What are the main results of Bocheskiinvestigations in ethics and moral philosophy?In his own view, he contributed to threematters: his treatise on miltary ethics, hisclear delineation of morals, ethics, andreligious morality, and, finally, hisdemonstration of the potentialities of analysisin matters moral and ethical. This view isdiscussed and verified in the paper.

This book introduces an important chapter of Polish 20th century philosophy, by analyzing the studies that contributed to value theory; i.e. the studies of Kazimierz Twardowski, Tadeusz Czeżowski, Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Władysław Tatarkiewicz, Roman Ingarden, Henryk Elzenberg, Maria Ossowska, and Józef Maria Bocheński.

Bertrand Russell was one of those moralists who advocate a broad concept of ethics, including both social and individual ethics. This latter ethics is composed of prescriptions relating to the various ways of attaining happiness and perfection. Since however both happiness and perfection, i.e. the creative experience of one’s own existence can be attained by the same way, the requirement of self-realization may contribute to the harmonious coexistence of all people an effect that is desirable from social point of view. (...) Russell believed that if all people an effect that is desirable form social point of view. Russell believed that if all individuals are granted possibilities of unrestrained self-realization armed conflicts will cease. The requirement of self-realization will be fulfilled above all when the barriers that have up to now handicapped the free development of human possibilities are pulled down. The barriers to self-realization include the restrictions connected with the specific living conditions pertinent to the industrial civilization, the commonly accepted false picture of human nature, and traditional morality. (shrink)

The author starts with recalling, primarily in reliance on Du Contrat social the main clauses of the social contract. Then he advances arguments to show that the text of The Social Contract admits of two interpretations of Rousseau’s theory of the social contract. In the first interpretation, the state which is produced as a result of the contract is viewed as the environment in which man fulfils his moral calling; it is the state that by social actions people can discover (...) and pursue moral values while preserving their individual freedom and sovereignty. The other interpretation implies that Rousseau had little respect for the individual person’s freedom and moral sovereignty, because both the construction of the “political machine” and its first decisive motions are dependent on the law-maker, a factor independent of the contracting parties, who is expected to take care of the unenlightened masses to transform them into a society reminiscent of those of Republican Rome or Sparta. In conclusion, the author advances the conjecture that the tensions pervading the theory of the social contract bad their source In certain deeper beliefs by which Rousseau abode also e his literary and educational work. Those beliefs included his distaste of modern civilization, his belief in the unconditional supremacy of moral values, his admiration of freedom, moral sovereignty and integrity, his belief that freedom is a most fundamental value, and his commitment to the kind of social ties which he saw embodied first in Geneva and most perfectly in Sparta. (shrink)

Polish philosophers’ contribution to the philosophy of our times is not limited to logic. Neither was Polish philosophy mainly one more form of analitical school. The scope of this philosophy was broader, and its methods were much more diversified. This may be confirmed by many examples. One of these is Polish value theory as represented by Ingarden, Tatarkiewicz, Czezowski, and Ossowska.The differences in their methods are striking: we have Ingarden’s phenomenolgy as a tool of axiological inquires into the nature of (...) works of art, various analytical procedures presented by Tatarkiewicz, Czezowski and Elzenberg, the descriptive method of Ossowska. In spite of deep substantial differences these thinkers have much in common: subtlety in their philosophical work, faithfulness to the facts that are the point of departure in their axiological investigations, clearly objectivist tendency in solving the problems of value theory (except for Maria Ossowska). Another common feature: these thinkers tested their views with their lives opposing - when need arose - the outbursts of totalitarian barbarity. (shrink)