毛泽东早期伦理思想的集中展现——《〈伦理学原理〉批注》记读

《<伦理学原理>批注》是青年毛泽东“修身课”、“哲学课”的学习体会和总结,其中关于强调伦理道德重在实践的观点,主张以事实论善恶、辨是非的观点,道德的阶级性和时代性的观点,道德、理想要坚持知、信、行相统一的观点等等,对我们今天贯彻公民道德实施纲要都有重要的指导意义。     

江泽民思想道德教育论

江泽民的思想道德教育思想表现为对党的前代领导人德育思想的明显继承性,鲜明的理论创新性和内涵的丰富性等特色。他把德育纳入“三个代表”的重要内容,作为实现人的全面发展的必要条件,作为特色社会主义精神明建设的重要组成部分,作为以德治国、依法治国的重要措施之一,从而把德育提高到治国和兴国的战略高度。江泽民关于德育的学说,是对中华传统的优秀德育思想的弘扬,是对马克思德育理论的创新与发展。     

论民族道德与国家道德

在民族国家特别是多民族国家中,如何看待并处理好民族道德与国家道德的关系,是一个事关民族利益和国家利益的大问题。从民族道德与国家道德的关系看,民族道德统一于国家道德,民族利己主义是为国家道德所不容的,民族道德与国家道德的最高原则是无产阶级国际主义。必须用前瞻性的战略眼光来看待并认识这一问题,因为它事关民族与国家的长远利益,对构建和谐民族、和谐国家、和谐社会均具有重要的理论意义和现实意义。     

Embodied and Embedded Morality: Divinity, Identity, and Disgust

Our understanding of human morality would benefit from an integrated interdisciplinary approach, built on the assumption that human beings are multidimensional unities with real, irreducible, and mutually interdependent spiritual, relational, emotional, rational, and physiological aspects. We could integrate relevant information from neurobiological, psychosocial, and theological perspectives, avoiding unnecessary reductionism and naturalism. This approach is modeled by addressing the particular limited role of disgust in morality. Psychosocial research reveals disgust as a universal emotion that enables evaluation and regulation of certain moral behaviors and is involved in cultural identity. Theologically, many religious traditions, including the Judeo‐Christian, use disgust in conjunction with moral codes designed to preserve purity and communal identity as the people of God. The concept of natural moral law suggests that morality is embodied in human nature. Neurobiology is beginning to trace the neural circuitry involved in disgust and in moral evaluation, suggesting that emotions are a necessary basis for moral judgment and revealing intriguing relationships between disgust, morality, and other aspects of the psyche. Several problems that arise within these disciplines and at their intersections are identified. Extension of the model to other aspects of human morality would further illuminate our understanding of morality without sacrificing its complexity and richness.     

论孝在中国传统社会中的异化

孝是伴随着家庭出现而出现的 ,其自然意义是指对父母的能养与敬事 ,属于私德范畴。自春秋战国以来 ,在以儒家为主的诸多学派对其进行的理论膨胀与实践延伸中 ,发生了愈益深刻的异化。这种异化 ,一方面表现为随着孝的社会化、政治化 ,使其由家庭私德而放大为社会公德与政治道德 ;另一方面 ,则是通过孝的法律化 ,将社会与政治的种种规范注入了作为家庭私德的孝中 ,使其由道德规范发展为法律规范 ,更加远离其本来。孝的这种异化趋势对中国传统社会道德的构建产生了深远影响     

THE HEFNERIAN LEGACY: RETHINKING THE "NATURE" OF NATURALISM

Philip Hefner calls for religion-and-science to shift attention from pure ideas to embodied ideas. He urges scholars to get back to the Baconian idea that science is intended to enhance life; in Hefner's wording, we must give attention to "science-as-enabler-for-changing/improving-the-world." I believe that this is the realm of overlap between all academic disciplines—what I call the pragmatic overlap. To make his argument Hefner mentions two forms of "conventional wisdom" that need to be rethought. First, he is worried that a "pressure toward naturalism" prevents certain words (such as teleological and transcendence ) from having instructive meaning. Second, with this move toward naturalism Hefner believes we dismiss as archaic all valuable implications of traditional religious myths and symbols. He rightly highlights these exceedingly significant concerns. However, narrowing our focus to the implications of naturalism alone misses the root crisis. That crisis can be articulated as: "conventional wisdom" regarding nature is too unsophisticated to account for the phenomenon it depicts, and furthermore, this understanding of nature controls the methodological, metaphysical, and practical versions of naturalism acquiring societal acceptance. Accordingly, an alternative vision of nature is needed to transform our current "conventional wisdom" such that Hefner's worries are addressed.     

The influence of temporal distance on justice and care morality

Agerström, J., Björklund, F. & Allwood, C. M. (2010). The influence of temporal distance on justice and care morality. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 51, 46–55.
The primary goal of this study was to examine whether changes in the temporal distance of a moral dilemma affect how it is perceived and subsequently resolved. Based on Construal Level Theory ( Trope & Liberman, 2003 ), it was predicted that the relative weight of abstract justice features should increase and the relative weight of concrete care features should decrease with temporal distance. The results showed that females became increasingly justice-oriented with greater temporal distance. However, this was not the case for males who were unaffected by temporal distance. This interaction was conceptually replicated in a follow-up experiment in which abstraction was manipulated directly by a mindset manipulation. The present results suggest that temporal distance is a contextual factor that can alter the extent to which moral judgments and reasoning are based on justice and care, although this effect seems to be moderated by gender.     

Can We Identify with a Nation Low in Morality? The Heavy Weight of (Im)Morality in International Comparison

Research has shown that the perceived morality of the ingroup is a primary source of group pride and ingroup identification. The present research examined whether this is true even when a group has a poor reputation for morality in terms of dishonesty and corruption, such as in the case of Italians. To address this issue, two studies analyzed the role of the three fundamental dimensions of social judgment—morality, competence, and sociability—in predicting Italians’ identification with their nation when the salience of social comparison and the status of the comparison outgroup were varied. Findings showed that perceived morality predicted ingroup identification when participants did not engage in social comparison. Under salient social comparison, individuals based group identification on other dimensions: Perceived sociability was the main predictor of identification when respondents compared with a higher status outgroup (Germans; Study 1; N = 109), whereas perceived competence was the main predictor of identification when participants compared with a lower status outgroup (Romanians; Study 2; N = 121). Overall, findings showed compensation processes in social identification: When social comparison is salient, members of a low morality group base identification on the dimension which allows positive differentiation from the outgroup.     

Deep Alignment with Country Shrinks the Moral Gap Between Conservatives and Liberals

Moral foundations theory suggests that relative to liberals, conservatives care more about values that are believed to bind group members together: loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and purity/degradation. In contrast, we propose that individuals who are deeply aligned (“fused”) with their group should display elevated commitment to group‐oriented moral values, regardless of their political orientation. The results of three studies supported this hypothesis. The tendency for conservatives to endorse the binding foundations more than liberals only emerged among weakly and moderately fused Americans. In fact, liberals strongly fused with the United States endorsed “binding” foundations more than average conservatives and to the same extent as strongly fused conservatives. These results indicate that to fully understand moral prerogatives, one must consider the nature of the connections people form to the group, as well as their political orientation.     

APPLIED MYSTICISM: A DRUG‐ENABLED VISIONARY EXPERIENCE AGAINST MORAL BLINDNESS

Intellectuals such as William James and Aldous Huxley have thought it possible to develop a technique to apply to this world the mystical‐type insights gained during drug‐enabled experiences. Particularly, Huxley claimed that the visionary experience triggered by psychedelics could help us rethink our relationship with technology and promote a much‐needed cultural change. In this article, we explore this hypothesis. To do so, we build a philosophical framework based on Günther Anders's philosophy of technique, presenting human beings as morally blind when facing technological development. Mystical experiences are then proposed as a means to improve our moral faculties—and psychedelic drugs as tools to enable them. We finally explore the empirical feasibility of such a hypothesis by thoroughly reviewing the recent scientific literature on the nature of the psychedelic experience, concluding that the long‐term effects in the personality domain openness and in nature relatedness point to the emergence of a morally improved agent, thus providing substance to an application of mysticism.