Basic categories of professional ethics. Ethics, its subject, types, structure

1. Terminology (basic concepts) The difficulties of studying the phenomenon of mass communication are associated primarily with its truly comprehensive nature, penetration into almost all pores modern society, role and influence, sometimes implicit, hidden, which

3. Standards of library ethics 3.1. Free access to information At the beginning of the century, librarians were concerned with the issue of collecting and systematizing knowledge that was scattered throughout the world. Many of them argued that this knowledge, constantly increasing and widely disseminated,

1.1. Basic concepts First of all, let us define the semantic component of the concepts “sex” and “gender” and terms directly related to them. In English-language literature, the concepts of “gender” and “sex” are defined by one word “sex”. In Russian, the word "gender" means

Man is a social being, therefore, willy-nilly, he has to constantly communicate with other people. And given the fact that all people are different, certain rules were formed to regulate our relationships. These rules are nothing more than centuries-old concepts of good and evil, right and wrong actions, justice and injustice of actions. And every person spontaneously or consciously tries to adhere to them. Depending on what concepts are included in moral norms and ethical rules, and whether they are taken into account at all, each of us can make it difficult or easier to communicate with our own kind. And, therefore, the speed of achieving your goals, the quality of communication and life will depend on this. Therefore, every citizen needs to know at least the basics of ethics. The rules of good manners have never harmed anyone.

What is ethics

The word “ethics” was first used by Aristotle. Translated from Greek, it means “concerning morality” or “expressing certain moral beliefs.” Ethics is the doctrine of the rules of communication between people, the norms of human behavior, as well as the responsibilities of everyone towards other people. And most of us, even those who have not specifically studied the code of etiquette, are aware on a subconscious level of the main rule of interpersonal relationships: “Treat others the way you would like to be treated.” One of the main aspects of ethics is morality. What is morality? This is nothing more than a system of values ​​recognized by man. This is the most important way to regulate relationships in different areas of our lives: in everyday life, family, work, science, etc. In addition to moral foundations, ethics also studies the rules of ethics - etiquette.

Etiquette - a system of signs

Our actions carry some information: when we meet, we can pat a friend on the shoulder, nod our head, kiss, hug someone by the shoulders, or throw ourselves into a hug. A pat on the shoulder indicates familiarity; when a man stands up, if a woman enters the room, this indicates his respect for her. The postures taken by a person, the movement of the head - all this also has etiquette significance. In phraseological units one can also observe forms of etiquette: hitting with the forehead, bowing one’s head, kneeling, turning one’s back, throwing down a glove, putting one’s hand on one’s heart, stroking the head, bowing, a beautiful gesture, etc.

Etiquette is not only a historical, but also a geographical phenomenon: not all signs of etiquette that are perceived positively in the West will be approved in the East. And some gestures that are acceptable today were categorically condemned in the old days.

Rules of good manners

Every person should know what ethics is and what rules it includes. Below we will present the basic concepts of good manners.

The communication that we allow ourselves at home with loved ones is not always acceptable in society. And remembering the statement that you will not have a second chance to make a first impression, we try to adhere to generally accepted rules of behavior in society when meeting strangers. Here are some of them:

• in a company or at an official meeting, it is necessary to introduce strangers to each other;
• try to remember the names of the people introduced to you;
• when a man and a woman meet, a representative of the fairer sex is never introduced first, the exception being the situation if the man is the president or the meeting is of a purely business nature;
• the younger ones are presented as the older ones;
• when presenting, you must stand up if you are sitting;
• after an acquaintance, the conversation begins with someone older in position or age, with the exception of the case when an awkward pause occurs;
• finding yourself with strangers at the same table, before you start eating, you need to get to know your neighbors;
• When shaking hands, look into the face of the person you are greeting;
• the palm should be extended strictly vertically, edge down - this means “communication as equals”;
• remember that any non-verbal gesture means no less than the spoken word;
• when shaking hands on the street, be sure to take off your gloves, with the exception of women;
• When meeting, the first question after greeting should be “How are you?” or “How are you?”;
• during a conversation, do not raise questions that may be unpleasant to the interlocutor;
• do not discuss anything that concerns opinions and tastes;
• don't praise yourself;
• watch the tone of the conversation, remember that neither work, nor family relationships, nor your mood give you the right to be impolite with others;
• It is not customary to whisper in a company;
• if, when saying goodbye, you know that you will meet soon, you should say: “Goodbye!”, “See you!”;
• when saying goodbye forever or for a long time, say: “Goodbye!”;
• at an official event you must say: “Allow me to say goodbye!”, “Let me say goodbye!”.

Teaching children secular ethics

In order for a child to grow into a worthy member of society, he must know what ethics is. The child must not only be told about the rules of behavior in society, at the table, at school, but also demonstrate and confirm these rules by his own example. No matter how much you tell your child that it is necessary to give up your seat to older people in public transport, without setting an example for him, you will never teach him to do this. Not every child is taught the basics of secular ethics at home. Therefore, the school is trying to fill this gap. Recently, the school curriculum has included the subject “Fundamentals of Secular Ethics.” During the lessons, children are taught about the rules and norms of behavior in various places, taught culinary etiquette, proper table setting and much more. Teachers also talk about moral principles and discuss what is good and bad. This item is extremely necessary for the child. After all, knowing how to behave correctly in society will make life easier and more interesting for him.

What's happened

There is such a thing as a code of professional ethics. These are the rules governing professional activities. Each profession has its own code. So, doctors have a rule of non-disclosure of medical confidentiality, lawyers, businessmen - everyone adheres to a code of ethics. Every self-respecting company has its own corporate code. Such enterprises value their reputation more than their finances.

Conclusion

A man without etiquette is a savage, a barbarian. It is the rules of morality that give a person the right to consider himself the crown of creation. By teaching your child what ethics is from an early age, you increase his chances of growing up to be a full-fledged member of society.

One of the main features that distinguishes philosophy from other disciplines of organized knowledge is usually called, and quite rightly, that it always, by its very nature, has difficulties with “scientific progress” and it invariably returns to those problems and dilemmas , which were set and, it would seem, already decided at the dawn of its history. Modern physicists and mathematicians no longer have the slightest need to turn to the problems that once faced Archimedes or Euclid, while today's Oxford ethicists and their overseas colleagues continue, albeit in the newest terminological guise, to solve problems posed by the older sophists and students of Socrates . Therefore, the phenomenon of ethical naturalism, which has already been repeatedly addressed by historians of ethics and which was once again very clearly outlined by Piama Pavlovna, provokes new, perhaps unnecessary, but, as it was found out, inevitable clarifications and details for philosophical consciousness of what is like would have been completely clear by now. Another reason for the appearance of these comments is that the ethical naturalism of the 19th century, which Piama Pavlovna mainly writes about, is reproduced and gives new “morphoses” to the present day, defining both the mentality of several eras of new positivism and the mentality that is now usually called postmodern, and we would call it poststructuralist mythology. Therefore, the upcoming comments will concern all three theoretically possible aspects of the consideration of “ethical naturalism” - conceptual, historical, and evaluative - they will precisely do so, because a more thorough entry into this topic, inexhaustible in material, will, of course, destroy all genre boundaries of the dialogue.

1. The designation of a certain number of philosophers as “naturalists”, which gives the impression of being quite ancient, was introduced into use relatively late - in the 16th–17th centuries, when Christian apologists F. de Marnay, R. Carpenter and G. Voetius began to call those who attributed everything that happened in the world to nature, denying the supernatural, or, in other words, atheists. But the phrase ethical naturalism, which became generally accepted among ethicists, was legitimized much later - after the treatise of the outstanding English philosopher J. Moore Principia Ethica(1903), from which a new stage in the history of ethics begins - metaethics. The essence of the new approach was that if ethicists before Moore had been arguing for more than two thousand years about what is good and evil in human behavior and what are the means of realizing the first and avoiding the second, proposing a variety of solutions to these issues, then Moore turned to finding out what what are these questions themselves from a logical-semantic point of view, what is the nature of ethical judgments in which the terms are involved good, evil And behavior, and what, finally, is the degree of definability of these initial terms. Study of the degree of definition of a concept good and led him to the formulation of the famous principle naturalistic fallacy(the naturalistic fallacy), which is that good, which as a concept of the absolutely “simple” turns out to be fundamentally indefinable (the task of definition as such is, first of all, the decomposition of the defined concept into “indivisible” parts), they try to define it through some other concepts, making the mistake that from a completely correct judgment like Pleasure is good or Sanity is good, the logically illegal step of type inversion is taken Good is pleasure or Good is sanity, because here it is not taken into account that if everything good has at the same time some other properties, then it does not follow from this that the establishment of the latter is thereby already the definition of good. As his predecessor, Moore names the great English ethicist of the last century, G. Sidgwick, who subjected a similar criticism to the definition of good in the founder of utilitarianism, I. Bentham, and I would consider Plato as such, who clearly showed (although did not yet prove) the indeterminability of good in his “ being” and its definability only through its individual “energies”. Considering good, therefore, to be an “atomic” concept, which makes no sense to define it through those closest to it, since they contain it within themselves, Moore was absolutely right. Moreover, what is true regarding agathology (as we prefer to call the study of the good-ўgaqТn, which is, in our opinion, a separate area of ​​philosophical research from ethics, which, however, serves as the basis of the latter), is also applicable to axiology, since all known For us, definitions of “value” are also the essence of defining it through that in which it itself is already presupposed.

Let us return, however, to naturalistic fallacy. According to Moore, its essence is that the good is reduced to some other thing, and ethical theories based on this error are divided into those that connect this “other thing” with some “natural” object such as pleasure (about which we know from direct experience) or with an object existing in some supersensible world (which we can only judge indirectly). He calls theories of the first type naturalistic, the second - metaphysical. It follows from this that Moore’s “ethical naturalism” has two dimensions: in a general sense - as any heteronomous interpretation of the good (regardless of the nature of the heteronomy itself), in a special sense - as an interpretation of the good within the framework of “natural things”.

Since Moore, metaethics (a term that has become popular since the 1930s thanks to Moore's followers, many of whom have since diverged from him) has gone through at least four stages (the last at the present time), determined by which interpretations of ethical judgments turn out to be dominant. Until the 1930s, the prevailing currents intuitionism- the understanding of these judgments, going back to Moore himself, as based on an intuitive comprehension of good (due to its essential indefinability); in the 1930s–1950s - emotivism, first radical in B. Russell and A. Ayer, who saw in them only an expression of emotions, devoid of both information and meaning, then moderate in C. Stevenson, who tried to soften this interpretation; in the 1950s–1960s - linguistic analysis the language of morality in R. Heer; from 1970–1980s - direction prescriptivism, according to which ethical judgments have only an imperative (prescriptive) and not a descriptive (descriptive) character, developed by the same Heer, but also by W. Frankena and partly by the Oxford ethicists D. Warnock and F. Foot. In addition to the analysis of ethical judgments, the subject of metaethics is (as the second subject tier of this philosophical discipline) the analysis of the language of the ethicists themselves and their concepts.

Leaving aside the disputes of various directions of metaethics on all other issues, we note three approaches to the definition of the concept of “ethical naturalism” that have developed to date. The first does not distinguish between the two levels of this concept in Moore that we have identified above - “ethical naturalism” as a way of constructing definitions of the good (regardless of whether one here agrees with the very interpretation of the “naturalistic error” in Moore or rejects it) and the worldview within which heteronomous understanding of good. The second approach reduces the sought-for concept only to a way of constructing a definition of goodness, correlating “ethical naturalism” with any approaches to the interpretation of ethical judgments as descriptive. The third takes into account two dimensions of “ethical naturalism” in the form:

1) attempts to include ethics in the series of ordinary scientific knowledge, in which the predicates of ethical judgments are interpreted as “natural” or objectively verifiable;
2) worldview, which is based on “metaphysical naturalism” and reduces moral life to the “natural”, opposing any attempts to understand it based on anthropology, which allows for the interpretation of man as a spiritual or rationally free being.

Thus, modern philosophical (more precisely metaphilosophical) language allows us to consider that the term “ethical naturalism” can be interpreted in three senses.

Firstly, as the position of those metaethicists who interpret any ethical judgment, e.g. Treating our neighbors well is our responsibility., as not only imperative, but also factual. Although such an interpretation of such a judgment seems doubtful, it is, however, only with great difficulty associated with what “naturalism” is usually associated with in our minds.

Secondly, as the position of those philosophers who derive the phenomenon of good from some other, “objective” factors, in relation to which it is secondary. This position is also not associated, from the point of view of common sense, directly with “naturalism”, for it is shared by both Marxists, for whom morality is a product (albeit relatively independent) of socio-economic relations, and Thomists, for whom it is a “natural” self-expression of nature man as a created bodily-spiritual being. But the important point here is that both of these approaches (along with very many others), with all their radical mutual exclusivity, must be attributed to the theories of heteronomous ethics, which is opposed exclusively by a rare class of philosophers - in the person of Kant, Moore (although the second of them did not recognize the proximity of his “kinship” with the first) and their “orthodox” followers who denied this heteronomy. We will specifically address this circumstance later.

Thirdly, as the position of those thinkers who base their ethical constructions on naturalistic anthropology, deduced, in turn, from naturalistic cosmology. In this sense, the term “ethical naturalism” acquires its distinctive, special meaning. In this most legitimate sense, it is also used by Piama Pavlovna, whose definition of the corresponding ethical theories needs only one clarification: that they look for the prerequisites of ethical principles not just in “nature” (which is a comprehensive concept), but in the nature of man, in which they recognize only two components - bodily and mental - and from which the third is excluded - its spiritual-substantial core.

2. The classification of trends in ethical naturalism of the 19th century proposed by Piama Pavlovna is convincing and does not require special comments, since the division into utilitarians, evolutionists, sociocentrists and “vitalists” is quite exhaustive (if you do not include various “intermediate” figures who tried to combine to one degree or another all four basic principles, which in general was not difficult). It is only necessary to expand the panorama of “philosophy of life” as a direction of naturalistic ethics, which in a certain sense turned out to be a priority in the twentieth century. Here we can first of all note two figures that are striking in their mutual dissimilarity.

F. Paulsen (1846–1908), whose famous book “Fundamentals of Ethics” (1889) went through 12 editions, belonged to the group of “scientists” that prevailed in the last century and believed in the omnipotence of science. A classical eclecticist, who at different stages of his ideological evolution experienced all possible influences from Kant to Spinoza and declared recognition of the spiritual essence of the universe and man, he nevertheless saw the closest analogue of ethical science in medical science and, verbally recognizing the completely indisputable remarks that were already made in his time due to the fact that ethics teaches that there must be, and not about what There is, nevertheless insisted on the kinship of the “ethical method” with the method of the empirical sciences. The truths of moral laws are experimentally verifiable. Moral laws do not flow from the transcendental source of life, as well as from the “inner voice” (that is, conscience), being “an expression of the internal laws of human life.” Where the demands of life are met, the moral law has the force of a biological law. The highest good, therefore, is a perfect human life, in which the individual achieves full development and manifestation of all his powers. But life is varied, and this is its perfection. Since the morality of an individual is rooted in the peculiarities of his life manifestation, we cannot avoid the conclusion that the morality of an Englishman is different from the morality of a Negro, and even that it should legitimately differ between a man and a woman, a merchant and a professor, etc. (and also, they added we would have the killer and the one who saves his victims). It is impossible, however, not to recognize general moral norms, “but only in a limited form,” since the main features of organization and living conditions are the same for all people... .

J. M. Guyot (1854–1888), “the French Nietzsche,” also swore an oath on the “book of science,” but his vitalism was much less philistine and revealed features of enthusiastic romanticism. Guyot sharply criticized both the egoistic and altruistic hedonism of the English utilitarians: pleasure is not the goal of our vitality, but only its manifestation, as well as suffering, avoiding which is like being afraid to breathe deeply, and Spencer's evolutionism: all the demands of my subconscious accumulated instincts can collapse in an instant before my determination free will. The main principle of morality is the principle of “expansion and fertility of life”, in which both egoism and altruism merge, and duty (which, like Paulsen, also has no sanction from God or conscience) must be replaced by the consciousness of “inner power” . Guyot proposes to radically rethink the basic ethical imperative: from I can because I have to should be abandoned in favor I can, therefore I must. The concept of duty is replaced by other principles of ethics: the ability to act as such, the idea of ​​higher activity, the “social character of sublime pleasures” and, finally, the desire for physical and moral risk. Man has nothing to hope for in this world other than himself, but is there any truth in the myth of Hercules, who helped his mother nature free herself from the deformities she generated and raised a sparkling firmament above the earth? And can’t we, free beings (for whom creative work takes the place of prayer), wandering in the ocean of this world, like on a ship without a rudder, make this rudder ourselves?!

The long list of editions of naturalistic ethics of the twentieth century, which Piama Pavlovna cited, needs only one significant addition - the worldview of post-structuralist myth-making, which could rather be defined even not so much as a worldview (unless the worldview, of course, does not include the “sublation” of any worldview ), much like Zeitgeist - “spirit of the times”. The ethical attitudes of the consciousness of poststructuralists, the main component of which is neo-Freudianism (their closest connection with the head of the Parisian Freudians, J. Lacan, turned out to be for the entire movement in in a certain sense defining), are clearly demonstrated in the unfinished monumental “History of Sexuality” by M. Foucault (1976–1984), who found opportunities to introduce Nietzscheanism into it (which, in general, was not very difficult to do).

Foucault, as follows from the prolegomena that appeared in the introduction to the second volume of his anthropological epic, claimed to be the author of two major discoveries in the field of ethics. The first was that previous moral histories had been written as histories of moral systems based on prohibitions, whereas he opened up the possibility of writing a history of ethical problematizations based on technology yourself(techniques de soi); we are talking about the historical formation of such self-conscious behavior of an individual, which allows him to become a conscious ethical subject, overcoming given and socially sanctioned codes of behavior. Another presumption of Foucault was the discovery of the fact that Freud did not discover the world of the unconscious as such, but only its “logic” (let us note the absurdity of the phrase “logic of the unconscious”), and psychoanalysis itself is on a par with the “practices” of confession and repentance , as well as those “developed forms of recognition” that have developed within the framework of judicial, psychiatric, medical, pedagogical and other practices. The subject of history that Foucault worked on is person willing(l'homme d№sirant), and the new anthropology is genealogy of a wishing person- almost genealogy of morality Nietzsche. This genealogy reveals the fact that technology yourself turned out to be underestimated in history and needs rehabilitation. The reason for this is the dual role of Christianity in human history(and this, let us not forget, is the history of the art of existence as life techniques). On the one hand, Christian spiritual practice is a direct descendant of Greco-Roman self-care, ethical work(Foucault writes, in particular, about the “practice of marital fidelity” as one of the ethical exercises), on the other hand, Christianity turns out to be a clear step back in comparison with antiquity: the Christian “practitioner” is focused more on compliance with a certain code of conduct (associated with the “Departure of pastoral power"), Hellenic - on “forms of subjectification”. The starting point for an adequate categorization of morality is the Greek “use of pleasure,” to which correspond, on completely equal grounds, the four “major axes of experience”: the relationship of a mature husband to the body, to his wife, to boys and, finally, to truth. Each of these four attachments-practices was for the harmonious Hellene a mode of the true “art of existence,” and the rigorism on which Christianity insisted was only one of the types technology yourself, in Foucauldian language, “ethical concern regarding sexual behavior.”

3. Piama Pavlovna’s conclusion that representatives of naturalistic ethics cannot provide a justification for the objectivity of moral norms and resolve the question of what is the essence of morality seems completely indisputable because in their justification of morality the logically most authoritative principle of sufficient reason is violated. The reason for this is the very naturalistic heteronomy in the understanding of morality, in which it is deduced from non-moral (and not super-moral, but sub-moral) foundations.

The principles of pleasure and benefit cannot be such grounds because they themselves are morally completely neutral and can be moral only when the motives of the acting subject are moral; when these motives are immoral, then they are also immoral, but in any case, the moral content of the act is not determined by them, but, on the contrary, is introduced into them by moral attitudes independent of them. The principle of evolution cannot be the basis of morality because the latter is the sphere only of the human world, but not of the subhuman world, in which it is not moral motives that operate, but only instincts, even the high degree of complexity and development of which (in the case of individual species) cannot fill that global abyss that separates them from the free moral choice, and there can be no “connecting links” between one and the other. The sociological principle cannot be such a basis because its explanatory power is significantly reduced by the presence of a logical circle: the morality of an individual is deduced from socio-economic relations, which themselves, in turn, are inexplicable without taking into account the moral (respectively, immoral) attitudes of those participating in them and creating their individuals; Another defect of this principle is that in its practical implementation it is based on a direct denial of what follows from the second formulation of Kant’s categorical imperative: the individual here is always only a means for the interests of “large numbers”, but never an end-in-itself . Finally, the principle of fullness of vitality can be neither an explanation nor a criterion of morality because vitality as such can manifest itself from a moral point of view in the widest range of possibilities (from the direction of vitality in Mother Teresa to its direction in the Marquis de Sade). Therefore, it is exceptionally characteristic that even the most loyal “vitalist” to morality, Professor Paulsen (who did not openly proclaim either the ideal “beyond good and evil”, like Nietzsche, or, like Guyot, “morality without duties and sanctions”) comes to the moral relativism, believing quite consistently that there can be as many moralities as there are nationalities and professions, happily returning at the very end of the century of self-satisfied scientific progressivism to the “philosophy of life” of Protagoras, as well as Callicles and Thrasymachus, whom Plato’s Socrates tried to dissuade from such views.

I will leave it to the reader to evaluate the possibility of justifying morality on the basis of various versions of Freudianism. About the version presented technology yourself Foucault, we can say that from a spiritual point of view it is of particular interest because, according to the words of St. Gregory Palamas, “a mind that has departed from God becomes either bestial or demonic,” and the human ideal defended here clearly opens up some third state , which does not reach the level of the demonic due to the absence, despite attempts to imitate Nietzscheanism, of a real “will to power” and differs from an animal due to the inferiority of its biologism. This flaw is seen in the fact that the very desire of Foucault’s “desiring man” is ultimately directed not at any other being in this world, but at himself. The fact that the recognized leader of postmodernism did not see anything more in Christian spiritual practice technology yourself, is quite natural, because it would be more than strange to expect from him, in the words of Piama Pavlovna, “a breakthrough to the transcendental.” It is unfair that Foucault attributes his worldview to boundless egocentrism (and not heroic, as it was, for example, in M. Stirner, the author of the famous “The One and His Property,” and not even sodomy, but, turning to other biblical realities, rather masturbatory shade) to the always socially minded Hellenes. In any case, it is obvious that here is the culmination of ethical naturalism, since the “technology of the self” openly focuses on the anthropology according to which man is only a body and the “desiring part” of the soul. In this, Foucault decisively departs from Plato, who is sympathetic to him in other respects, for the latter, even before Christianity, distinguished a third part in the composition of human nature - the realm of the rational, goal-setting, self-positing and governing two other parts of the spirit, which in this earthly world continues to remain a citizen of the transcendental world. And this distancing is quite understandable, because with the recognition of this one “dual citizenship” of the subject of moral consciousness and action, which was subsequently deeply comprehended by Kant, all the dilapidated buildings of naturalistic anthropology and, accordingly, ethics are destroyed like a house of cards.

Ending. For the beginning, see No. 4(22) for 1999.

In introducing my new scholia to Piama Pavlovna’s text, I consider it necessary to note from the very beginning that now our tasks with her are significantly more complicated in comparison with the previous dialogue. In fact, to draw a conclusion about the inconsistency of naturalistic justifications of morality based on the naturalistic interpretation of man as a generic or individual psychosomatic organization (as most of the characters in our previous conversation saw him - from Spencer to Foucault) or as a “social form of the movement of matter” (as in at one time, one of our leading specialists in history and mathematics identified a person) is relatively simple. To do this, it is quite enough to pay attention to the one-dimensionality of the corresponding anthropology and to the fact that the moral cannot in any way be derived from the pre-moral (for in this case the venerable principle of sufficient reason is violated). A completely different matter is anti-naturalistic concepts of morality, which presuppose, firstly, an anthropology that is fundamentally non-one-dimensional and, secondly, that which is unthinkable even for the highest and respectable “naturalism” (which includes in the “natural” not only the biological and social instincts of man, but also all the “souls” beautiful impulses”) an approach to morality in which it is not reducible to any “naturalness”. Like any multidimensional phenomena, these concepts are themselves complex and distinct from each other; they constitute essentially different “ethical worlds”, united only by Wittgenstein’s “family resemblances”, and not by those very close ties of complementarity that connect, for example, Marxism and Freudianism in the naturalism of French postmodernism.

The complexity of the subject, or more precisely, based on what has just been said, the subjects of discussion predetermines not only our inevitable aberrations, but also “discrepancies”, which are also determined by our personal interest in the topic. Naturalistic concepts of ethics evoked in us, in addition to awareness of their logical inconsistency, also a solidary feeling of hostility, while their antipodes, on the contrary, evoked a feeling of undisguised sympathy; but, as a rule, they do not sympathize with everything equally, and therefore the situation here is similar to the one when, as Aristotle noted in connection with Love and Enmity in Empedocles, the second rather unites, and the first separates.

I conclude this preamble with my readiness to follow the dialogue plan proposed by Piama Pavlovna, starting with her general classification anti-naturalistic concepts of ethics, continuing with considerations in connection with each of the conceptual blocks she outlines and concluding with an attempt, in her words, “to show what the strengths and weaknesses of each of them are.”

1. The threefold classification of anti-naturalistic concepts of ethics that Piama Pavlovna proposes seems to me to be completely justified and quite comprehensive. It includes, firstly, Kant (and rightly so, because although chronologically he only precedes the period we are considering, but, as she quite rightly notes, his influence on this entire period is “difficult to overestimate”), secondly, the axiological continental and partly analytical British ethical traditions of the 19th–20th centuries. and thirdly, theistic ethics. Of course, the second block needs a little more unification, which includes a lot, but, as we will see below, it actually contains something beyond a mechanical unification of the main European anti-naturalistic concepts of a certain period.

The fact that they anti-naturalistic in the literal sense, there is also no doubt - all of them, starting with Kant’s, are built through direct opposition to naturalistic concepts of varying amounts of content.

But here is a positive generic description of the representatives of all these movements as those who sought to create absolute ethics needs, in my opinion, more clarifications than those that were proposed. This ethics, according to Piama Pavlovna’s definition, presupposes:

(1) consideration of the moral principle as “valuable in itself, as an end in itself”;
(2) consideration of man as “a moral being by nature.”

Both of these signs of “ethical absolutism” are not entirely normative. Point (2) needs, in addition to this, an additional qualification, namely, that a person in anti-naturalistic concepts is a being who has opportunity to be moral, because if he were considered moral by nature, then these concepts would be just naturalistic, albeit in such a sublime sense as Stoic, Rousseauian or Humean, but then from here it would be necessary to immediately exclude the ethics of Kant, the “Copernican revolution” of which consisted in the fact that, according to this ethics , the value world, in which the moral is the highest value, is created by the acting subject as something that is fundamentally new in comparison with its “nature” and is in no way (which is the difference from any form of ethical sentimentalism) not reducible to it. As for point (1), in a strict sense only Kantian ethics corresponds to it, and then only in one of its, albeit the most important, but still not the only dimension. In connection with phenomenology, more serious differentiations are already required. For N. Hartmann, morality indeed, in a certain sense, completes the value series. But in M. Scheler it refers to the third level of “value modalities” (opposition fair/unfair) along with aesthetic and epistemological values ​​(which philosophy seeks to realize) and cultural values. The highest value modality, fourth in “rank” and clearly separable from the one in which the moral is included, turns out to be the modality of the sacred (opposition saint/unholy), which reveals itself only in those objects that are given as absolute in intention, and all other values, including moral ones, are its symbols. Moreover, Scheler, about whom Piama Pavlovna deservedly speaks a lot, builds his intuitionist axiology on the comprehension of the “rank” of a particular value, which is carried out in a special act of cognition - internal “certainty of preference” for higher ranks over lower ones, including the sacred moral . As for theistic concepts, they - and this is their real divergence from Kant's - consider morality only a means, although absolutely necessary, but not yet sufficient for the realization of the highest goal of human existence, and in no way the goal about which it was said that The eye has not seen, the ear has not heard, and what God has prepared for those who love Him has not entered into the heart of man.(1 Cor 2:9), while the ear has repeatedly heard about moral things and it has also come to the heart of man.

2. Moving on to individual anti-naturalistic “blocks” in ethics, I will begin in the suggested order with Kant’s.

2.1. Exposition of the principles of Kantian ethical perfectionism Piama Pavlovna’s is truly “perfect”; what has been said also applies to her disclosure of the Kantian justification moral action through the autonomy of good will alone with the exclusion of any natural inclinations from the moral sphere, as well as to the identification of the most important content of his concept of “double ontological citizenship” of man as a citizen of the kingdoms of nature and freedom (I note that for Kant ethics is not built on the basis of ontology , but on the contrary - the “jewel” of practical reason requires the assumption of a “box” necessary for its storage). Only two points need clarification.

First. The opinion that “Kant sought to preserve the main content of Christian ethics, but at the same time free himself from its religious prerequisites - from the doctrine of God and the immortality of the soul. True, Kant did not succeed in completely freeing himself from these premises...”, is one of those, although accepted, but by no means indisputable. From the end of the 18th to the end of the 20th centuries. number of works per different languages(including in Russian), specifically or contextually touching on the most complex topic “Kant and Religion,” could make up a good library, and trying to seriously deal with it again within the framework of our dialogue is completely unrealistic. But I still think that it is not entirely correct to state the failure of Kant’s attempts to “free himself” from the religious prerequisites of Christian ethics while wanting to preserve its “matter” - due to the absence of the very desire for this “liberation”. To assert the opposite, one must consider either Kant’s hypocrisy, admitted for purely opportunistic reasons, or a reflection of his own misunderstanding of his entire system, his famous revelation of the directly opposite “liberation” in the famous preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (1787): “Therefore I had to eliminate knowledge in order to make room for faith” (Ich musste also das Wissen aufheben, um zum Glauben Platz zu bekommen). But it seems that it is unlikely that anyone who imagines Kant’s personality would dare to draw such a conclusion. Even his most “seditious” treatise, from the point of view of his theistic critics, “Religion within the Limits of Reason Only” (1793), does not contradict the quoted “memorandum” of Kant. In the preface to the second edition, which appeared a year later, he very carefully clarifies that “religion within the limits of reason alone” means limitation by the “limits” not so much of religion as of reason, since “revelation” and “pure religion of reason” are correlated there as two concentric circle, of which the first contains the second. True, according to the preface to the first edition, these circles could be imagined rather as adjacent, but certainly not in the sense that the first circle was denied altogether or even included in the second.

What is true is true: Kant changed his positions both in connection with the “institution” of theology and in connection with its very subject, and was truly obsessed with the idea of ​​​​building a self-sufficient moral ideal that could justify the imperative of a completely “disinterested practical reason”, motivation of which there would be one without a conditional sense of duty without any other “compensation”, even such as eternal bliss. From the standpoint of consistent and confessional theism, this is, of course, an obvious aberration, since only an Uncreated Being can lay claim to unselfishness in the absolute sense, but not a created one, in whose “essence,” in the language of medieval scholastics, the necessity of its “existence” is not inherent. But, firstly, Kant also realized theological super-tasks here, primarily the substantiation of the existence of God through the goal-setting of practical reason (which he distinguished from what can be conventionally called the motive of this reason), designed to replace pseudo-evidence from metaphysics (reducing, in the parameters his systems, Divine being to the level of “appearance”). Secondly, Kant’s insistence on the self-sufficiency of the sense of obligation fits quite organically into the completely Christian debates of the New Age, for example, into the famous polemic that late XVII V. led by two prominent French theologians J. Bossuet and Fenelon (F. de Salignac de la Mothe), of whom the second also defended the possibility and even the necessity of serving God without the prospect of eternal bliss. Therefore, recognizing the complete non-church, partial non-confessionalism and insufficient consistency of Kant’s theism, we would still not dare to talk about his desire to free ethics from “Christian premises,” especially considering that one of the most important such premises is the awareness of the limitations of the human mind and the need for him to have a “sense of distance” in relation to the Transcendent - was present in him to a much greater extent than in those philosophers who, in ethics, as in metaphysics, proceeded from the presumption that any being, including the Divine, is divided on human concepts without a trace, but for some reason they were and are considered very Christian (connected with this thoughtlessness is, for example, the fact that in our country Hegel, already from the first half of the 19th century, was often considered almost the revivalist of Christianity, “suffered ”after the destructive work of Kantian philosophy).

Second. Surprisingly, Kant’s ethical absolutism was less absolute than it usually seems, because it extended... only to the “absolute”, and not to the “relative”. Namely, the imperative of unconditional obligation appeared in its rights in connection with a person as a citizen of the intelligible world (noumenal subject), but not of the earthly (empirical subject). This conclusion follows from a comparison of “Critique of Practical Reason” (1788) with the lectures “Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View” (last lifetime publications - 1798 and 1800), which, as a rule, are rarely referred to by both admirers and critics of the philosopher. Leaving pure obligation for the first subject, Kant provides the second practical advice, which are as far from the demands of perfectionism as earth from heaven: young people are recommended to have a temperate lifestyle only because intemperance will deplete their ability to receive the necessary pleasures in the future, married women should not reject their “seekers”, because they can all be useful, and so and to others - advice in the spirit of prudent epicureanism. Such a relapse of eudaimonism “through the back door” can hardly be explained by the fact that Kant, in his old age, “relaxed” in all respects and decided to abandon his high moral teaching. Rather, as an “experimenter,” he demonstrated an inversion of his method: in “Critique of Practical Reason” and in “Religion within the Limits of Reason Only,” he in a certain sense deduced ontology from practical reason, and here - morality from the ontology of the individual, from that very “dual citizenship ”, giving all due credit to the “empirical individual”. When the romantics, whose libertinist ethics seems to be only a “dialectical negation” of Kantian perfectionism, develop the ideas of the plurality of hypostases of the same individual (each of which is completely autonomous), this will be the development of a marginal, but very real perspective inherent in the multidimensional world of Kantian philosophy.

2.2. Continental axiologists and “island” ethicists are brought together not only by individual explicit recognitions of internal kinship, such as that expressed by J. Moore, admitting in 1903 that of all the philosophers he was closest to F. Brentano. Their deep closeness is seen in the fact that their research was a new and very fruitful attempt to revive platonism after the reception of Kantian criticism. It could not be any other way, since it is Platonism that is the basic alternative to any naturalistic constructions. In both cases, the eidetic interpretation of the fundamental ethical categories and realities is accepted: among the followers of Brentano - in the form of a hierarchy of goods that form the organism of the intelligible cosmos and determine the nature of their material carriers, but are not determined by the latter; among Moore and those who followed him - in the form of recognition “atomicity” - indivisibility and indefinability - concepts benefits and the impossibility of reducing it to any “clarifying” concepts such as benefit, since the latter are determined by it and therefore cannot add to our knowledge about itself. The first of these models goes back to the hierarchy of goods according to Philebus (66a-c), the second - to the justification of the indeterminability, apophatic nature of goods in the State (505b–506b). Another similarity - Piama Pavlovna also notes it - is in the intuitionistic understanding of eidetic values ​​and, accordingly, the good, as well as other ethical categories, and it follows from the first: that which cannot be logically deduced from anything can only be comprehended through special “speculation”. The third similarity is the problem of “criteriology”, or the search for those carriers of this “speculation” on whom one could be guided while living in the empirical world: the function of philosophers, to whom Plato entrusted the management of the state, is performed by Brentano and Moore’s followers by a special, “eidetic” thus experienced people, authentic bearers of wisdom and cultural values, whose judgments in the “use of intuitions” can be considered as a model for others.

Finally, they are brought closer to Plato by the Aristotelian components in the argumentation of their critics: the main complaint in both cases was that the proposed eidetic realities were too far from practical life, did not offer verifiable criteria and did not provide reliable methods for solving specific behavioral problems (in the case with British analysts there were also “Aristotelian” complaints in connection with the abuse of mathematical analogies in the analysis of ethical categories). That Moore and his followers were bombarded with this kind of argument is not surprising: this is the birthplace of utilitarianism. It is interesting that similar claims in Germany were put forward by philosophers so far from utilitarianism as the existentialists O. Bolno (1903–1990) and M. Heidegger. The second, also in the Aristotelian spirit, criticized the basic axiological concepts: good is determined through value, which, in turn, is determined through good; the same is the relationship between value and the concepts of significance, purpose and reason; in other words, axiology introduces us to logical circles. Being, thus, pseudo-concepts, values ​​are responsible for the pseudo-existence of the individual (let’s not forget about the very significant Nietzschean component in Heidegger’s existentialism): humanity naively believes that any attempt on them threatens the collapse of its existence. The difference between Heidegger and Aristotle was, however, that the latter, disavowing Platonic idealism, tried to replace it with scientific realism, and not with the movement “from logos to myth”, did not pretend to be a priest-hierophant of being and did not pass off his own games with language as the language of existence itself. However, the pathos of the existentialists is understandable: the philosophy of values ​​had (with a certain perspective, namely when turning to the “logic of the heart”, which Scheler sought after Pascal), significant opportunities for substantiating a new existential philosophy, and her rivals did everything possible to “neutralize” her.

What Piama Pavlovna said about continental axiologists needs, in my opinion, only one clarification and two small additions. G. Lotze did not “introduce” the category of values ​​into philosophy - in ancient philosophy this was done by the author of the pseudo-Platonic “Hipparchus” and the Stoics, and in modern philosophy - to the greatest extent by the same Kant, on whom Lotze also relied, truly remarkable and now almost forgotten philosopher, although he polemicized with the formalistic principle of his ethics (by the way, long before Scheler, who was less original here than is commonly believed). Lotze’s merit rather lay in the fact that after his publications (as well as after Nietzsche’s “revaluation of all values”) that “axiological boom” began in the philosophy of the late 19th - early 20th centuries, which I already wrote about on the pages of this publication. The additions may be due to the fact that among the axiologists-anti-naturalists it would be appropriate to name another outstanding student of Brentano - A. von Meinong. Already in the book “Psychological and Ethical Research on the Theory of Values” (1897), he sharply criticized many of the principles of axiological subjectivism, considering it untenable to derive the value of an object from its desirability or ability to satisfy our needs, since the relationships here are rather opposite: it is desirable for us and satisfies ours needs are what we already consider valuable to us. Mainong, however, believed that the subjectivity of value experiences is proven by the fact that the same object evokes different value feelings in different individuals, and sometimes in the same person, but even at the same time he saw in the feeling of value only a symptom of value, the only phenomenally accessible to us in it, and therefore leaving room for the noumenal valuable, which is not limited to the framework of the subject. Later, in “Foundations for the General Theory of Values” (1923), he defines “personal value” as the suitability of an object to serve, thanks to its property, as an object of value experiences, and value as such is the meaning of the existence of an object for the subject, and along with personal values, he states the presence and transpersonal, “should be values ​​for every subject” - truth, goodness and beauty. Two other prominent representatives of phenomenology are G. Rainer, who in the book “The Principle of Good and Evil” (1949) tried to reflect Heidegger’s attacks on axiology and defended primarily moral values ​​(based on anthropological data), as well as R. Ingarden, who developed axiological ideas of Husserl and Scheler and distinguished between carriers of ethical and aesthetic values: the first are personalities, the second are works of art.

From English-language anti-naturalistic ethics, I would like to pay somewhat more attention to the direction that begins with G. Pritchard mentioned by Piama Pavlovna (undeservedly forgotten now even in English-language literature) and received the designation deontology- a creative synthesis of the basic principles of Kant and Moore]. The main emphasis of deontologists is to consider “right” as a categorization of such
same “atomic” and indivisible sui generis, like “good” (good). Believing that only the second is such, Moore, according to deontologists, himself makes a concession to utilitarianism (in English terminology consequentialism- see note 2 on p. 230), reducing the right to “producing the maximum good.” In his famous essay “Is Moral Philosophy Based on Error?” (1912) Pritchard, also influenced by J. C. Wilson, argued that one of the fundamental errors of ethics was the attempt to rationalize our duties. A moral obligation cannot be interpreted as an action that must be performed because the consequence of doing so will be greater good than when performing an alternative action. Calculations of consequences do not work here: we can either have a direct perception of duty or not, and the main task of ethics is to bring to the consciousness of the individual the indispensability of this “direct vision” of duty.

The problem of judgment analysis This action is correct Charles Broad, one of the elders of metaethics, also dealt with this in his famous book “Five Types of Ethical Theory” (1920). W. Ross, a leading researcher of Plato and Aristotle, in his classic treatise “The Right and the Good” (1930), as well as in “Foundations of Ethics” (1939), accepts Prichard’s deontological intuitionism, developing it in the identification of judgments This action is correct= This action is due be perfect, but also introduces the concept of presumption of debt, partly of legal origin ( prima facie duty). The latter concept, in turn, is identified with the concept of duty, which is relevant in all cases except those in which more significant moral motives outweigh. For example, the duty to keep one’s promises is relevant completely regardless of the consequences, but can in one situation or another be “neutralized” by a more significant duty - not to commit an atrocity or to prevent its commission. Accordingly, we have no general rules, other than the same specific “discretion,” which of the primary duties to give preference to in case of their “conflicts,” but Ross sees the criterion of moral truth in the judgments of “the best men,” which are no less reliable than evidence sense organs for naturalists. The difference between this position and Kant’s is that it is still not absolutist (see note 2 on p. 230), because according to Kantian logic we must keep our promises even if this maxim comes into conflict with the maxim “Do not commit an atrocity” (but in this case, of course, we will no longer be able to consider the second maxim unconditional). Among modern philosophers who are sometimes classified as deontologists, one can note the American J. Rawls, whose books “A Theory of Justice” (1971) and “Political Liberalism” (1993) became philosophical bestsellers. Rawls is a consistent opponent of utilitarianism in social philosophy and considers the “right” not only not reducible to the “good,” but even priority in comparison with it. In accordance with his interpretation of deontology, he insists that human rights are not a “conventional institution,” but have an unconditional character, and tries to build a social philosophy on the imperative of honesty.

2.3. Theistic ethics is represented by neo-Thomists, representatives of Protestant theology and Russian religious and philosophical thought, among whom Piama Pavlovna specifically singles out N. O. Lossky, probably because his “moral philosophy<…>feeds not only from Orthodox tradition, but also from Russian literature of the 19th century century, especially the works of F. M. Dostoevsky.” It is from the assessment of the main ethical work of this thinker that our most decisive “differences” with it are outlined. They are probably connected, first of all, with the fact that for me, in the initial assessment of any work, the question of its genre identity is of decisive importance. From this point of view, “Conditions of Absolute Good” (1944) are in no way comparable typologically with the results of the above-mentioned works of axiologists and analysts, because in that case we were dealing with philosophical research itself, and in this case with semi-conceptual-semi-expressive philosophizing, theology and moralizing , which is often considered a specificity of “Russian philosophy”, as long as it is denied that it should relate to philosophy as such as a species to a genus. The above also applies to “sophiology”, “Russian cosmism”, “transformed eros”, passion for which still seriously interferes with the study of relatively modest in scope, but real professional (university-academic) philosophy in Russia.

“Conditions of absolute good” is one of the steps taken by Nikolai Onufrievich to build his “complete philosophical system”, the foundation of which he considered his concept intuitionism(in no case should be confused with the above-mentioned axiological and ethical intuitionism!) and the doctrine of “substantial agents”, tailored according to the standards of Leibnizian monads, but bringing nothing essentially new to the scope of the latter concept. In his work on axiology, he partly reproduces the Austro-German theories of value and partly criticizes them, drawing on the sayings of the Church Fathers and Orthodox ascetics, and after this ethical work a work on aesthetics appears. “Conditions of Absolute Good” are somewhat reminiscent of the hundreds of amateurish lectures on philosophy that are now being published in our country (under grants), which is amazing, since Lossky at one time was credited with the best translation of the “Critique of Pure Reason” into Russian. They are addressed to an audience without philosophical training. One of the significant similarities with this kind of literature is quotations from typologically incomparable written monuments, which reflect a lack of understanding of the differences between meters and kilograms and give the unprepared reader the impression that philosophy is a matter accessible to everyone. The nature of Lossky’s synthesis is given by those “theological chapters” in which he tried to help clarify the Trinitarian dogma with the resources of his doctrine of “substantial figures” (allowing, it turns out, the “Orthodox” doctrine of reincarnation), to clarify the nature of good through a mixture of Scheler’s “ ranks of values” with God’s (in the author’s interpretation) commandments, as well as “about the nature of Satan” (naively studied by Nikolai Onufrievich based on the materials of “The Village of Stepanchikov”, “The Idiot” and most of all, of course, “The Karamazov Brothers”), but demonology follows ... the theory of the spirit of Scheler and L. Klages (which is preceded by the “absoluteness of moral responsibility” based on the material of the same Scheler, “Les Miserables” by V. Hugo, “Anna Karenina” and stories about the life of the Russian artist A. A. Ivanov).

Problems are also caused by the application for the creation of a new type of ethics, which Piama Pavlovna quite sympathetically quotes. It's about that Nikolai Onufrievich decided to overcome, by definition, the insurmountable mutual opposition between autonomous ethics and heteronomous ethics in the form of a new “synthesis” that he proposes in his ethics. The norms of this ethics, for example, love your neighbor as yourself not heteronomous, since they are obligatory, not because there is an order for this, even a higher one, that “God commanded so,” but because they are organic for the consciousness of every person, even an atheist, and are not autonomous, and therefore are not marked “ the temptation of pride” of Kant’s moral philosophy, for they do not contain “self-legislation”, and they “are not created by my will, but contain within themselves a perception of the objective value of what is due.” There are too many logical imperfections in this new ethics to go unnoticed:

1) differences between ethical auto nomia and hetero nomies are not at all in the obligatory or voluntary nature of the corresponding moral imperatives (they are equally voluntary and generally binding in both cases), but in what is meant by source of moral consciousness: human practical reason (as in Kant) or Revelation (as in confessional systems);
2) the given commandments, for example, about love for one’s neighbor, do not exist in a person by themselves, but have a biblical origin, and the fact that we have become accustomed to them (but have not internalized them at all, not with theirs them, as Nikolai Onufrievich believed) means their “naturalness” no more than our habit of using a telephone - the fact that humanity has always had one;
3) the difference between “theonomous ethics” and autonomous ethics on the basis that moral norms are not created by my will, but contain a consideration of the objective value of what should be, firstly, logically, and secondly, factually erroneous: on the one hand, Kant never insisted on the fact that autonomous practical reason is not based on the objective value of what should be (cf. the second formulation of the categorical imperative, according to which any person should be treated only as an end, and not as a means, because his personality has an enduring value), on the other - if moral norms “are not created by will,” then the ethics invented by Lossky has no relation to human activity, and therefore does not correspond to the definition of ethics.

3. The opportunity mentioned by Piama Pavlova to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of each of the three large “blocks” of anti-naturalistic concepts of ethics is too important a task to undertake a comprehensive solution, especially within the framework of a journal dialogue. Let me therefore limit myself to just a few theses.

The Kantian ethical system continues to remain to this day the most perfect of those that were created “within the limits of reason alone” due to the perfection of both its fundamental principle of unconditional and purified from all impurities of “naturalness” and “consequentialism” of free good will, and of all architectonics erected above it is the a priori legislation of practical reason with a clearly defined hierarchy of motives, imperatives and maxims that determine the existence of the entire personalistic “kingdom of goals”. However, “reason alone,” as Kant showed best, is inevitably limited. In the Kantian system this is expressed in the paradox of moral absolutism, which in at least two points is transformed into relativism. On the one hand, “absolute adherence” to one a priori necessary maxim contradicts, as has already been shown, the implementation of others, no less a priori necessary, and leads to their relativization; on the other hand, the requirements of moral legislation apply only to the individual as a citizen of the intelligible world, while he, as a citizen of the empirical world, is recommended to act in accordance with “natural dexterity”, and no real significance is attached to moral goals and means. If Kant had “issued” another categorical imperative: “Always act as your nature requires as a noumenal subject and never as a phenomenal one,” this “gap” would have been filled, but he did not do this, and, moreover, as it was already assumed, quite deliberately.

The main achievements of phenomenologists and analysts of the 19th–20th centuries. - after the experience of Kantian philosophy - were associated, as already noted, with the introduction into ethics of the main philosophical guarantor of non-naturalism - platonism. It was the revival of Platonism that allowed phenomenologists to create an alternative to Kant’s “formalism in ethics” and find a place for it in the world of “material” eidos, establishing instead of the “kingdom of goals” - a “kingdom of values”, external to the empirical world, but designed to “guide” the latter. The citizen of this country is no longer divided into two, like the Kantian individual, who is allowed to live simultaneously according to mutually negating laws, and is an unconditional recipient and creator moral values. Moore’s merits in the rediscovery of both the indivisibility and “atomicity”, apophatic irreducibility of the good to anything else, as well as in its intuitionistic reading and provision of this concept with the means of linguo-philosophical analysis are completely obvious, as well as the merits of deontologists who substantiated the similar indivisibility and intuitiveness of the sense of obligation and the impossibility of reducing it to utilitarian calculations. The most vulnerable place of phenomenologists is in the insufficient elaboration of their own initial categorical apparatus, in the absence of differentiation of the supercategories of “value” and “good”, “goal” and “interest”, which their unfriendly opponents drew attention to. The problems of Moore and deontologists are in an overly expanded interpretation of “naturalism”, which prevented the former from distinguishing between the good in genere and its contextual applications, without which ethics cannot work, and allowed the latter to actually insist on duty at the expense of responsibility (relegating the latter to the department of utilitarianism), resulting in such a paradoxical result as an irresponsible sense of duty or duty-based egocentrism. On the other hand, consistent ethical intuitionism is difficult to combine with the criterion of truth in the form of “judgment of the best,” because as many individuals there must be as many deontological intuitions.

Finally, Christian ethics (of course, in its real implementations) offers the most reliable ontological rationale for morality and infinite moral perfection - on the “sufficient basis” of the dogma of the creation of humanity in the image and likeness of the infinite personal God, who gave the commandment of all commandments - Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect(Matthew 5:48). However, in connection with the possibility of building a Christian ethical system One cannot fail to take into account the cardinal dilemma that was emphasized in the polemics of the outstanding medieval philosopher John Duns Scotus (1265/6–1308) with the followers of Thomas Aquinas on the question of good: is God good because he always desires good, or, vice versa? , that is, the good that God desires? If the followers of Thomas Aquinas were right, whose reasoning allowed us to prefer the first method of resolving the issue, then we retain “Christian ethics,” but in it we are deprived of the Christian God, Who must thus be measured by the standards of created and limited reason. If Duns Scotus was right, who preferred the second solution (and there can be no doubt that from a Christian point of view he was closer to the truth), then we are not deprived of the Christian God as the Creator of the one who can think about the good itself, but we are deprived of “Christian ethics,” which should have the generic characteristics of ethics as a philosophical discipline and work by means of rational deduction in the least relevant sphere - in the field of Revelation. Since it was still beyond the power of even the strongest minds to adequately “synthesize” what was mutually incommensurable, creating a hybrid of “Evangelical Ethics” first with the Aristotelian “Nicomachean Ethics”, and later with the Kantian, phenomenological, etc. ethics, there is reason to assume that and further syntheses of this kind will not be successful.

The scope of ethics proper is also quite limited in that area of ​​theology known as moral theology. In its least adequate, but most popular application, it was only an outward theological camouflage (in the form of theologia moralis courses taught in Jesuit, Lutheran or, after them, in Orthodox academies, starting with the Kiev-Mohyla) all the same attempts to build deductive systems of “Christian ethics” from “natural reason”. In its more authentic execution, this discipline of theological knowledge contained “ethics proper” only in its apologetic part - in the form of criticism of non-Christian (primarily naturalistic, discussed above) concepts of the origin and essence of morality, while its main, positive part corresponded to the thematization of the heritage of the Church Fathers , associated not with ethics as such, but with soteriology and asceticism (the subject of which, however, includes the moral, but mainly in a more general and at the same time special context of the synergy of Divine grace and human achievement).

From the above it follows that for a Christian philosopher there remains a relatively modest field of activity in the field of ethics in the form of criticism (this implies primarily research rather than evaluative content this term) ethical and metaethical judgments and analytics of the corresponding concepts. However, this field looks modest precisely “comparatively”, since philosophy in the strict sense as a special professional activity primarily deals with the criticism of judgments and the analysis of concepts of a certain content. The only condition that can be imposed on the activity of a Christian philosopher is that he must limit his subject to the works of the human mind, without extending it to the One Who Himself created this mind, and also refrain from studying the mechanism of action of His uncreated energies on created minds and hearts. But this condition is in fact only a natural self-restraint because the philosopher for whom these restrictions are not significant can hardly be considered a Christian. I think that what has been said is also applicable to varying degrees in connection with other philosophical disciplines, but their consideration is entirely beyond the scope of this dialogue.

1. Moore writes about his new approach to ethical problems themselves - based on the “criticism” of ethical judgments and the definition of ethical concepts - already in the first lines of the preface to his main work and in the first two paragraphs of his first chapter. See Moore J. Principles of Ethics / Trans. from English Konovalova L.V.M., 1984. - P. 37, 57–58.
2. Moore compares attempts to define goodness with the possibility of defining such a simple concept as “yellow,” which could only be defined through certain light waves that affect us in such a way that ... cause a sensation yellow color. - Right there. - pp. 66–67.
3. Namely, Sidgwick in “The Method of Ethics” (1874) discovered a logical circle in Bentham’s definitions, when in one passage of his work “the right and worthy goal of human actions” is defined as “the greatest happiness of all people,” and in another it turns out that “the right and worthy” is already “leading to the greatest happiness of all people,” as a result of which “the greatest happiness of all people is the goal of human actions leading to the greatest happiness of all people.” - Right there. - pp. 75–76.
4. See: State 505b–506b, 507b–509b. Anticipating Moore, Plato shows that good cannot be determined not only through pleasure and understanding, but even through truth, just as the Sun - the source of light - cannot be adequately comprehended through the “sun-shaped” things themselves - vision and everything visually comprehended.
5. Such, for example, are the definitions in many philosophical lexicons of what is valuable as that which corresponds to what is desirable or supposed to be good, while what is desirable or good is also defined there through what is valuable.
6. Moore J. Principles of Ethics. - P. 101–102.
7. An example is the authoritative discussion of the problem by one of Moore’s critics, J. Harrison: Harrison J. Ethical Naturalism //
   Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Vol. 3/Ed. in chief P. Edwards. NY–L., 1967. - R. 69–71.
8. Example: Wimmer R. Naturalismus (ethisch) //
   Enzyklopaedie Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie. Bd. 2/Herausg. von J. Mittelstrass. Mannheim etc., 1984. - S. 965.
9. Example: Gawlick G. Naturalismus // Historisches Woerterbuch der Philosophie / Herausg. von † J. Ritter und K. Gruender. Bd. 6. Basel-Stuttgart, 1984. - S. 518–519.
10. “Lies tend to cause mistrust; mistrust tends to destroy human coexistence. This is a generalization of the same kind as the fact that alcohol tends to weaken the nervous system.” - Paulsen F. Fundamentals of Ethics / Trans. L. A. Gurlady-Vasilieva and N. S. Vasilyeva. M., 1906. - P. 14.
11. Right there. - P. 4, 16–18, 20–21.
12. Guyot M. History and criticism of modern English teachings on morality / Transl. N. Yuzhina. St. Petersburg, 1898. - pp. 454–456, etc.
13. Guyot J.M. Morality without obligation and without sanction / Transl. from French N. A. Kritskaya. M., 1923. - P. 140.
14. Guyot M. History and criticism... - P. 457; Guyot J.M. Morality without obligation... - pp. 143–144.
15. See Foucault M. Histoire de la sexualité. I. La volunteer de savoir. II. L'usage desplaisirs. III. Le souci de soi. P., 1976–1984.
16. Foucault M. The will to truth. Beyond knowledge, power and sexuality. M., 1996. - pp. 298–299.
17. Right there. - P. 306.
18. Right there. - P. 280.
19. The idea of ​​Paulsen and other “vitalists” regarding the possibility of complete, comprehensive and harmonious perfection in the development of all vitality and the manifestations of the individual is convincingly corrected on the basis of the same “empiricism,” in particular, the personal spiritual experience of the Apostle Paul, which led the Apostle to the knowledge that “even if our outer man is decaying, then the inner man is being renewed from day to day. For our momentary light affliction produces eternal glory beyond measure” (2 Cor 4:16-17).
20. A destructive but fair characterization of the Freudian picture of the world in the minds of poststructuralists is presented in the article: Yu. Davydov. Modernity under the sign of “post” // Continent. 1996. No. 89 (3). - P. 301–316.
21. See the famous allegorical image of the chariot: Phaedo 246a-e, 253d; Timaeus 69c-d.
22. Metaphysics 985a 20–25. See Aristotle. Works in four volumes. T. I. M., 1975. P. 74.
23. In modern philosophy, ethical absolutism is understood as “the view according to which there are actions that are always wrong or, on the contrary, always obligatory, no matter what consequences they cause.” The opposite of absolutism is consequentialism (from the English consequence ‘(by) consequence’), in which actions are assessed based on the balance of good and evil that is the result of their commission or, conversely, non-commitment. See: The Oxford Companion to Philosophy
    /Ed. by T. Honderich. Oxf., N.Y., 1995. R. 2. A classic example of ethical absolutism in this sense is the “maximalism” of Kant, who insisted that, for example, no good considerations can relieve the obligation to follow the maxim (rule, norm) of not lying, for otherwise there will be justifications for violating any moral maxims.
24. In this regard, in particular, see our article: Shokhin V. Classical philosophy of values: background, problems, results // Alpha and Omega. 1998. No. 3(17). P. 314, and also: Dobrokhotov A. Questions and answers about the axiology of V. K. Shokhin
    // Ibid. P. 321.
25. For Scheler’s hierarchy of value modalities, see
    Sheler M. Selected works. M., 1994. pp. 323–328.
26. Immanuel Kants Werke in acht Buchern. Ausgewahlt und mit Einleitung versehen von Dr. H. Renner. Bd. I.B., b. g. S. 14. Variations of translations of this position (as well as other “key propositions” of Kant’s main work) are collected in the publication: Kant I. Critique of Pure Reason / Trans. N. O. Lossky with variants of translations into Russian and European languages. Rep. ed., comp. and the author will enter. articles by V. A. Zhuchkov. M., 1998. P. 43.
27. Of course, Piama Pavlovna herself, whose analysis of Kantian philosophy belongs to best pages her newest monograph: Gaidenko P. P. Breakthrough to the Transcendent. New ontology of the twentieth century. M., 1997. P. 79–93, etc.
28. Kant I. Treatises. M., 1996. P. 268.
29. Right there. P. 266.
30. Right there. pp. 261–262.
31. We can talk about the partial non-confessional nature of Kant’s theology within the framework of evangelicalism because this confession, which rejects Tradition in its ecclesiological completeness, assumes that every believer is, in principle, an “autonomous” subject of theological creativity, not “fettered” by church conciliarity, which, however, is not does not deny the existence of Lutheran orthodoxy, which considered itself competent to judge the correctness of faith as a matter not only of a private, but even a state matter (Kant’s criticism was directed from these positions, prompting Frederick William II to send him the famous letter of October 12, 1794, in which he called the philosopher to order after the second publication of “Religion within the Limits of Reason Only”).
32. See Kant I. Selected works in three volumes. T. III. Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view. Kaliningrad, 1998. pp. 122–123, 187–191.
33. “Anthropology” summarized the relevant lectures given from the winter semester of 1772/73 to the winter semester of the 1795/1796 academic year. It is significant that Kant, who was not particularly willing to publish his lecture courses, thought it was important to publish this one.
34. For more information about J. Moore’s concept of the indeterminability of good, see the previous article within the framework of this dialogue: Shokhin V. Two types of ethical concepts // Alpha and Omega. 1999. No. 4(22). pp. 236–237.
35. According to the Nicomachean Ethics, the eidos of good cannot generalize
    its particular varieties; The Platonic good cannot be acquired or realized in action, whereas only what is acquired and realized is of interest. There is no expression of goals in this good, the supreme of which should be recognized as happiness as something perfect and self-sufficient (1096b5–1097b5). See Aristotle. Works in four volumes. T. IV. pp. 60-63.
36. In connection with generalized positions of criticism towards English analysts of the direction under consideration, see Abelson R., Nielsen K. History of Ethics
    // The Encyclopedia of Philosophy / P. Edwards, editor in chief. Vol. III. N.Y., L., 1967. R. 101–102.
37. See Heidegger M. Time and Being: Articles and Speeches. M., 1993.
    pp. 71–72, 56, 210, 361.
38. Wed. one of Heidegger’s many “hymns” to being: “...being is at once the emptiest and the richest, at the same time the most universal and the most unique, at the same time the most understandable and resistant to every concept, at the same time the most worn out by use and still just coming for the first time, at the same time the most reliable and bottomless, at the same time the most forgotten and the most memorable, together the most expressed and the most silent.”
    - Right there. P. 174. The quoted lines find quite precise parallels in the “Tao Te Ching”, the mystical poetry of the Buddhist Mahayana or Middle Eastern Gnosticism.
39. On the history of “values” as a philosophical concept, see V. Shokhin. Classical philosophy of values... P. 297–313.
40. Meinong A. Zur Grundlegung der allgemeinen Werttheorie. Graz, 1923. S. 167.
41. The term deontology (from the Greek δέον, gender δέοντος ‘necessary’, ‘due’ + λόγος ‘teaching’), ironically, was introduced into circulation by the founder of the very utilitarianism to which deontologists declared an irreconcilable war - I. Bentham in 1834.
42. See Prichard H. A. Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?
    // Mind. 1912. Vol. 21. R. 21–152.
43. Thus, Ross denounces both moral subjectivism and ideal utilitarianism, which “ignores highest degree the personal nature of the debt, or at least does not do justice.” - Ross W. D. The Right and the Good. Oxf., 1930. R. 22.
44. Right there. R. 41.
45. See Lossky N. O. Value and being. God and the Kingdom of God as the basis of values. Paris, 1931.
46. See Lossky N. O. The world as the realization of beauty: Fundamentals of aesthetics. M., 1998.
47. Thus, only in one of the chapters devoted to the manifestations of good in the organic world are quoted V. Solovyov, the materialist naturalist E. Haeckel, Aristotle, G. Spencer, then domestic authors P. A. Kropotkin, naturalist N. A. Severtsev, biologist S. Metalnikov, Turgenev (story “Ghosts”), then the famous mystic John Bonaventure, Francis of Assisi, and then Lermontov (“Three Palms”), naturalist philosopher E. Becher and E. N. Trubetskoy, who were previously preceded by Pushkin and Scheler with W. James. See ibid. pp. 74–84.
48. Right there. pp. 55–56, 65. Lossky’s doctrine of reincarnation (processing of Leibniz’s metamorphosis) is presented in more detail in Lossky N. O. History of Russian Philosophy. M., 1991. pp. 304–306.
49. Having become acquainted with the author of world evil through “The Brothers Karamazov,” Nikolai Onufrievich paints the following psychological portrait of him: “... the life of Satan is full of disappointments, failures and ever-increasing dissatisfaction with life. Thus, we have sufficient grounds to assert that even Satan will sooner or later overcome his pride and enter the path of good,” while also referring to “the considerations of St. Gregory of Nyssa” (with the same immediacy as he refers in other cases to N. Hartmann or Lermontov), ​​who, however, for all his theologumens, was by no means such a subtle “psychologist-portrait painter.” See ibid. P. 125.
50. Right there. pp. 68–69.
51. Lectures on the “Sentences” of Peter of Lombardy (Opus Oxoniense III.19; cf. Reportata Parisiensia I.48). One of the best presentations of the ethical views of Duns Scotus as a whole is contained in the monograph: Gilson É. Jean Duns Scot. Introduction ses positions fondamentales. P., 1952. pp. 603–624. The dilemma itself, however, dates back to “Euthyphro” from the corpus of early Platonic dialogues, where a similar problem is explored and two ways to solve it are proposed: 1) piety is pleasing to the gods because it is a kind of justice (as Plato’s Socrates believes) and 2) pious is whatever pleases the gods (as his interlocutor, the Athenian soothsayer Euthyphro, believes). See Plato. Dialogues. M., 1986. pp. 250–268.
52. One of the normative texts of this kind can be considered, for example: Popov I.V. Natural moral law ( Psychological foundations morality). Sergiev Posad, 1897.
53. About metaethics and the scope of its subject matter, see our first article in the framework of the current dialogue: Shokhin V.K. Two types of ethical concepts. pp. 237–238.