The prevailing modern publice thics adopts a lateral perspective based on the interpersonal mutual constraint.It aims at timeless principles,but virtually focuses on the temporal lateral relationship.This perspective fails to capture the diachronic lasting nature of political community,and prevents us from formulating a reasonable conception of social justice due to its presumptions about the agents as adults and normal persons,and its even-Steven moral attitude in the distribution of resources.A vertical dimension of time ought to be introduced which accounts for the socio-economic achievements in terms of social accumulation and develops an ethical justification for the fairdistribution of resources based on some kind of social asset irreducible to individual performances.But this vertical dimension of time neither implies an interpretation of public ethics in the light of inter-generational relationships,nor an attempt to resolve the conceptually questionable problem of inter-generational justice.Its essence lies in a trans-temporal or atemporal perspective in public ethics which is contrary to the timeless lateral thinking.

主流的现代公共伦理思维采取的是人与人之间相互约束的横向视角,它寻求的是无时间性的原则,但真正聚焦的却是即时性的横向关系。这一视角无法理解政治共同体历时延续的内在本质,它对行动者成人化、常人化的假定,以及在资源分配问题上互不相欠的道德态度,也是我们追寻社会公平的观念障碍。公共伦理因此需要引入纵向的时间维度,从历时性社会积累的角度理解经济社会发展的成果,以不可还原为个体行为的 “社会”资产为资源的公平分配提供伦理基础。但这种纵向的时间维度既不是要用世代关系来解释公共伦理,也不是要解决概念上存疑的所谓代际正义问题。其核心是要摆脱横向思维的无时间性特征,同时强调公共伦理的跨时间性或非时段性视角。