Since early the 1980s Feminist philosophers started to put up the value of care on agenda in study of ethics, investigating issues of valuing care as a balance of justice. A book came up as The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global in 2006, written by Virginia Held (VH). She called her balancing approach as “fairer caring” and caring justice”. These two terms show the essence of VH’s analysis of notions of care and justice: meshing them together as inseparable but emphasizing care as a wider framework into which justice should be fitted. Hence, care should be the priority in a more comprehensive moral theory, the ethics of care (EC). I will interpret VH’s thoughts and arguments of EC as priority and how justice and care integrated for each other and why EC will work out a better wayregarding many ethical issues. Finally, I will compare VH’s EC with Confucian ethical idea of reciprocity as the golden rule of Confucianism, and evaluate the difference between the two and strengths of each.

By analyzing various models of moral behavior, I wanted to show that humanity does not have any universal moral feeling. The positive and negative emotions I have described appear in concrete situations in various ways. The dominant role goes to negative emotions provoked in response to possible or real violations ofmoral demands. This, by the way, explains the fact that most well-known moral rules have a negative character (don't lie, don't use others solely as a means to your own ends, don't commit adultery, and so on). The positive motivations are mainly represented in situations where shared values influence the process of satisfying highly developed human needs. Traditional approaches to ethics (especially Immanuel Kant's) stressed the separation of moral motives from other socially and naturally caused behavioral stimuli that finally obstruct possibility to explain positive moral motivation. So in order to understand the role of positive motivation in moral we need a new methodology. The basis of this new methodology has to be a complementary principle which allows us to show how differentmotivations can be combined under one nature without mutually suppressing each other.

This paper presents an interpretation of the paradoxical decision of Abraham done by Søren A. Kierkegaard in his work Fear and Trembling as an ethics of silence. The main idea is to understand ethics not as moral standards or specific duties, but as the responsibility of becoming a single individual in time; singularity as the intimate and personal relationship with the calling of love. In such a way, that silence is the experience of the encounter with the paradox that being human means to be singular in conditions that claim an universal and general transparent manifestation dependent of the dominant rational discourse.Then, silence becomes the fundamental ethical claim to become a human person, as spirit in time, where it becomes a time of trial and examination, a temporality, where the trial is the fidelity to love’s calling, the listening of the possibilities that are presented by the anxiety of the decision. These possibilities are not immanent to the world or to history, they call for a personal choice, always containing a space of revelation; therefore of listening to the interiority of the personal choice that for Kierkegaard is the passion of faith, communicated and lived in silence. Concluding that an ethics of silence by the image of Abraham implies to re-think the role of philosophy in relationship to faith, hope and love in time, as a silent thought.

The use of Kant’s universalizability principle as a method of determining the warrantability of an ethical claim has two fundamental flaws. On the one hand, it renders the universalizing moralizer mute in the face of fanaticism, and, on the other, it too easily dissolves into irrational rule worship. In the face of such flaws,many have argued that this “rational” approach to ethics ought to be abandoned in favor of fanning the flames of sentiment. Such a proposal suggests that we have trapped ourselves into a false dilemma. While there is no doubt that the employment of the universalizability principle is more “reflective” than simply following what springs from the heart, nonetheless, it is no where near the pinnacle of rationality to which we can aspire. Ethicists, like their natural and social scientific colleagues, can adopt a form of scientific ethicism that demands that the legitimacy of any ethical claim depends upon the degree to which the reasons that back it are subjected to the formal demands of both local and global sufficiency, and as well, that the legitimacy of the entire procedure survive scrutiny in a public forum of objective inquirers. Paradoxically, since this process is inter- rather than intra-subjective, and since the surviving claims will be maximally unbiased, the widespread adoption of scientific ethicism has the potential to proportionally expand “the circle of we”—which is precisely what critics of rationality, who advocate non-rational sentiment expansion, would have us do.

This paper aims at proposing a criterion to analyze the concept of subjectivity by surveying and classifying the theories of some major figures in the history of the western philosophy: Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hobbes, Bentham, Kant, and Hegel. As proceeding in this work, I reveal two approaches which confront each other, self-centered viewpoint and system-centered viewpoint, and arrange Descartes, Hobbes, and Bentham into the former, and Aristotle and Kant into the latter. Also, I assign Plato and Hegel to an alternative, say, unified viewpoint. In this project, the subjectivity is defined as the fundamental status of a man. When dealing with it, two kinds of viewpoint present and distinguish themselves from each other by two factors as follows: one is whether or not it allows mediation with others to be involved in the configuration of subjectivity, and the other is whether it is determined by its formal features or by its contents. The self-centered viewpoint gets married with the no allowance of mediation and the contents-determining, and the system-centered one does with the allowance and theformality-determining. And the unified viewpoint is suggested as an overcoming account of those two. The significance of this attempt would be these three: one is that it can provide a clue to create new spectrum through which theories in the history of the philosophy are looked out over. Secondly, it can be groundwork to seek for a source of normative ethics by a way of re-determining personal identity. Finally, criticizing the self-centered viewpoint, a dominant account in present moral discourse, it can propose a footstone for an alternative theory of it.

Even for one, individual, singular person, there are potential problelms with Utilitarianism. We must decide whether we go for pleasure, or try to avoid pain. Many other options are available. In addition to maximizing pleasure, we must also think of what the probabilistic likelihood to getting what we want. When weunderstand the problems, we also face the problem of making transitive decisions. Problems with Intransitive decisions take us out of Utilitarian theory. When we add additional people, the problems are still there, but are now elevated. We see there are exact contradictions, and when we add the problems of evaluating,utilitarianism is more difficult than we had expected. Even Jeremy Bentham’s approach leaves us with problems that cut every way in different directions. This is only a start for Utilitarianism.

Active reciprocity is a process of human harmonious development, which is based on reciprocity. Reciprocity is the result of trichotomy and the expression of golden mean; Active reciprocity is the expression of active golden mean, which discards the passive part of reciprocity. Active reciprocity is a form of rational collectivism which, generally speaking, has two rules for individual communication behavior, namely mutually benefiting and mutually tolerating. It also has three rules for individual behavior, namely benefiting the others without harming oneself, benefiting both oneself and others, benefiting oneself without harming others. It has, through norms, incorporated values and ideas such as fairness, reason, democracy, philanthropism, freedom, harmony, as well as right, responsibility, respect, tolerance, trust, sustainable development. However, it has to be pointed out that active reciprocity should oriented towards altruism, with the minimum requirement of doing no harm to others. Otherwise it will result in moral relativism.

This paper describes the relation between the surpassing and ethics. It first describes how we re-think the surpassing. We divide it into a non-reflective and a reflective level. Next we link it to ethics. The point we want to make is that in order for something to be ethical it needs a surpassing element. Yet not all surpassing elements lead to ethics. Therefore, we will first delineate the surpassing.

The key issue of traditional theories of human nature in China is De or virtue, Yu or desire and their correlation. It leads to two developing currents: one is the old tradition since Xia, Shang and Zhou, the Three Dynasties which take desire as nature, another is the new tradition later Confucius initiated which take virtue as nature. So the understanding of human nature in early China experienced a process from desire to virtue, or from the instinct of human to the essence of human. Prior to Confucius, nature is desire and instinct. In that time, the theories of human nature has two themes, namely to manage nature by virtue and to explain nature by Qi. Since Lao Zi, virtue was taken as the inner essence of human. Later Confucius further to take virtue as nature directly, so completes the fundamental transformation of traditional theory of human nature. This is the source of the idea nature of reason and the origin of the theory nature is good. Zisi advocated “what Heaven has conferred is called the nature” to promote the new tradition, and named desire as “the inner”. The new excavated bamboo book Xing Zi Ming Chu not only developed the idea of “the inner” of Zisi, but also further to restore desire as nature, and constructed a unique system of outer moral apriorism for it. Shortly afterward, Mencius turns this trend and advocates none but the four beginnings is nature, desire only is impartment, therefore he develops the new tradition to extremes. Even though, before the period between Tang and Song dynasties, the mainstream of the theory of human nature in China was the oldtradition, and that the new tradition merely like a flash in the pan. In fact, the dualism of human nature in Song and Ming dynasties carried on the old tradition, and at the same time, succeeded the new tradition, and put them into a unified thought system.

The present paper aims to view three ways of thinking time by Emmanuel Levinas. We distinguish existential, historical, and eschatological time demonstrating how they are connected with his central notion of responsibility toward the Other. The following analysis reorders and interprets what Levinas has said in response of Martin Heidegger’s and Hegel’s position. The text does not make any other claims but aims to offer a possible reading and exegesis of Levinas’s philosophy and open a further discussion on these topics.

The author considers positions of evolutionary ethics from the point of interaction with defining ideas of " big science ", and also on a material of concrete ethical concepts. As a program principle the statement about a substantiation of moral principles as congenital biological structures is accepted. Based on concrete positions of works of D. Dennet and I. Merkulov, the author addresses to concept of rationality which "works" as one of the reasons both in evolutionary process and in development of culture. Appearance of special human models of behaviour during evolution can be presented as selection of some conditions focused on efficiency which in the world of culture gets valuable senses of mutual aid, cooperation, altruism.

Modern consequentialism is a very broad theory. Consequentialists can invoke a distribution sensitive theory of value to address the issues of distributive justice that bedeviled utilitarianism. They can attach intrinsic moral value to such acts truth-telling and promise-keeping and, so, acknowledge the essential moral significance of such acts in a way that classical utilitarianism could not. It can appear that there are no limits to consequentialism’s ability to respond to the criticisms against utilitarian theories by embracing a sophisticated theory of value. But there are limits. They are imposed by consequentialism’s commitment to ground considerations of rightness solely on considerations of goodness. Some consequentialists have attempted to incorporate elements of guilt and desert into the theory of value. This can be done, consistent with consequentialist scruples, only if these notions can be analyzed without appeal to deontic concepts such as right and wrong. I analyze the problem consequentialists face and suggest a way incorporate notions of guilt and desert in a theory of value without relying in any fundamental way on concepts of right and wrong action.

My aim in this paper is to illuminate the limitations of adopting thick ethical concepts to support the rationality of moral emotion. To this end, I shall first of all concentrate on whether emotions, especially moral emotions are thick concepts and can be analysed into both evaluative and descriptive components. Secondly,I shall examine Gibbard’s thesis that to judge an act wrong is to think guilt and anger warranted. I then raise the following question. If we identify moral considerations with anger in particular, it overly emphasizes one seemingly arbitrary emotion. In other words, I doubt whether ‘other’s anger’ can be the general concept corresponding to thick concepts such as courage or generosity. My doubt about the objectivity of Gibbard’s moral emotion depends on Bernard Williams’doubt about ethical objectivity in terms of a critical notice of the distinction between thick and thin ethical concepts. Finally, I shall pose a challenge to the distinction between thick and thin ethical concepts on the ground that it is not in fact a clear one. I shall argue that it is impossible clearly to classify various ethical concepts either as thick or thin. This is because, I shall argue, as Scheffler points out, “any division of ethical concepts into the two categories of the thick and the thin is itself a considerable oversimplication.” Indeed, I shall argue, our ethical vocabulary is tragically rich with an irreconcilable plurality of values. If my analysis is right, I argue Gibbard’s attempt to appeal to thick concepts to explain the rationality of moral emotion is open to question.

In this talk, Hume’s distinction between ‘is’ and ‘ought’ in the Treatise of Human Nature will be discussed. It will be argued that Hume accuses previous moral philosophers neither of committing a logical error in their reasoning, nor of falling short of a possible deduction of an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’ because of false assumptions. Rather, Hume argues that these philosophers have an incorrect notion of reason: By means of reason, we do not discover eternal moral truths, and also, reason does not motivate us. According to Hume, reason reveals only causal relations that exist between external facts and our emotions, which are facts as well. The ‘ought’ is located just in our emotions and not in the things which evoke the moral emotions inside us.

The advance of medical and biological science and technology has presented us with new ethical and legal issues. Is embryonic stem cell research morally justified and legally allowed? What moral status do embryos have? Who can be a morally appropriate user of In Vitro fertilization? Who can use donated sperm and/or egg? What is the scope of reproductive liberty?” What is the meaning of a family and that of reproduction? How far does our genetic intervention go?”Scientists, lawyers, and laymen are waiting for clear answers from philosophers. Unfortunately, philosophers have not seemed to give satisfactory answers to them. We may have various reasons. One of main reasons, however, seems to me that the above philosophical questions have not been the main research topics for philosophers since philosophy gave up metaphysical and/or religious questions. Thus, I argue that biomedical ethical issues urge philosophers tochange the philosopher’s attitude of doing philosophy. Those issues make them consider and rethink our fundamental concepts of life, death, family, and values pursued by human beings. In addition, it is easy to find conflicting ethical and philosophical answers to the above questions. Thus, it is very hard to reach consensus on the above ethical issues. This makes philosophers consider how we make a group decision over ethical issues showing conflicting but reasonable ethical answers in a plural society. This requires philosophers, especially scholars of ethics, develop a new ethics and its relevant concepts. This ethics must be able to work in a plural society where reasonable comprehensive belief systems coexist. In these respects, I argue that bioethics has to struggle with a newchallenge to philosophy.

The responsibility of the subjects is the most important basis of the social life. Recurrences of irresponsible behaviour on the all levels of the modern society do the problem of the purposeful cultivation of the liberty and the morality to be more actual nowadays. The liberty and the morality realized by any personality become the prerequisites of the responsibility that are so necessary for the society. Became the true reality the responsibility provides the sustainable reproduction of all system of feelings, convictions and actions and raises the liberty to the higher and more deliberate stage. Responding to the changes of the time the philosophy has to be urged to clarify the idea of the closing of the social anthropology, aksiologiya and ethics.

Directed reasons are reasons that rely for their normative significance on the authority one individual has with respect to another. Acts such as promising seem to generate such reasons. These reasons seem paradigmatically agent relative: they do not hold for all agents. This paper provides a defense of the claim that theform of agent relativism seemingly required by directed reasons is innocuous, and poses no general problem for a practice dependent account of directed reasons, and, therefore, for consequentialism. While the position I present does not constitute a complete teleological account of value, it points toward a way of integrating directed reasons into a practice-based account of value. The position presented also remains consistent with the so called Compelling Idea that often motivates consequentialism: it is always permissible for an agent to do what will lead to the outcome that is best.

Traditionally virtue ethics was considered as a theory about personal perfection. So it may seem that virtue theory hardly can be adopted to the study of social morality which, as some researchers demonstrate, is formalized and institutionalized, effect-oriented and presupposes not personal but shared imputation. However, as impartial analysis of the history of moral philosophy displays, virtue ethics has always had social dimension and has never existed out ofit. For example, Aristotelian ethics extends to politics and his politics is considerably mediated by ethics. And many of modern virtue ethicists proclaim the social orientation of their theories as of high priority. Today social virtue ethics is making substantial progress in applied and professional spheres. My aim is to demonstrate which peculiar basic features of virtue ethics make it effective in dealing with the most urgent social problems.

This paper adopted a constructive thinking model which is highly abstract and summary to investigate the life phenomena. It is more inclined to avoid detailednonessentials to grasp macroscopic outline trend, which is like: clearly see the direction of mountain range only by climbing to a height and looking forward; the more you enter into the braches and knots of trees, the more difficult to distinguish the general picture of the forest. Adopting this macroscopical mode of thought, it will be easier to break away from the limitation of life body to grasp the inherent essence and common property of life. Any life is like a “running machine” and the running and living life state is the essential property of life. This life state isn’t windy; instead, it is a state of life material system and a state which could makematerial synthesis and energy transfer to keep automatic circulation and linkage running. When this state is established, life is formed. When this state is destroyed, life will be perished, when this state is restored, life could relive. It is the task of chemist and biologist to clarify precise material structure. From the property and characteristics of the life state, we could unearth the common connection and profound value meaning of movement development of objective world. It is Philosopher’s task to make it as the doctrine to guide the development of life world. On the basis of this life state, this paper put forth a theoretical model of life origin, so as to find answer of life origin theoretically. It opened passage between physical world and life world and made the life generated inmaterial system under specific condition to become an inevitable law. It will indicate orientation and a way out for the practical activity of exploring life origin. Meantime, this essay also found the vitality, which created life and push life to continuously run and develop, in addition, it created a significant theory of vitality extension. By means of life body, it downwardly connected with natural science law and upwardly connected with truth and doctrine of human society through life activity. It organically connected with material world, life world, human society and human spirit, offering an explanation to the world. It makes beautiful and simple world weltbild, which is like a developing and rising monument: A stele of weltbild.

L’existant humain est par essence un être-au-monde. Cette dimension ontologique (pré)suppose une réalité ontique, à savoir la nature comme espace de visibilité de notre existence. Cependant, le pouvoir technologique défigure cette nature et se retourne contre l’homme au point que même l’éthique traditionnelle devient inopérante face aux défis de ce pouvoir. C’est à juste titre que Hans Jonas soutient que la réflexion éthique doit cesser de s’occuper uniquement de l’action humaine en rapport avec les hommes entre eux pour s’intéresser à l’homme comme une force agissante au sein de la nature. Ainsi, contrairement à Kant, Jonas pose les effets de l’acte comme condition de sa moralité. Et pourtant, il nous semble que la disposition intérieure du sujet agissant, la volonté bonne,n’est pas non plus à négliger. D’où la pertinence de l’impératif de l’éthique de la visibilité dans l’invisible qui réconcilie les deux positions : Agis de telle sorte que ton acte, sous-tendu par une intention pure, produise des effets compatibles avec la permanence d’une vie authentiquement humaine sur terre en assurant ainsi ta visibilité dans l’invisible. L’inflexion de cet impératif dans la praxis quotidienne passe par l’éducation ; laquelle doit s’organiser autour de trois principes cardinaux, à savoir : le principe de préséance de la vie, le principe d’interaction des générations et le principe de discontinuité des antivaleurs.