Plato believes that the human soul is a contradictory and harmonious unity composed of reason, will and lust. Reason represents man's rational part, while lust represents man's secular and material part. The body will always have the demand and desire for material and sensory enjoyment, which is fundamentally contrary to the lofty spiritual pursuit of human rationality. Passion is like an uncontrollable spirited horse. If you are not careful, you will break away from your rational control and do things that violate rational norms. And man is an animal with something to pursue. His soul and spirit always want to get rid of the bondage of physical lust and reach an infinitely beautiful and lofty moral realm. However, due to the limitation of realistic objective conditions and the material needs and desires of the human body, it is impossible for people to be detached from the world and achieve detachment in their lifetime. Therefore, the human mind is always in the struggle and conflict between reason and lust, ideal and reality.
The conflict between people is not only the internal conflict between ideal and reality, reason and lust, but also the contradiction and conflict between human perceptual desire and various ethical norms and laws and regulations. People are the sum total of social relations. Living in society, people must deal with people, have various relationships, and need to abide by various norms. At the same time, people's nobility also requires people to be civilized people with high moral character, and often they need to sacrifice their own happiness in exchange for the preservation of others or collective interests. But people are self-interested, and they must survive first, which leads to the conflict between individual rights and social ethics. Society needs people to collect money. However, for a poor man who is hungry and cold, perhaps the only food or money I have encountered will help him and his family get out of the predicament and gain vitality. In the end, whether it is something acquired by the Shanghai Stock Exchange or something left for self-help, there will inevitably be contradictions and conflicts in the hearts of conscientious parties. Helping the poor and giving oneself up to save others is a noble act advocated by society, but if we help others, our lives and property will be greatly threatened and damaged. How should I choose? "Hero's blood and tears" not only reflects the society's ineffective protection of good deeds, but also shows the contradiction and conflict between safeguarding personal interests and practicing social morality.
The ethical conflict in social life is not only manifested in the conflict between personal interests and social norms as a whole, but also in the confusion and dilemma people encounter when facing various social norms. This conflict is first reflected in the conflict between different cultural types. Due to historical and religious reasons, people from different regions and religions have formed different cultural psychology and customs in their long-term social life, thus forming different ethical norms. When two different cultures meet, there will be corresponding collisions and conflicts. Many conflicts or international debates are often caused by differences in ethical culture. For example, polygamy is reasonable and legal in the Arab region, but it is not allowed by morality and law in Britain, America and China. Explorers in modern Europe found that a tribe in North America killed their elderly parents in order to reduce the pain of the elderly, which most of our civilized societies could not bear. For another example, in Christian culture, life is sacred and inviolable, and abortion for any purpose and reason is equivalent to murder and is not allowed. So is euthanasia. Secular morality, on the other hand, allows abortion under certain conditions from the standpoint of pregnant women or for some utilitarian purpose. In addition, it also allows euthanasia under certain conditions because it recognizes the nobleness of life and respects people's independent rights. It can be seen that under different cultural backgrounds, social ethics norms are different, even quite different.
Even within the same culture, professional ethics in various fields and industries will be inconsistent or even deviated from the overall morality of society, which reflects the multi-level nature of morality and the particularity of its application scope. For example, news media reporters should be loyal to the facts, report the truth accurately and timely, and take into account the interests and feelings of some people when necessary, or conceal the truth in order to keep state secrets. The professional ethics of scientists are science and innovation, but in the face of some moral forbidden areas, such as scientific experiments such as human cloning and IVF, which should scientists take first? Doctors take saving patients' lives as their highest goal, but should euthanasia be implemented in the face of extremely painful patients? These are all manifestations of moral conflicts in different professional fields.
Within the same culture, due to changes in historical and social conditions, the specific social environment to which the original ethical norms apply has changed. Traditional social ethics norms can not effectively regulate or regulate people's interests and behaviors at present, and will also lead to contradictions and conflicts between tradition and people's ethical concepts at present. For example, in the traditional society based on family blood, "three cardinal guides and five permanents" is not only an ethical standard to regulate the relationship between family members, but also an ethical standard to regulate the interest and moral relationship between different interest classes and classes in the whole society. With the disintegration of the society based on family blood relationship, in the new individual-oriented civil society, the traditional hierarchical obedience relationship has been replaced by the equal relationship between citizens and the legal relationship between citizens and the state, and the ethical norms and moral concepts of the relationship between mediators will also change. "Filial piety" in traditional society requires "parents are there, and they don't travel far", while the frequent population movement in modern society makes it impossible for even filial children to stay with their parents humbly all the time. The traditional so-called "husband as wife" and "father as son" have lost their social foundation. If under the new conditions, the parties still want to demand the other party's behavior by traditional norms, it will inevitably lead to conflicts and show their own inadaptability.
With the progress of science and technology, society changes with each passing day, and a large number of new situations and problems appear, which makes the original clear and single ethical norms seem unprepared, unable to effectively regulate and guide our social life and behavior, and may fundamentally impact and subvert our existing ethical norms and moral concepts. For example, with the continuous progress of science and technology, the rapid development of medical technology, the emergence of test-tube babies, the massive transplantation of human organs and the emergence of the problem of "human cloning", not only bring confusion to the existing ethical relations and concepts of human beings, but also bring fundamental changes to the definition and understanding of "human beings". The development of information technology has also brought great impact on people's traditional communication methods and ethical concepts. How to deal with these sudden ethical changes and conflicts has become an urgent problem for ethics, medicine and science, and even the whole society.
Of course, human beings are rational animals, and human rationality not only enables people to pursue lofty moral ideals, but also has the ability to deal with and solve these emerging ethical conflicts and problems. With the long-term development of civilization and the accumulation of experience, people have established some basic moral norms and concepts, such as core concepts and fundamental principles such as "no harm", "autonomy", "justice" and "responsibility", and to some extent ensured that ethical conflicts can be properly resolved through equal consultation and allowing correction. However, to fundamentally resolve these ethical conflicts, on the one hand, we should strengthen the study and research of ethical theories, especially in view of the ethical confusion and ethical conflicts after the emergence of new situations, and formulate corresponding strategies and methods as soon as possible to standardize and guide people's social life and behavior. More importantly, we should strengthen moral education and moral cultivation, and enhance people's moral judgment and moral autonomy in practice. After all, any norm is limited, and only one's own moral conscience can become the most fundamental and reliable moral court.