Sources of Norms, Plurality of Regulatory Systems and Moral Relativism: Explanatory Resources of Sociological Theory

The research describes the core sociological approaches to the theoretical interpretation of interrelated key issues of modern sociology of morality — the sources of the significance of multiple regulatory orders, the relations of morality and power, the role of morality as a universal intermediary in potential conflicts among regulatory systems (in particular, between state and non-state laws, professional ethics, religion, corporate codes of conduct, etc.). Based on the critical scrutiny of classical and modern approaches to the sources of norms and relations between multiple regulatory systems, in particular law and morality, the author outlines perspective directions of the theoretical interpretation of the relationship between morality and law. Using the reconstructed reasoning against the thesis of moral relativism in the social sciences recently offered by S. Lukes, the research studies the possibility of describing “moral” and “conventional” as analytically different dimensions of social norms, as well as the prospects of using the concept of “participating reactive mindsets” as a theoretical interpretation of the general source of moral emotions and judgments.