On Return To Normative Ethics

Since the beginning of the20th century, the meta-ethics has become the mainstream of the Western ethics study. Based on tight scientific logics, the meta-ethics analyzes the language of morals in the perspective of logics or semantics, thereby determines its usage. But because of that meta-ethics cannot solve the western moral crisis and is incapable of dealing practical problems, people lost in moral dilemma call on the return to virtue ethics and regain the normative ethics. In1960s, the normative ethics which was neglected once again becomes the mainstream ethics school. The normative ethics is mainly build up by Rawls and Macintyre and it has bold claims on the social justice and the construction of rationality, the realization of individual rights and values and many other aspects. It opens up a new situation in the fields of politic ethics, virtue ethics and applied ethics.In the process of Chinese society transformation and modernization, we are faced with the same crisis of survival mode existed since the Western industrialization and the ethic dilemma and moral challenge brought by it. That how to deal with those many problems properly is a question which is worth thinking seriously in the fast development of technology and economy. This essay uses the return to the normative ethics in the20th century as a breakthrough point to review the development, features and impacts of modern normative ethics. Its study also comes to the reality in China and tries to find out a new thinking perspective for people in ethics dilemmas.