儒家伦理与诚信危机

Abstract

Through a close analysis of the classical texts of the Lunyu (the Analects) and the Mengzi, it may be safely argued that traditional Confucian ethics indeed highlights the virtues of “honesty and trust (chengxin)” by strongly demanding that people should reject any lies absolutely on the dimension of truthfulness and be loyal to their own true feelings on the dimension of sincerity in the organic unity of the two dimension. Because Kongzi and Mengzi insist on the Confucian basic spirit of “consanguineous affection” that definitely takes kinship love as the supreme principle of human life, nevertheless, both the masters always advocate that people should put the dimension of consanguineous sincerity unconditionally above the dimension of truthfulness in the cases of conflict, with the result that the former dimension will eventually destroys the latter dimension in some in-depth paradox of distorting the virtues of honesty and trust. The two typical cases of Lunyu 13:18 and Mengzi 5A2 clearly demonstrate not only such an in-depth paradox that Confucian ethics forces people to abandon the truthful honesty and trust in order to maintain the honesty and trust of kinship love, but also the serious negative effects that Confucian ethics encourages people to bias for the relatives’ interests at the cost of universal justice. In this negative way, the Confucian idea of honesty and trust has ironically brought the so-called “crisis of honesty and trust” in ancient and modern Chinese society, which could be overcome only by critically negating the Confucian particularistic spirit of “consanguineous affection”.