自由与信任:“陌生人社会”的伦理视点

Liberty and Trust:An Ethical Perspective on “Stranger Society”

在当今中国从传统“熟人社会”向现代“陌生人社会”转变的过程中,自由这一伦理价值受到越来越充分的重视和强调。同时,信任也是任何社会得以存续的基本条件。在“陌生人社会”中,自由与信任之间存在着内在伦理张力,而基于自由的制度信任为“陌生人社会”的维系提供了底线伦理路径。这一路径表明,制度的供给必不可少。而要发挥制度作为国家之公器的应有作用,政府的角色至关重要。政府作为公共权力的掌控者、公共利益的代表和实现者,能否真正做到如其所是是其公信力能否得以树立和巩固乃至提升的决定性因素。政府公信力之善不仅可以为实现人的自由提供坚实的伦理保障,而且能够为“陌生人社会”信任关系的形成和持存树立道德榜样和标杆,在促进构建美好伦理生态和推动社会文明发展进步方面具有不可替代的价值引领作用。

In the process of transformation from the traditional “ acquaintance society” to the modern “ stranger society” in today’s China, the ethical value of liberty has attracted more and more full and enthusiastic attention and emphasis. At the same time, we have to admit that trust is a basic condition for the survival of any society. In the “stranger society”, liberty provides the moral basis for a person to be independent and live in harmony with strangers. People are destined to respect and treat each other equally without discrimination,but this does not mean that people trust each other, and it is indisputable that people in the “stranger society”distrust each other, which shows that there is some inner tension in it between liberty and trust.However, institutional trust based on liberty provides a bottom-line ethical path for the maintenance of“stranger society”. This path shows that, on the one hand, people create institutions based on liberty and for liberty’s sake, in other words, institutions are themselves the product of human liberty. On the other hand, the trust between people in the “stranger society” is a kind of institutional trust, for which institutional provision is clearly essential. In order to make institutions work as a public tool of the state, the role of the government appears to be of vital importance. As the holder and controller of public power, the representative and implementer of public interests, the government represents the decisive factor of whether its public credibility can be established, consolidated and even promoted.No matter the degree of public credibility of the government, its influence is extensive and far-reaching.That is to say, everyone in the entire society, especially when it concerns the trust relationship between strangers, will undoubtedly be influenced by the government’s public credibility. Either because of the goodness of the government’s public credibility, which develops in a positive direction when people trust and get along with each other harmoniously, or because of the bad government’s public credibility, it gradually grows apart when the social mood is negative and people do not trust each other or even cannot get along with each other. No matter what the situation is, it will inevitably have a complex practical impact on the whole ecology of social ethics. Clearly, the goodness of the government’s public credibility can not only provide a solid ethical guarantee for the realization of human liberty, but also set a moral example and benchmark for the formation and maintenance of trust relations in the “stranger society” and it therefore plays an irreplaceable role in promoting values in the construction of a better ethical ecology and the development and progress of social civilization.