The study of the effectiveness of ethical laws is not only to satisfy the completeness of ethical laws in theory, but also to consider the social function of ethics. As far as the general nature of normative disciplines is concerned, ethical law and legal norms have many similarities, or ethics and jurisprudence are similar in normative matters, except that the former is between self-consciousness and self-action, and the latter is between weakness and coercion, but in any case, ethical self-action cannot reach the level of coercion. Nevertheless, it does not prevent us from paying attention to the validity of ethical rules, because ethics is a philosophy of action based on practical reason, and its effectiveness is one of the important references for measuring the rationality of action rules. Potency refers to the actual effect or effect produced by a certain force or ability. From the perspective of the normative nature of ethical laws, the problem of effectiveness is the fundamental problem of exploring the role of ethical laws. In other words, if an effective ethical law explicitly requires people to perform certain obligations or prohibit certain behaviors, it means that this law has a basis for people to consciously abide by and obey, and has a certain influence and achieves corresponding effects. The effectiveness of ethical laws is not the effectiveness of pure form, but the influence on people's social behavior based on the positioning of a certain social order, which has three basic dimensions: normative power, pointing force and staying power.
The normative power of ethical laws.
Normative force is the authoritative effect of ethical laws. Whether the ethical law is effective for social governance should first be seen to see whether it has a normative (restrictive) force on human behavior. Normative force is the life of the validity of ethical laws, which demonstrates the objective inevitability of ethical regulations. The content of ethical laws is objective, not only actively reproduces the ethical requirements of social development, such as democracy, civilization, harmony, freedom, equality, justice, etc., but also the observance of basic ethical laws is a necessary condition for the survival and development of individuals, because the survival of individuals who ignore the laws of the community can only be "eliminated". As the product of human long-term ethical practice, ethical law is the crystallization of human spiritual production activities. From totems and taboos to the formation of guidelines, proverbs, obligations and responsibilities, and finally abstracted into laws, it vividly shows the process of the genus occurrence of ethical laws, which is a gradual process from low to high, from spontaneous to conscious, from concrete to abstract, and embodies the objective historical inevitability process of human ethical life. Therefore, in a certain sense, the normative power of ethical laws is the fundamental embodiment of ethical efficacy. The normative force also shows the social constraints of ethical activities. Man is the sum of all social relations, and society is the carrier of human life. "Xunzi Monarchy" contains: "Water and fire are angry but not born, plants and trees are born and ignorant, birds and beasts are knowledgeable but not righteous, people are angry, alive, knowledgeable, and righteous, so they are the most expensive in the world." The strength is not as good as the ox, the walk is not as good as the horse, and the cow and the horse are used, why not? Said: People can be grouped, but they can't be grouped. This simple concept encapsulates the social and ethical nature of human beings, and the ethical law is a rational regulation of the social nature of human beings. For the survival and security of the group, the society needs certain external norms to restrain people's individual behaviors, regulate the conflicts of interest arising from social interactions, and coordinate actions and common development. The ethical law adapts to this objective requirement, and as a restriction of man's natural impulses, the ethical law produces and externally restricts man's behavior and prescribes the direction of man's action. Therefore, as long as people are in social relations, they are subject to the social norms of reality. For social individuals, ethical laws constitute a realistic social constraint force, which shows that human freedom and social constraints coexist, freedom is the internal goal, and constraints are external guarantees, and the normative force of ethical laws takes effect in the organic unity of the two. The normative power of ethical laws can be realized, in fact, from the perspective of human intrinsicism, it still comes from human rational ability. The innate intellectual power of human beings compels people to abandon the state of nature and live a life of goodness under the guidance of reason. For "the main purpose of all moral culture is virtue and the cultivation of the rational will, which becomes the regulating principle of all action, and we call this virtue or virtue self-control". The "rational will" and "self-control" mentioned here refer to man's rational consciousness, which is the rational consciousness internalized by external moral norms, thus forming the basis of man's spiritual power, driving man to consciously restrain his instincts, control his desires, and pursue the goal of goodness for himself.
The directive force of the ethical law.
The pointing force is the object effect of the ethical law, and it is the vector regulation of the (bound) force of the ethical norm. The normative power of ethical law is a natural orientation and ideal goal, and it is the force that guides people to pursue justice by following good actions. The normative power of ethical laws can only be realized when it is concretely implemented into people's behavior and specific people accept the norms. It can be seen that there is a directional problem in the normative power of ethical laws, that is, to whom a certain ethical law is binding and for whom it is not. Therefore, the ethical directive force constitutes a vector description of the effectiveness of ethical laws, and specifically stipulates the normative boundaries of ethical effectiveness on people. In real social life, due to the influence of a variety of complex factors, people's social roles are multiple, and people's moral consciousness levels are also different. Therefore, the system of ethical and moral norms in society is often hierarchical and targeted. Different ethical guidelines are prescribed for people with different roles and identities and different moral standards, and the direction of these ethical standards is different levels and scopes. Generally speaking, in the life of social ethics, the orientation of social public ethics is the most universal, and its ethical binding force covers every member of society, so social ethics education is an important way to practice social ethics. Social public ethics is often composed of two parts: one is the common ethics of all mankind. It originates from the minimum required by the common humanity of human beings and the common sequence of survival and development, that is, some of the simplest and most basic rules of public life that people should abide by in order to form a normal order of social life. Its binding force is directed at every individual in human society, reflecting the minimum standards and general requirements of an orderly society. For example, peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy and freedom are the common values of all mankind, and vigorously promoting the common values of all mankind will help mankind jointly create a better future. The second is the public morality of the whole people. It reflects the corresponding norms of the common interests and general requirements of all members of society living in a particular political, economic, or ethnic region. For example, the "Outline for the Implementation of the Construction of Civic Morality in the New Era" puts forward new requirements for strengthening the construction of civic morality in the new era, promoting the close unity of all the people in ideals, beliefs, values, and moral concepts, firmly establishing the common ideal of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the whole nation, and vigorously promoting the core socialist values in the whole society, and so on, with the aim of promoting the moral quality of the whole people and the level of social civilization to a new height. In addition, for the ethical norms of specific life fields and role positions, their directive force is relatively closed, and they only have binding effect and rule enforcement for a specific range of actors. For example, professional ethics applies to practitioners in different industries, family ethics refers to the members of society in family life, and occasion ethics refers to the parties to interact in a specific place of interaction. These ethical norms usually do not go beyond the scope of application, and once they are not pointed in the right direction, the normative force of ethical laws cannot be effective.
The staying power of ethical laws.
Staying power is the temporal effect of an ethical law, i.e., because it has an enduring value and cannot be arbitrarily "deleted". The validity of ethical laws cannot be based solely on specific "clauses", but on the basis of a higher or highest level of ought-after and a super-empirical value. Even if a specific rule in the system of ethical laws does not fully satisfy the requirement of fitness for purpose, it still satisfies at least one value, which is the permanence value of ethics. Ethical laws are different from legal norms, there is no clear (obvious) timeliness problem, that is, the effective and expiration time is not considered, maybe some second- or third-order norms are outdated due to the development of the times, and their normative content will change somewhat, new rules will be produced, and old rules will die, but the ethical laws that maintain the overall ethical spirit and ethical order of society will not change. We cannot say that the law of justice can be abandoned at a certain historical moment, that the spirit of benevolence can be dispensed with at a certain time, or that the ethical law can even be "tentative" or "temporary" at a certain time period. At the same time, there is no question of the retroactivity of ethical laws in terms of temporal validity. Retroactivity is the question of whether a norm is appropriate to the acts and events before it came into force, and whether it is binding. "If it can be adapted and binding, it is retroactive, or retroactive; If it is not able to adapt, it is not binding, it is not retroactive, or it is called non-retroactive. "Ethical laws are universally adaptable, and their binding force is permanent, but the degree of restraint may vary according to the moral level of the actor and social environmental factors. Of course, we should not regard ethical laws as "once and for all" existence, in addition to their spiritual essence unchanged, they should also "change with the times" and "change with the situation", enhance their adaptability, and then achieve the purpose of enhancing their effectiveness.
It is necessary to further emphasize theoretically that the effectiveness of ethical laws itself is the influence that should be enforced, which does not mean that the effectiveness of ethical laws is the influence that is actually implemented and realized, and the effectiveness of ethical laws and the effectiveness of ethical laws are two different categories. The effectiveness of ethical laws is "actual" rather than "should" in nature, which refers to the actual operation of the effectiveness of ethical laws in the social order. For example, "Thou shalt not steal" is an ethical law that everyone should follow in terms of its effect, but if someone does steal, it only means that the ethical effect is too weak to produce the desired effect, but it cannot be said that it is not effective. The effectiveness of ethical laws requires a minimum of ethical effectiveness to ensure their effectiveness, and it is difficult to maintain the existence of an ethical norm when it is basically empty and cannot be effective. Therefore, the effectiveness and effectiveness of ethical laws are closely linked, and effectiveness can only be implemented when it is finally transformed into effectiveness, and effectiveness is the normal result of effectiveness.
Li Jianhua is a professor at the School of Philosophy and the Center for Applied Ethics at Wuhan University