1 4 S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 5 - 2 Fa l l 2 0 1 9 son d’être– may we still speak of morality if aims transcending the manipulatable objectified world were excluded from the reflection of action? This ethical question, hiding a kind of skepsis, resulted from the original pedagogical question: May we speak of moral education at all if we have limited it only to the ability of social negotiation for the most comfortable individual life without evident negative social and environmental consequences, possibly, if we have narrowed it only to the development of a competence to verbalize rational arguments? Educational and moral practice as well as analysis of theoretical discourses suggest that the dichotomy of heteronomy and autonomy of morality (and moral education) does not provide sufficient explanation of the phenomenon of morality of man in its entire integrality and with regard to realization of life good in its whole in particular. Both above-indicated models lack openness to transcendental sources of morality. In this study, however, it is not my intention to reproduce classical metaphysical or religious theses that directly refer to theonomous reasoning of morality. The aim of this research study is to disturb the thesis on binarity of ethical conceptions by including the “third type” of ethics that phenomenologically uncovers transcendence of the Other as a source and necessary condition of morality. The Other (the other person, Thou) seems to be the path of “return” of transcendence to ethical reflection, but mainly to moral practice [1]. At the level of pedagogical thought, cultivation of virtuous relationality (benevolence, beneficence, help to the other, responsibility for the other, solidarity, prosociality) appears to be the key criterion of the processual and, predominantly, content side of moral education oriented at so-called flourishing life (Aristotle). Without attempting to grasp the entire spectrum of ethical theories, I have methodically narrowed them to three groups bearing distinctive labels “the first-person ethics”, “the third-person ethics” and “the second-person ethics”. This symbolic grammatical reduction has its philosophical background that is clarified below. Even though this auxiliary terminology is mine, its philosophical inspirations may be found already in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (particularly where it conceives three forms of life: a life of pleasure, a life of political activity and a philosophical life [Aristotle 1934, 1095b], where it differentiates between the perfect and imperfect friendship [Aristotle 1934, 1155a–1156b]). These philosophical inspirations are also to be found in philosophers of dialogue who deal with the “problem of the third” in ethics (e.g. Lévinas 1997c, 189 and the following). 2 Insufficiency of “Two Ethics” Immanuel Kant, in his groundwork of The Metaphysics of Morals (1785) placed autonomy in a radical contrast to heteronomy. He considered suchmorality heteronomous that is governed by external or affective motivations (e.g. lust or sympathy), or social expectations. The autonomous morality, on the contrary, is governed by reason and has to be forced by obedience to general law. Kant’s distinction of morality and ethics to these two kinds reduced the criterion of morality to rationality and obedience to general rules, while each conditioned (heteronomous) morality is, according to this key, beneath man. I suggest that ethical dichotomy, outlined in the introduction, cannot grasp and explain richness of human moral action, and it even dehumanizes it in the end. I offer three kinds of arguments to support this assertion – a philosophical, psychological and pedagogical one. In the following part, I would not like to offer a broad outline of argumentations, my intention is to suggest their layeredness and interdisciplinarity. Philosophical argumentation against the disunity of ethics by Kant may be led in several lines, I state only some. The notion of autonomy has several meanings; in Kant’s writings, too, shifts in meaning can be found, and he admits himself that the notion is full of paradoxes: autonomy (sovereignty, independence) of an acting subject is in perfect accordance with the will of Nature (Providence) only in enlightened individuals who, at the same time, have a great power of realization. The French revolution, however, showed Kant that abuse of power may easily occur with justification of a higher moral order: the autonomy of the powerful slips to despotism, the autonomy of the weak ends in blood. This condition may be transferred to everyday life “in peace and freedom”, where the moralizing superiority of some uses moral arguments on the expense of the others in political or common interpersonal communication. In general, it may be stated that narrowing of morality to the question of mandatory power appears to be particularly problematic, which has also been expressed by the author of the paper in a semantic manner through differentiation between the so-called hypothetical and categorical imperative. Acting in accordance with the law needs to be therefore forced internally (but also externally), which means that the morally good identifies with the obedient, based on duty. Other limits and problematic points are pointed out further, in the part 4 The Third-Person Ethics.
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