The Rule of Virtue: A Confucian Response to the Ethical Challenges of Technocracy
The Rule of Virtue: A Confucian Response to the Ethical Challenges of Technocracy
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DOI：
10.1007/s11948-021-00341-6
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发表时间：
2021-10-01
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Liu, Yongmou
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Lan, Lishan;Zhu, Qin;Liu, Yongmou
技术官僚思想在西方技术哲学和技术社会学文献中受到了广泛的批评。对技术统治的常见批评是，它代表了一种“反民主”和“非人化”的意识形态。本文邀请西方学者借鉴儒家伦理的资源，重新考虑他们对技术官僚政治的反对。在此过程中，本文综合了西方哲学、政治理论、社会学和政策研究领域学者主要关注的技术官僚的主要伦理挑战。本文认为，将德治等儒家资源纳入技术统治可能有助于重新审视根植于西方自由民主意识形态的技术统治所面临的伦理挑战。儒家的德治意味着社会政策应该由有德有能力的人来制定，并且这些政策需要对社会的道德进步产生影响。儒家价值观为技术官僚评估他们所建立的社会技术系统的道德质量提供了道德指导。从儒家的角度来看，社会技术系统通常是根据这些社会技术系统是否以及如何促进协调过程的标准来评估的。本文将介绍一些实际案例，展示技术专家和专业知识如何为组织和社会管理做出贡献。在这些情况下，美德和美德规则确实发挥着至关重要的作用：美德要么决定技术官僚的选择及其政治权力的合法化，要么嵌入工程设计并影响使用环境中的人类行为。
The idea of technocracy has been widely criticized in Western literature in the philosophy and sociology of technology. A common critique of technocracy is that it represents an "antidemocratic" and "dehumanizing" ideology. This paper invites Western scholars to reconsider their oppositions to technocracy by drawing on resources from Confucian ethics. In doing so, this paper synthesizes the major ethical challenges of technocracy mainly concerned by Western scholars in philosophy, political theories, sociology, and policy studies. This paper argues that incorporating Confucian resources such as the rule of virtue into technocracy may be helpful for reexamining these ethical challenges to technocracy that are deeply rooted in Western liberal democratic ideologies. The Confucian rule of virtue means that social policies should be made by the virtuous and capable and these policies need to have impacts on the moral progress of the society. Confucian values provide ethical guidance for technocrats in assessing the moral quality of the sociotechnical systems they build. From the Confucian perspective, sociotechnical systems are often assessed based on the criterion whether and how these sociotechnical systems contribute to a process of harmonization. This paper will introduce some practical cases that demonstrate how technical experts and expertise contribute to organizational and social management. In these cases, virtues and the rule of virtue do play a crucial role: virtues either determine the selection of technocrats and the legitimization of their political power or are embedded in engineering design and affect human behavior in the use context.