Law and morality are both products of specific economic relations in human society. Law belongs to the category of social systems

and morality belongs to the category of ideology. Both are important mechanisms for regulating social relationships and people's behavior

. Law is a code of conduct formulated and enforced by the state, while morality is a code of conduct that relies on people's inner beliefs, traditional habits and ideological education. The two are not only different from each other, but also penetrate, support, transform and complement each other. The organic combination and coordinated development of law and morality are the only way to build socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Simultaneous emphasis on law and morality: lessons from history

The relationship between law and morality has been valued by Chinese rulers throughout the ages. As early as the Western Zhou Dynasty, rulers put forward the idea of ??"clear virtue and careful punishment". It marked that the slave-owning class had a conscious awareness of the relationship between France and Germany. Confucius is the founder of Confucian ethics and moral thought. He realized that law and

morality are two different means of governing the country. He believed that the concept of virtue can only be guided by moral education.

Punishment alone will not do. He said, "Tao is governed by government, and unified by punishment, and the people are spared and shameless; Tao is governed by virtue, and unified by courtesy, there is shame and dignity" ("The Analects of Confucius: For Politics"). Qin's use of strict laws and torture

rejected morality and shortened life. The rulers of the Western Han Dynasty summed up the lessons of Qin's fall and proposed "paying equal attention to etiquette and law".

Dong Zhongshu then demonstrated that "morality dominates and punishment assists" The thought of "punishment is the aid of virtue, and yin is the aid of yang" ("Spring and Autumn Fanlu·Heaven Discrimination in Man"). Whether it is "clear virtues and careful punishments", "paying equal attention to etiquette

laws", or "morality dominates and punishments are supplemented", they are all to maintain the feudal ethics. The feudal "rule of law" is the "rule of law" under the rule of man. It is pan-moralism and uses law as a means to cooperate with the promotion of feudal ethics. For thousands of years, rulers of successive dynasties have combined ethics and morality with politics, and integrated rituals and punishments, so that rigid legal norms can be elevated to people's consciousness with the help of morality. inner beliefs and behavioral standards.

The discussion of the relationship between law and morality in the West also has a long history. As early as more than 2,000 years ago, the ancient Greek thinker Plato believed that law is a means to maintain justice, and justice means treating friends with kindness and dealing with enemies with evil. Aristotle and Socrates advocated that abiding by the law is a person's moral responsibility, and the formulation of law must focus on virtue and goodness. Aristotle once said that the actual significance of the law should be to promote a permanent system of justice and goodness that can be carried out by the people of the whole state. He believed that law should be the realization of principles of justice, virtue and happiness. Many famous Western jurists believe that people's pursuit of social moral ideals is reflected through the rule of law. The representative one is the natural law of the Stoics, which had a huge impact on Roman law and Roman jurisprudence. The core of natural law

is that law is the art of kindness and justice. Natural law constructs a value system of nature, rationality, justice, and

equality. After the 17th and 18th centuries, natural law thought was again used by bourgeois jurists as a weapon against feudal autocracy. The most prominent feature of the natural law school is that it believes that only laws that are in line with morality are effective, and laws that conflict with morality are bad laws. In the Western tradition, there are many moral concepts about "obeying the law" that we can learn from, such as Plato's "People must have laws and abide by them, otherwise their lives The famous saying "will be like the most savage beasts"; the modern "love of the law" as the core of "national morality" and so on. These moral values ??emphasize that abiding by the law is the moral responsibility of citizens, and self-discipline is a strong support for the rule of law.

It can be seen from the development of the relationship between Chinese and Western law and morality: Eastern ethical law and

Western natural law both advocate the internalization of external laws into people's conscious consciousness. Only when the law meets people's psychological and emotional needs can it be universally and consciously observed. Law and morality are interpenetrating, integrating and transforming each other.

The law always represents the most basic moral pursuits of society

For example, don't steal and don't kill are the most basic morals of society.