ABSTRACT
In modern social sciences, moral norms are generally explained as a product of individual actions or as a manifestation of adaptation to sociocultural institutions. In recent decades, theories that combine these two paradigms in various mixes have multiplied in so-called institutionalised individualism, a distinctive trait of Western morality. The chapter argues that these modalities for explaining morality reflect the structural and cultural dualisms of modern Western society and their compromises, which today face a profound crisis. The basic thesis is that moral norms are meeting processes of change characterised by the need for new relational behaviours between humans and between them and nature. The emergence of a transmodern social morality takes place in those social spheres in which relational normativity becomes the fundamental moral criterion of new social practices.
