Radical & Conservative Ethics

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MARXIAN ETHICS AND RADICAL ETHICS

Marxian Ethics

Three stages:

Idealistic humanism,

Scientific economism

Dialectical materialism

Idealistic Humanism

1. Man as the supreme being

2. A higher kind of civilization

3. Good based on human nature

4. Two kinds of ethics

5. Universal morality

6. Objective moral norms

7. Moral alienation

Scientific economism

1. " Useful things and useless people "

2. Modern morality as a outcome of capital commercial society

3. Alienated human nature by surplus value of labor

4. Man as a slave of machine in the process of production

Dialectical Materialism

1. Morality as a product of political oppression and economical exploitation

2. Morality as a reflection of class struggle and capitalist decadence

3. Moral principles as social consciousness determined by social existence

4. Ethics as a type of ideology: part of political superstructure

5. Fully developed human beings through communism 躩

6. Morality changed by the social development

Critical Ethics

To provide a moral justification for the violent over throw of the existing social system

Marcuse

1. Relation between ethics and revolution

2. Ethical terms applied in political and social movement

3. The general and individual welfare

4. Rational criteria

5. Moral standards as historical standards

6. Two historical rights

7. The means and relation as the ethical problem of revolution

Existentialist ethics

" Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself: the first principle of existentialism "

1. An ontological characterization of man: Being for Themselves

2. Freedom and responsibility of men

3. Morality from human consciousness

4. Absurdity of the actions, creations and choices of men

5. No fixed moral rules

6. Good and evil without objective properties

7. Obligations as inventions

8. Irrationalized and individualized moral principles

9. Morality linked to the actions and intentions of men

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