The Identity,Separation And Complementation

The man is a kind of social being. The society is organized by norms and rules. The existence and development of the human society depend on a series of social norms, in which the institutions and morals are two kinds of rules to form human society and ensure social order.The institutions and morals are not only interconnected but also standing separately. Their connections display on two aspects:the first, the institutions and morals link up mutually. In particular social lifestyle and social structure, morals can be promoted to institutions to be compulsory and universal. Also the institutions can be turned into morals which are a field of self-conscious behavior and drop out of formal rules; the second, the institutions as a cultural expression and accumulation are based on the certain values. Only the institutions of justness, righteousness and according with people's benefits are received by the persons. And only the recognized institutions are effective. The sense of reorganization and identity comes from the moral tradition in which the institutions are rooted.However, the differences between the institutions and morals are fundamental: from the expressions, the institutions are usually the formal regulation which is written in the form of formal rules. The morals, a kind of unwritten rule, are from the mind's self-consciousness; from the way of action, the institutions, rooted in the compulsion rely on punishment, and so they are heteronymous. The morals depend on the tradition to form the driving behavior habits, and they are self-discipline; form the roles they engaging in the whole social rule system, the institutions are the bottom line of a society to maintain the basic social order. And the morals are the upper line of a society to guide the society towards 'perfection'of the lofty goals. In the thesis we insist that the difference is major among the relationships between the institutions and morals. The separation of the institutions and the morals is a sign of both maturity and a prerequisite that they can complement each other. Just because the differences, the complement is necessary. Two identical and complete different things do not complement each other at all. Formally, there is no intermediate state between the institutions and the morals. We complement each other intend to acquire the double effect. But if we cause confusion between them, not only we will make mistake in the doctrinal errors but also it is not conducive to the improvement of the institutions and the morals. This is the basic argument throughout the thesis.However, the separation of the institutions and the morals is not produced at the very beginning. As the sigh of the maturity of the institutions and the morals, the separation of them is historically generated. So in the thesis, we strive to find the occurrence, the development process and the real historical conditions of the institutions and the morals. We do not divorce from the historical context to discuss the relationship between them. In the first four chapters of this thesis, we spend a lot of time to clarify the evolution history and logical process of the relationships between the institutions and the morals in the rich resources of thought history. This is the essential theoretical preparation to reflect the relationships between the institutions and the morals in practice.Chapter I:In primitive society, the primitive living connected by blood relationship is seamless and it is organized by the group. The original group is sacred and integrated. At that time, countries have not come out; therefore, the social organizations were not enacted by the legislature of the state and not implemented by the state's coercive power. Also, there were no written rules of conduct. The primitive people followed the old orders, practices and rules. They were customary laws which came from the cumulative experiences in the practice of primitive life. The institutions and the morals confused together and would generate in the same primitive culture at the beginning of human civilization. So they had the same identity in primitive society. Then there was no distinction among the morals, the laws and religions. As the norms to maintain the existence of the society and regulate the social relationships, they implicated in the totemic taboo, witchcraft, mythology and the original religion. They resorted to the source of the sacred things to create a holy social order. Therefore, at this time, the institutions and the morals had not yet differentiated and they did not have clear boundaries. They were original as a holistic system of social norms.Chapter II:When countries produced and the character appeared, the state's statute backed mandatory came into being. The institutions obtained the independent cultural form. From then on, the two kinds of social norms, the institutions and the morals, became growing divisions and led to separation. They played the roles together in the history evolution of human society. But the separation of the institutions and the morals was not finished just because they differentiated from the primitive ethical order and acquired the cultural forms. The fulfillment of the separation was a long historical process. The separation was expanded just by the historical conditions' accumulation. Sometimes even particular social structure prevented them from the historical process of separation, such as the traditional Chinese society. Therefore, at the beginning, the separation of the institutions and the morals was only formal. The people did not have the conscious motives to separate them in their thought, idea and consciousness. The institutions and the morals were mixed together. Ancient Greek and Roman society, the medieval Christian community and the Chinese traditional ethical and authoritarian societies were characterized by the mixed rules.The mixed relationship between the institutions and the morals as follows:the morals were in the heart of the system of norms and rules in ancient society; the laws and the morals were not two separated areas. The virtue and the law were the parts of the morals. The institutions subordinated to the morals; the institutions mixed together with the morals and the religion, servicing to'goodness'of the society. In traditional Chinese society, the mode of mixed relationship formed a special social order, which was the rule of Ritual.'Li'was the mixture of the laws and the morals, not only the moral laws but also the juristic morals.Chapter III:Separation is a sign of maturity. The separation of the two social norms during the historical evolution and their respective action in different fields, were the inevitable result of increasingly development and complexity of the society. This was the general path of the relationship between the institutions and the morals. In the thesis we maintain that the separation of the institutions and the morals can only happen in modern Western society, because just it qualified for the separation of social and cultural historical conditions. Awakening and the ability of individuals to upgrade, on the one hand it made the secular society from the shackles of religion, the other, it made the private life and public political life separated. The two changes became the social basis of the separation. From then on, the research of political science began to be independent of ethics. In these historical conditions people can promote the increasing separation consciously in their consciousness and actions. The separation of the institutions and the morals displayed in:the morals increasingly became a personal matter and the personal moral dignity received the maximum espoused. People did not want that the personal morals were intervened by the public power; at the same time, the institutions began to play an indispensable role in public field. The institutions, for example the law, gradually formed a complete system, a collection containing principles, rules, concepts and standards. The form and the abstraction of the system were up to an unprecedented height with the characters of university, certainty, predictability, consistency, procedural and limitation in Western society. The institutions were the main way of social control which advocated individual freedom, rights, fair competition and free development in civil society.The separation of the institutions and the morals was the sign of the maturity of the law. But the separation did not stop at this, when it stepped forward again the error was at hand. In the 19th century, the prevalence of legal positivism made the separation extremely. Legal positivism completed the separation but denied any connection between the institutions and the morals.Chapter IV:In contemporary society, people began to consciously reflect on the dangers and errors of the extreme separation during the separation process. The crisis of values in institutions and the utility crisis in morals promoted people to rethink the relationships between the institutions and the morals. They made efforts to find a possible and real way to complement the institutions and the morals. Political liberalism gave us the enlightenment than we may put the relationships between the institutions and the morals into public political field. On the one hand, we allow and encourage people to discuss the moral arguments publicly in order to make them to be the consensuses during the public discuss, such as justice, rights, freedom. On the other hand, the social issues, particular the political problems should be changed into legal issues and institutional issues to highlight the characteristics of procedural justice.The morals in the public political field are not only moral values; they are a kind of intellectual ability and moral ability to pose requirements toward the institutions of politics, economy and society. The ability is acquired during the participation in politics especially when they involve in the construction, evaluation and implementation process of institutional practice. The justices of the rules are not because they make technically arrangement of the morals. It is because the rules'own integrity and independence of procedures, forms, systems and specifications. Just these rules can offer a free, democratic and open institutional space. The legitimacy of rules lies in the abstract and negative features in institutional arrangement.Chapter V:In the thesis we received the following revelations during the research of the historical evolution of the relationships between the institutions and the morals: we emphasize the importance of the differences in the connections and the distinguishes of the two; we stress the necessity of separation in the trend from mixture to separation of the two; we insist the domination of the institutions in the function the institutions or the morals taking. As a reference, we examine and reflect on the relationships between the two and their practice in contemporary Chinese society. In chapter V, we make effort to clarify the theoretical misunderstanding and practical hazard'institutional ethics'aroused. We define the dominant place the institutions take in the system of contemporary social norms. We insist that just democracy and rule of law can provide good institutional environments.