The Morality of Personal Relationships

　　From the Soil. The foundations of Chinese Society (chapter 5)

　　In this chapter, Fei Xiaotong develops the idea that the “organizational mode of association” (tuantigeju) and the “differential mode of association” (chaxugeju) have led to different types of morality. In the Western pattern, morality is built on the relationship between the organization and the individual, whereby the organization is the force controlling the individual behavior. Morality is a common will that precedes the individual members of the organization. In such an organization, all individual members are equal and the organization is not any individual’s private possession. Organizations should protect individual rights. In the Chinese context, morality extends out from the self to the social spheres formed by one’s personal relationships. Each sphere is sustained by a specific type of social ethic. There are no ethical concepts that transcend specific types of human relationships, i.e., there is no comprehensive moral concept.