What is meta-ethics? Ethics includes meta-ethics, general ethics and applied ethics. Meta-ethics is also known as ethical philosophy which is the most important elements of ethics. It mainly studies people's outlook of values, which is the ultimate motive of human behavior and ultimate standard of all worth. Value outlook include outlook on life, moral and ethics.

Meta-ethics is the foundation of all of philosophy and science. When we discuss epistemology and ontology later, we will recognize the fundamental role of meta-ethics. However, meta-ethics has always been a big gap in the development of philosophy, even lacking a decent theoretical framework. What we should talk about meta- ethics are common problems, they have just been scattered all over, not being gathered under the topic of meta-ethics. These issues include the meaning of life, human needs and interests, individualism and altruism,liberalism, humani- tarianism, good and evil, cultivation, win-win, justice, the source of morality and law, the relationship between efficiency and fairness, small family and extended family. These questions belong to philosophy, but neither the ontology and epistemology nor general ethics, but meta- ethics.

We have a lot of value standards in our common sense, but most of them are not universally applicable. For example, people usually prefer to be neat, but sometimes chaos is better. If a child broke the clock, it shows that he has the spirit of exploration. People all like beauty, but Chinese believe that ugly wife and the field near home are treasures of family. Everyone wants to be smart, but sometimes ignorance is bliss,it's folly to be wise. The mission of the doctor is to save people, the military's mission is to kill, but both of them may be justice. People sometimes praise the firm stand that rather die than surrender, and sometimes believe that whosoever understands the times is a great man. Sometimes people firmly maintain discipline, sometimes they worship rebellious spirit. Sometimes they advocate individual liberation, and sometimes they also advocate the the quality of humility and restraint. These values are not universally applicable.

People often argue about the relationship between the little family and extended family in the Cultural Revolution in 1960-70s. How can extended family exist without little family? How can little family exist without extended family? Which is right? Philosophers cannot answer it, either. Many ethical norms proposing by philosophers and ethicists are usually contradictory. For example, Kant put forward some moral injunctions including “never kill”, “never steal”, “never lie”. However, some people must be killed, most countries do not abolish the death penalty. And sometimes we have to fight, war has always been an effective means for peace. Now the Chinese socialist core values include prosperity, democracy, civilization, harmony, freedom, equality, justice, legal system, patriotism, dedication, integrity and friendli