DOI 10.30792/2222-9175-2018-29-150-162
MORAL AND INSTRUMENTAL VALUE OF HUMANITY AND JUSTICE
Hun Xiuping, Hu Yunhuei
Confucius and Mencius distinguished moral and instrumental values in humane and just behavior. Humanity and justice act as direct objects of a subject’s needs and possess a pure moral value for the one pacified in humanity and benefitting from it. However, after humanity and justice became socially common moral criteria they inevitably evolved towards instrumental value. That is why in relation to those who must be humane and who borrows humanity, humanity and justice turned into a means of achieving certain benefits and acquired a certain instrumental value. The emergence of a dualistic, moral and instrumental value of these notions conditioned their division into true and false. The Taoists rigidly recognized a hypocritical character if humanity and justice, from the very beginning foreseeing the instrumentalization of morality. Confucius and Mencius as well as their followers also had a premonition concerning a chance of instrumentalization of humanity and justice. Therefore they paid serious attention to behavior and consciousness distinguishing between the true and false humanity and justice. History confirmed that in the course of creation of moral culture it is necessary to pay considerable attention to realization of moral concepts.
