Administrative ethics is a kind of applied ethics and a kind of professional ethics; ethics is a kind of practical wisdom. Traditional Chinese society is an ethical society with profound and extensive ethical thoughts. Since the Han Dynasty, Confucian ethics and moral concepts have been transformed into national ideology, social systems, and folk etiquette. In our country, from the Western Zhou Dynasty to the Ming and Qing Dynasties, various "official proverbs" and other books that taught the importance of being a person, the way to be an official, and the way to do politics mostly summarized the official moral cultivation and ways of doing politics with a large number of historical facts. Experience and lessons have been put forward to varying degrees to put "virtue" first in selecting officials and the idea of ??strict management of officials. Officials with "no morals", "bad morals" and "harming morals" are denounced as "villains" and Officials who value "virtue" are respectfully called "gentlemen". In China, which is deeply influenced by Confucian ethical culture, it is natural for China to inherit and carry forward traditional Chinese ethical thoughts and ethical culture. For example, "We hold power for the public good and engage in government for the people; we insist on justice and are fair in dealing with things; we practice frugality and integrity; we are loyal to our duties, dedicated and diligent; we set an example and be strict with ourselves." Government; put people first, implement virtuous government; select talents and appoint talents to prosper the world." Of course, ancient Chinese administrative ethics can also be explained from the virtues of public loyalty, integrity, clean government, diligence, love for the people, use of talents, and self-cultivation. .

2. The development of foreign administrative ethics

Since the second half of the 20th century, ethics circles in North America and European countries have successively published a considerable number of works on responsibility ethics, such as the United States The famous philosopher Feinberg's "Responsibility Theory", Donald Kennedy's "Academic Responsibility", Terry Cooper's "Administrative Ethics: Approaches to Achieving Administrative Responsibility"; British John M Fisher and Mark Lar Wiese's "Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility"; German Hans Jonas's "Principles of Responsibility", Lenk's "Introduction to Applied Ethics: Responsibility and Conscience", Hans Küng's "Global" Responsibility" and so on. Administrative ethics includes three aspects: the first is the administrative ethics concept, which is the core of the administrative ethics system; the second is the administrative ethics norm system, including administrative ethics principles, administrative ethics categories, and administrative ethics norms; the third is administrative ethics Mechanism system, including administrative ethics supervision mechanism and administrative ethics development mechanism. From the perspective of the relationship between ethics and morality, it is generally believed that administrative ethics is the theory of administrative morality. Compared with the theoretical nature of administrative ethics, administrative ethics is more specific. It mainly involves the norms and value orientations of administrative subjects' practical activities, which are expressed through the functional practice of administrative subjects. Some people summarize it as: Administrative ethics "is a special social morality determined by social and economic relations, produced to adapt to the needs of administrative management, and maintained by the inner beliefs, traditional habits, social public opinion, legal obligations and other factors of administrative officials. Phenomenon.

Modern Western administrative ethics thought is combined with the development of public administration theory, with the new public administration movement and the new public management movement as the theoretical background, and as a The development of administrative philosophy or political philosophy of the basic concepts of *** administration, with basic concepts such as "fairness" and "justice" as the core, with the establishment of a responsible government as the basic value orientation, and with the administration facing the reality of public life itself Ethics. The main discussions of Western administrative ethics are:

(1) Aristotle believes that “a person’s virtue does not depend on the social role he occupies but on the person himself. It is the purpose of human beings as a species that determines what kind of human qualities are virtues." ① Aristotle believes that human beings have four virtues: wisdom, temperance, justice and courage. The individual's fulfillment of this social responsibility, It is virtue.

(2) The theory of executive administration recommends the "politics-administration dichotomy". Its founder, Woodrow Wilson, believes: "Public administration is the clear and systematic implementation of public law. Activities". A "clear distinction" should be made between "political officials and non-political officials." Goodnow's famous saying: "Politics is the expression of the national will, and administration is the execution of the national will." Classic expression of the dichotomy. According to the logic of the dichotomy, administrators are mere executors of the will of others and are nothing more than intelligent robots.

Because the core topic to be discussed in administrative ethics is the rationality of value selection in administrative actions.

"If we affirm the so-called "practical rationality" in which administrative people's value judgments dominate, then in reality, we must criticize the political-administrative dichotomy that dominates the mainstream of thought, and we must recognize administrative people's value judgments. If we use administrative discretion as a positive form of autonomy, we must give up the distrust directed at administrators, and we must give up the institutionalist illusion that attempts to regulate the thoughts, words and deeds of administrators purely by the rule of law. To give administrators the political rights and obligations to represent the people, it is necessary to study the moral generation mechanism of administrators, and to cultivate administrators’ moral cognitive abilities, moral judgment abilities, and moral behavioral abilities beyond the narrow purpose of authoritative order.”⑧ The discussion of these issues constitutes the starting point and destination of administrative ethics research.

Gauss affirmed the rationality of administrative discretion in his article "The Responsibility of Public Administration" and raised the issue of who and what should be responsible for the administrator's discretionary judgment. In view of the characteristics of administrative discretion, Gauss advocated strengthening "internal law", that is, through individual administrators' sense of obligation arising from their recognition of professional concepts and standards, ethical reflection and normative judgment on their own behavior, to reflexively Monitor your own behavior. The enduring debate over the effectiveness of "internal controls" was represented by Hermann Fenner and Carl Friedrich 1935-1941. Friedrich believed that in complex modern environmental conditions, the kind of "external control" controlled by politics and law is false and insufficient to ensure the responsible administration of administrators. Therefore, he advocated cultivating the "internal law" of administrative people proposed by Gauss, that is, using administrative people's professional values ??and ethical norms to compensate for or even replace external control. ⑨