a tool for meeting the requirement of social development, in fact, the function of moral education is put to such an extreme that its ontic functions as individual development and mental enjoyment have been shielded. Compared with those previous traditionalteaching patterns-political ethics, criteria ethics and the theory of a bag virtues, the presentemphasis of utility energized college moral education greatly. However, the intentionally or unintentionally extreme emphasis of utility is out of harmony with the original goal of moral education.In order to assure college moral education to function in a benign way and maximize its efficiency, this thesis analyzes the phenomena, harm and reasons of utility, and then puts forward corresponding measures so as to contribute some to the present moral education theory, practice, reform and optimization. The whole thesis consists of four parts:Part one expounds the practice of utility in moral education. Utility in ethic education on one hand revives students' sense of values as individuals, on the other hand, causes them to strive for their own benefits. At present time, utility in moral education lies in the following aspects: focusing on the function of "serving society multidirectionally", neglecting its individual function; intensifying its nature of negative adjustment, disregarding its transcendent nature; stressing its social role, lacking training of "caring others"; and cognitive orientation monopolizing the process of moral education.Part two analyzes the harm of utility. Moral education is a kind of spiritual activity, utilitarian education results in people's deterioration of morals. The harm may be summarized in the following aspects: 1. the lower effect and efficiency of moral education. Specially, it reflects in the loss of credit, lack of validation, and downward status. 2. the lost sense of value in moral education. College moral education overemphasizes its value as a social tool, so much so that the sense of value as molding ethic viewpoints, developing satisfactory personality, and improving people's moral life has been lost. 3. nonentity of subjects in moral education. Loss of sense of value misleads moral education, as a result of which focuses on teaching and training utility. 4. college students' worldly values. The nature and imperfect development of market economy make people short-sighted and utilitarian, which influence college students to have worldly and utilitarian values.Part three anatomizes the deep root of utility in moral education. First of all, the utilitarian nature of social environment constitutes the basis of utility in moral education. Secondly, traditional culture characterized with utility provides historical background for moral education. Thirdly, utilitarian ethics verifies utility in moral education. Finally, utility in education leads to utility in moral education. Moreover, people's cognition of standardization of ethics strengthens utility in moraleducation. Criteria ethics defines morality as "the sum of criteria regulating people's conduct",rules and social restriction are regarded as the basic characteristics of morality, attaching too much importance to its function of social control, heteronomy and restriction, neglecting individuality and subjectivity of morality.Part four redefines "utility" in college moral education, and. put forwards some countermeasures. First of all, a thorough grasp of college education is a precondition to transcend utility in moral education. Utility and transcendent utility are two aspects of morality, which should not give prominence to one by denying the other. This thesis holds that teaching transcendent utility should be the main goal of college education as well as moral education, and then puts forward some measures: the goal of moral education should be based...