Chapter 16 The Insufficiency of China's National Ethical Resources

The political-economic structural changes in the Chinese-speaking world in the past fifteen years have brought about a new scene in the Chinese-speaking intellectual circles. Among them, the shortage of ethical resources, although less attention has been paid, is one of the fundamental changes. The ethical resources of ancient Chinese society were provided by scholar-bureaucrats. This kind of ethical resources of intellectuals is different from the ethical resources provided and maintained by priests in traditional European society. It emphasizes the meaning system and ethical order.What is also important is that this religious socialization and institutionalization mechanism of intellectuals is not implemented by an independent organizational system of religious orders, but by a combination with the country's bureaucratic group.With the abolition of the imperial examinations and the reform of the political system in the late Qing Dynasty, the real basis for the religious socialization and institutionalization of Confucian intellectuals was lost.In order to maintain the religious nature of traditional Confucian ideas, Confucian intellectuals must find a new basis for socialization.

one The construction of "ism" is a cultural concept system formed in the process of China's modernization to meet the requirements of the construction of a nation-state.The two cultural concepts of "ism" construction for obtaining social legal rights both contain elements of cultural nationalism and emphasize the special value concept of national culture, although this concept is influenced by universalism factors in the ideological system of Chinese Marxism to a certain extent. constraints.What is important is that what this restriction produces is still the religious nature of Confucianism and Marxism and its national ethical order.

When the two "isms" took over from Confucianism and became an institutional cultural religion, they continued the traditional combination of religious intellectuals and state bureaucracy, and made the group of religious intellectuals themselves divide into an independent class to a considerable extent. , already similar in nature to religious organizations.The major political parties with social legal power in modern China are not purely political parties, but patriarchal parties with religious commitments. They provide interpretations of the meaning of the world and life, stipulate the legitimacy of the national ethical order, and delineate the spiritual life of society. direction.In this way, party ethics will become national ethics.

The brief descriptive analysis above provides a framework for us to examine the changes in cultural and religious aspects of Chinese intellectual circles in the past fifteen years.Since the bearers of the religious nature of culture are intellectuals, I will mainly focus on the relationship between the changes of intellectual elites and the national ethical resources in the Chinese-speaking world. two The recent cultural reflection on the so-called rise of East Asia was initially positioned on the relationship between the East Asian modernization model and the traditional Asian ethical structure, in order to find the capitalist kinship factors in traditional ethics.This kind of questioning is proposed in the direction of Weber's modern study questioning.In my opinion, the actual construction process of East Asian modernity and its unformed form should be the design direction that deserves more attention.Correspondingly, Simmel and Scheler's modern studies are also noteworthy.The issue of East Asian modernity is still in an open state of history; the political, economic, social, and ideological changes in the Chinese-speaking world in the past fifteen years are quite floating in any field.If academic thinking does not understand the fluctuation of the social mechanism of East Asian modernity and the fluctuation of cultural concepts related to this fluctuation, it is impossible to grasp the problems of East Asian modernity.

three The contemporary change of national ethical resources in Chinese-speaking society involves structural changes in social ethics in the Chinese-speaking world.At present, whether in mainland China or Taiwan, the revival of popular folk religions and the long-suppressed advancement of Buddhism and Taoism into the field of cultural establishment show the institutionalized decline of the traditional dominant intellectual religion.The ability of the knowledge-based religion to suppress the folk religion and the religious group is weakened, and it is increasingly losing its socialization effect.

One of the important changes in the Chinese-speaking world in the past fifteen years is that the party ethics with social legal power has gradually declined in the process of modern economic-political transformation.With the decline of political party ethics in different degrees in various parts of China, the socialization and institutionalization mechanism of spiritual ethics can no longer be achieved by alliance with the political system, and the socialization mechanism of spiritual ethics is facing a crisis.This is the fundamental problem of the construction of national ethics in the contemporary Chinese world.

Four The historical investigation of modern sociology shows that there are two main socialization mechanisms of spiritual ethics: a. Organically integrate spiritual ethics into the grassroots of society through religious organizations that are differentiated to a considerable extent in society, and effectively integrate civil society The popular religious impulse of the country, such as the situation of Western Christianity and Eastern Christianity in history, the religious bearers of this culture are the clergy who have received rational education; b. Through the bureaucratic organization of the country, spiritual ethics are organically implanted The social grassroots, such as the Chinese Confucian scholar-bureaucrats in history, bear the cultural and religious characteristics of bureaucrats who have received Confucian imperial examination education.The typological feature of cultural religion is elite ethics: a small number of elites selected through institutionalized elite selection mechanisms determine the quality of culture and spirit.Elite ethics and mass ethics have always been in a structural tension.In the process of modernization, due to the structural changes in social mechanisms and the transformation of the advantages of class power, mass ethics has always maintained an unabated trend of subverting elite ethics.In China, "ism" religion, as the construction of political party ethics, actually expresses the social appeal to balance the conflict between elite ethics and mass ethics that has appeared in crisis as much as possible, so as to restrain the elite ethics of Confucianism after losing the socialization mechanism. The disorder of national ethics that emerged.

Fives The problem so far is: once the elite ethics loses its alliance with the state regime, and at the same time it does not have a social religious organization as the basis for rebuilding its socialization mechanism (the elite ethics of modern Confucianism is in such a situation), its fate seems to be There are only two choices: elite ethics can either develop towards pure individualization, and then gradually lose its function of socialization, ceding the control over social ethics to mass ethics; Get closer and reduce the so-called "superior" moral connotation in yourself. In this way, the formation of bearers of elite ethics is a phenomenon worthy of attention.First of all, what is worth noting is not the individual aspect of the bearer of cultural religiousness, but the social mechanism that sustains the formation of the bearer class.

The social mechanism for the self-sustainment of the intellectual class of cultural religious elites is the humanities and research institutions of institutions of higher learning. The political party ethics of "ism" religion have weakened the control of university education to varying degrees, and various modernist trends of thought have re-emerged into colleges and universities.At present, in the Chinese intellectual circles, although the various dominant ideas are guaranteed by the institutional system of universities and research institutions, the socialization mechanism is quite fragile.

six In the past 15 years, a new regional structure has emerged in universities and research institutions, which serve as the nurturing mechanism for the Chinese intelligentsia: in addition to the mainland and Taiwan, the two main areas of the Chinese intellectual circle, the Chinese intellectual circle in Hong Kong has become increasingly active. A considerable number of intellectuals studying in North America from mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong have gradually gathered into a new cultural elite group of religious intellectuals.Because the political-economic-social organisms in these four different regions are different in varying degrees, and the university system is subject to the regulations of their respective social-cultural organisms, although the influence of flow factors cannot be ignored, ethical resources will increasingly show differences. construct intention.

If the elite ethics in ancient China were of the intellectual human type, or if the dominant religion in ancient China was of the cultural type rather than of the priest-religion type, then from the current situation, after the decline of political party ethics, the Chinese-speaking world National ethical resources will be further shortfall.Although priest-religion religions (especially Buddhism) have increasingly participated in the construction of social ethics, they are still not enough to balance the stretching power of folk ethics. If elite ethics want to maintain their own existence and rebuild the socialization mechanism as much as possible, it seems that they can only stick to and maintain the humanities field of the university. However, even this field is facing the dilemma of being reduced. Mass ethics is forming a new style (such as qigong teaching ethics).The elite ethics is declining, but the ethics of popular intellectuals is expanding through popular culture, which can also be regarded as one of the new styles of popular ethics.The ebb and flow of various ethical styles is one of the problems of East Asian modernity: What changes have taken place in the elite temperament and experience structure of the Chinese-speaking world today, and what is the reconstruction of the ethical structure?Due to the differences in different social organisms in the Chinese-speaking world (mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, and North American Chinese communities), it is difficult to conduct a general analysis. Hong Kong in 1994