What are the manifestations of morality in different periods?

1, the morality of primitive society, with the basic principle of safeguarding the common interests of clans and tribes, advocates common labor and equality and mutual assistance, and people unconditionally perform their obligations of public duties, respecting integrity, honesty and courage. But at the same time, the phenomenon of vendetta between clans, intermarriage between blood relatives and cannibalism showed the defects of moral form in this period.

2. The morality of slave society emphasizes the absolute obedience and personal attachment of slaves to slave owners. The mainstream society despises labor and laborers and pursues the principle that men are superior to women and men are superior to women. During this period, Ji Dan, a famous politician and thinker in the Western Zhou Dynasty, founded the religious and political ethics of "matching heaven with morality" and "respecting morality and protecting people". Confucius in the Spring and Autumn Period began to form a moral system with "benevolence" as the core.

3. In feudal society, morality was used to maintain the patriarchal hierarchy, which was characterized by politicization, religionization, standardization and theorization. The feudal system is based on the small-scale peasant economy and needs the patriarchal clan system to maintain it. Therefore, the patriarchal clan system and its derived ethical culture have been respected and promoted, and gradually evolved into a set of feudal social moral basic norms with the main contents of "three cardinal principles", "four dimensions", "five permanents", "six disciplines", "three virtues", "self-cultivation, keeping the family in order, governing the country and calming the world", namely loyalty to the monarch and filial piety.

4. After the Opium War, western thoughts were gradually introduced into ancient China. Advanced intellectuals, represented by Yan Fu and Sun Yat-sen, introduced bourgeois social Darwinism and natural human rights theory, as well as bourgeois basic moral norms such as freedom, equality and fraternity into China. At that time, China was a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society, and the moral principles of the bourgeoisie played a positive role in promoting the process of the old democratic revolution. However, the moral limitations of individualism and egoism are also very obvious.

Extended data

The origin of morality

Practice or activity stems from desire, not reason. Reason can only distinguish right from wrong without causing any activity. Desire, on the other hand, can cause activities, but it cannot distinguish right from wrong. Desire can obey reason or oppose it. The desire to obey reason leads to a good choice, and the desire to oppose reason leads to a bad choice, and morality lies in this good choice, so morality fundamentally comes from the unity of desire and reason.

Furthermore, desire is caused by feelings, which are divided into pleasure and pain. Happiness comes from hobbies, and pain comes from disgust. Anyone who loves something can be happy because of it, so people who love morality can be happy because of it. Therefore, morality and happiness are not incompatible.

Before we get into the habit, happiness often induces us to choose to do immoral things, while pain forces us to do immoral things, so it is not easy to be a moral person. However, once the good habit of choice is formed, moral activities can bring happiness, and then induce us to choose to do moral things, so it is not difficult to be a moral person. Special attention should be paid to forming a good habit from an early age, because since good habits are particularly helpful to improve people's happiness, bad habits will naturally damage people's happiness.

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