Ethics and morality in the modern world. Modern ethical theory Ethics in our time

Morality of modern society

The morality of Modern society is based on simple principles:

1) Everything is permitted that does not directly violate the rights of other people.

2) The rights of all people are equal.

Since the main slogan of Modern society is “maximum happiness for the maximum number of people,” moral standards should not be an obstacle to the realization of the desires of a particular person - even if someone does not like these desires. But only as long as they do not harm other people.

It should be noted that from these two principles comes the third: “Be energetic, achieve success on your own.” After all, every person strives for personal success, and the greatest freedom provides the maximum opportunity for this.

Obviously, the need for decency follows from these principles. For example, deceiving another person is, as a rule, causing him harm, and therefore is condemned by Modern morality.

The morality of Modern society was described in a light and cheerful tone by Alexander Nikonov in the corresponding chapter of the book “Upgrade of the Monkey”:

“From all today’s morality, tomorrow there will be only one rule left: you can do whatever you want without directly infringing on the interests of others. The key word here is “directly”.

If a person walks naked on the street or has sex in a public place, then, from the point of view of modernity, he is immoral. And from the point of view tomorrow, the one who pesters him with the demand to “behave decently” is immoral. A naked man does not directly encroach on anyone’s interests, he simply goes about his business, that is, he is in his own right. Now, if he forcibly undressed others, he would be directly encroaching on their interests. And the fact that it is unpleasant for you to see a naked person on the street is the problem of your complexes, fight them. He doesn’t order you to undress, so why are you pestering him to get dressed?

You cannot directly encroach on the lives of others: life, health, property, freedom - these are the minimum requirements.

Live as you know, and don’t meddle in someone else’s life if they don’t ask - this is the main rule of morality for tomorrow. It can also be formulated as follows: “You cannot decide for others. Decide for yourself." This largely works in the most progressive countries now. Somewhere this rule of extreme individualism works more (Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden), somewhere less. In advanced countries, “immoral” marriages between homosexuals are allowed, prostitution, smoking marijuana, etc. are legalized. There, a person has the right to dispose own life, as he pleases. Jurisprudence is also developing in the same direction. Laws are drifting in the direction indicated by the thesis “no victims - no crime.”

All of the above reasoning is actually aimed at expanding the individual choice of people, but does not take into account the possible negative social consequences of such a choice.

An increase in freedom always leads to some people using it to their detriment. For example, the ability to purchase vodka leads to the emergence of alcoholics, the freedom to choose a lifestyle leads to the emergence of homeless people, sexual freedom increases the number of cases of sexually transmitted diseases. Therefore, freer societies are always accused of “decay,” “moral decay,” etc. However, most people are quite rational and use freedom to their advantage. As a result, society becomes more efficient and develops faster.

If we talk about the priority of values, then the main thing for Modern society is human freedom and condemnation of violence and intolerance. Unlike religion, where it is possible to justify violence in the name of God, modern morality rejects any violence and intolerance (although it can use state violence in response to violence). From the point of view of Modern morality, traditional society is simply filled with immorality and lack of spirituality, including severe violence towards women and children (when they refuse to obey), towards all dissidents and “violators of traditions” (often ridiculous), a high degree of intolerance towards people of other faiths and so on.

An important moral imperative of Modern society is respect for law and justice, because only the law can protect human freedom, ensure equality and security of people. And, on the contrary, the desire to subjugate another, to humiliate someone’s dignity are the most shameful things.

The importance of ethical teachings for modern ethics

The inadequate (not corresponding to the importance of the subject) attitude of modern society towards moral problems can be illustrated by how we relate to academic discipline ethics.

We all know what place ethics is given in our education.

At best, it is studied in depth at specialized humanities faculties, and then - studied as theoretical material, as a subject for further teaching and scientific activity, but not at all as the primary guide in one’s life.

And it’s not for nothing that the word “ethics” gave birth to the word “etiquette”, and from it came the word “label”. Etiquette is the label of a secular person, but not at all of a highly moral, virtuous person.

Thus, the science of ethics, which is part of the triad of the main disciplines of philosophy, is designed to explore questions of good and evil and find the sources of the highest justice, while remaining “normative”, i.e. - “science without scientific laws”, over time turned into a servant of secular society...

Let us show what “ethical normativity” is in practice. This is as if we were introduced to the management of a certain technological process and we were provided with the norms for its management without explaining the principle of the process itself. At the same time, we would have a very vague idea of ​​what would happen if we violated these norms. We would hardly see, or see in a very distorted form, the results of this process, its “finished product”. Those. we would not know either the principles of the technological process itself or the purpose of this process. Moreover, we would have been given more than one code regulatory documents, and a whole bunch of them, saying: choose yourself - whichever rules seem closer to you, use them.

It is clear that as " finished products The technical process in this example is the person himself and his society. The result of such “control” is also clear and predictable...

We must admit that when studying modern ethics, we are not actually studying laws in the moral sphere, but “dead casts” of them, so to speak. We do not see the entire cause-and-effect chain of life processes of a person and society, but we snatch from a real dynamic process only a static picture that more or less plausibly reflects it. This is what “normativity” is.

Let's return to the question with which we started. If a person asks why he should be moral, modern ethics will not give an intelligible answer. But if she clearly saw the mechanisms of nature and explained how they work in relation to immoral people who, in essence, commit self-destruction, then the question would disappear by itself.

Second half of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries. became a time of severe testing of philosophical doctrines, ideological and moral principles and the social systems themselves for their truth and humanity. In general, this era became a time of turning point, marking the end of classical philosophy and the emergence of a new, modern philosophy and ethics. This was expressed in a departure from the basic principles and guidelines characteristic of all classical ethics, or their rethinking in the light of new realities, the emergence of a huge variety of teachings and schools, and a change in the very methods and approaches to traditional problems.

The classical philosophy of man and morality was traditionally based on the cult of reason and rationality, on optimistic confidence in the regularity and logic of the structure of all existence and man himself, capable of consciously reorganizing his life on the principles of rationality, justice and humanity. Everything accidental, inauthentic, unreasonable, unfair, egoistic was considered as temporary characteristics of existence, through which, through the progress of science and enlightenment, the development of human consciousness, Reason would pave its way.

All classical ethics was permeated with humanistic principles, and the differences between movements and schools concerned mainly only the means of substantiating and affirming the ideals of humanism and justice, freedom and human dignity. These ideals were expressed in categorical form in the concepts of “human nature,” his essence and “purpose” and, ultimately, were of an abstract and generalized nature. They seemed to hang over the individual with his uniquely personal fate and random empirical interests, demanding submission to the rational-universal principle.

In general, we can say that the classical philosophy of man was characterized by confidence in the harmony of truth, goodness and beauty, both in being itself and in its knowledge. Individual “renegades” of the historical and philosophical process - skeptics, pessimists, agnostics - with their exclusivity only confirmed the general rule. Morality was thought of as an expression of the true essence of man, his purpose as a rational being.

Further, if in his empirical existence a person was far from his calling, Reason had to discover and formulate the principles of the structure of the world on the principles of humanity, goodness and beauty, and this truth, with its convincing attractiveness, had to inspire people to its implementation.

The course of history in the 19th-20th centuries seemed to completely refute these expectations, and reason and science, although they confirmed their triumph in the knowledge and subjugation of the forces of nature, revealed their complete powerlessness in the structure human life. The claims of classical philosophy, based on the belief in the natural structure of the world and its movement in the direction of progressive ideals, in the rationality of man and the world of civilization and culture he creates, in the humanistic orientation of the historical process itself, turned out to be unconfirmed.

Therefore, it was necessary either to indicate new ways and means to realize these claims, or to expose their illusory nature and deliver humanity from vain expectations and hopes.

Least of all, these changes affected Christian ethics, which has never been oriented towards the final resolution of human moral problems in earthly life, easily fitting the crisis phenomena of human civilization into an apocalyptic vision of this life. The changes that affected religious Christian philosophy were therefore expressed, first of all, in the fact that it tried to combine the religious picture of the world with the data of science by giving this picture an increasingly symbolic and allegorical meaning, and in a decisive anthropological turn of all religious issues to socio-ethical ones problems of personality, problems of its moral self-determination.

The most decisive attempt to preserve the classical heritage in a radically inverted form was made by Marxism, which tried to overcome the most significant drawback of all previous philosophy - its idealistic moralizing through the discovery of a materialistic understanding of history.

Marxism saw its merit in the fact that it correctly resolved the question of the relationship between spirit and matter, showing that the source of ideas, consciousness, values, goals and ideals is the socio-historical process unfolding on the basis material production. With this, Marxism sought to put an end to abstract moralizing as a means of changing the world and move on to an understanding of morality as a way of spiritual and practical mastery of reality, the sphere of social consciousness unfolding on the basis of social existence.

Morality had to be understood not as a special sphere of the spirit - the divine will, the world of ideas, some kind of universal Reason - opposed to inert, spiritless matter, not as an independent area of ​​\u200b\u200bwhat is valuable and proper in contrast to the wretched existence, but as a product of social production, the basis of which is the method of production material goods.

At the same time, Marxism tried to overcome the naturalistic understanding of man and morality, which was derived from abstract human nature, but in fact was already present in this concept of human nature in an unconscious and hidden way. And here the world of the proper and valuable, the ideal, was opposed to reality from the very beginning and was only apparently deduced from it - it is not without reason that different philosophers derived from the same “human nature” completely different understandings of its purpose and calling.

Marxism saw the key to understanding the essence of man not in the way of identifying some abstract general characteristics of representatives of the human race, not in their biological or anthropological existence, but in the study of the totality public relations created by man.

Man, being a being of nature, with his material and practical activity confronts nature, transforms it to satisfy his needs and in this process receives a powerful means for transforming himself. Expanding his skills and abilities, a person objectifies them in the products of his practical activity, objectifies his “essential powers”.

In this process, a person creates a total objective world culture, containing in accumulated form the total comprehensive activity and “essential forces” of humanity, as well as the world of social relations through which it joins this world of culture.

And each individual becomes a human person only in the process of actively engaging and mastering this universal cultural heritage, which is both the result and a prerequisite for the further development of man and society.

Thus, the world of human culture and social relations acquires the status of the true socio-historical essence of man, through familiarization with which man is only able to obtain his specific characteristics, overcome his individual limitations and turn into a universal and spiritual being.

Therefore, penetration into the essence of man means for Marxism the study of the process of social life and the patterns of its development, together with the phenomena of consciousness and spiritual life that ensure this process - goals, values, ideals.

Then moral values, moral qualities of a person, his virtues and vices will appear not as originally given to him by nature, but as developed in the process of social development. Natural prerequisites for the emergence of certain needs and abilities, natural factors influencing the nature and content of spiritual processes in a person during the historical process, are gradually supplanted and replaced by socio-historical and cultural determinants. As a result, the very needs, drives, interests, goals and values ​​of a person are increasingly not a natural, but a socio-historical product.

Everything that is actually human in a person - and, first of all, morality and the ability for spiritual self-improvement - is the result of a socio-historical process, the correct (materialistic) understanding of which becomes in Marxist philosophy the main explanatory principle for comprehending all forms of spirituality.

Based on the material of the formation of capitalism, Marx developed the content and principles of the materialist understanding of history, presenting it as an objective natural-historical process, occurring, although with the participation of consciously acting individuals, but on the whole independent of their consciousness, will and desires.

The decisive factor for understanding all manifestations of this process is the method of production of material goods, which determines the social, political and spiritual processes of society. Consciousness is nothing more than awareness of being, i.e. its reflection and expression. And it is possible to understand its origin, content, role and functions in society only by studying the structure and functioning of society itself, penetrating its structure, analyzing the forms of activity of social actors.

Through identifying the patterns of development of the method of production of material goods, the change of socio-economic formations, Marx revealed, as he saw it, the general logic of the development of human society, penetrated into the historical necessity that determines both the development of society and the ways of understanding this development.

Thanks to this view, the study of the phenomena of moral life was placed on the basis of objective historical determinism. Social development has its own logic, which is specifically recognized (reflected and expressed) by morality in its inherent imperative-value form, in the form of developing demands and values. Their content is historically conditioned and has an objective nature, therefore it can be revealed not through subjective reflection, but through analysis of the logic of social development.

Thus, ethics gains the opportunity for objective knowledge and justification of moral values ​​and requirements and can not only describe and systematize the reflections of moral consciousness, but penetrate into the very content of morality, the patterns of its development and functioning. At the same time, through juxtaposition and comparison of morality with other types of consciousness and forms of human spiritual experience, ethics turns out to be able to reveal its specificity, its special place in the structure of the spiritual development of reality.

Moreover, Marxist ethics saw its advantage over all other varieties of ethical theory in the fact that it is capable of understanding and explaining the very nature of their inherent errors.

The dramatic discrepancy between earthly life and the demands of Reason, the dictates of God or the values ​​and ideals derived from “human nature”, the inability of man to live up to his “calling”, purpose or “essence” - everything that philosophers deified or fought against - began to be interpreted as a manifestation of idealistic fetishism.

This fetishism in ordinary consciousness manifested itself in views on morality as something that was initially opposed to human desires and aspirations, binding a person and limiting his opportunities in life. In ethical theories, it manifested itself in the affirmation of the originality and eternity of this state of affairs, its rootedness in the very structure of existence, in the imperfection and sinfulness of man himself, as a result of which even the most optimistic educational theories turned out to be powerless utopian projects.

In reality, the eternity of opposition to what is due to existence is an illusion, but an objectively conditioned one. This is the result of an alienated consciousness, unaware own premises and determinants.

Its source is the spontaneous social division of labor and the private property that secures it, which split human society, pit some social groups against others, alienate the social wealth of the human essence - the world of culture - from the majority of people, assigning it to the owners.

As a result, the accumulated social wealth itself, which is the result and condition for the development of mankind, including culture, morality, science, appears to the majority as an alien and unknown force, a means of their oppression, a sphere of coercion and lack of freedom.

A private property society approves such forms of life activity, the mastery of which presupposes an egoistic life attitude. In conditions where property is the focus of social power and real opportunities for self-affirmation, the success and well-being of individuals are directly related to the strength of possessive instincts and selfishness as a desire to assert themselves at the expense of others.

In such conditions, the social essence of man, making its way through the sublimely unselfish aspirations of morality to strengthen the bonds of collectivism and solidarity, is increasingly shifted to the periphery of social life - into the narrow sphere of the personal existence of individuals - and ultimately is completely divorced from reality as an independent sphere of consciousness .

Thus, morality moves into an ideal - conceivable, desired, required form of existence. Separated from reality, it becomes “an expression of social relations over which people have lost control.” It is under such conditions that it acquires the ability to be an ideal reproach to the imperfect egoistic life of people, to translate real social problems into the plane of moral condemnation, thereby preventing their actual resolution.

Therefore, from the point of view of Marxism, philosophical idealism in all its manifestations turns out to be identical to a moralizing approach to social life, incapable of really bridging the gap between the world of ideal values ​​and reality. No development of enlightenment, construction of an ideally reasonable and fair society, strengthening of religious faith - none of this is in principle sufficient to realize the goal postulated by classical ethics - the harmony of truth, goodness and humanity.

Of course, the development of education, the improvement of laws, and the inculcation in a person of loyalty to spiritual values ​​can have an impact on life through individual spiritual self-coercion, but it is very limited. In general, moral values, divorced from a solid material foundation, remain a purely ideological phenomenon, a fact of calling, obliging, admonishing and conjuring consciousness. At the social level, they form the phenomenon of official morality, which everyone recognizes in words and few people observe in practice.

Just an introduction to ethical theory social practice, aimed at transforming social existence, overcoming social antagonisms caused by private property, are able to overcome alienation and ensure the moral elevation of life and the return of morality to the earth.

Thus, Marxist ethics is based on the belief in the omnipotence of social practice, capable of radically transforming the system of social relations and thereby human nature itself. Unlike all previous philosophy, the historical optimism of Marxist ethics is based not on the belief that the world is arranged in such a way that ultimately truth and humanity coincide, but on the conviction that this ideal is achievable due to the fact that it is literally created by man himself.

At the same time, its creation required extremely powerful means that turned not only idealism on its head, but also the whole world: it was recognized that the “weapon of criticism,” which philosophy has always traditionally used, must be decisively replaced by “criticism with weapons.”

The cornerstone position of “the destruction of private property” can be considered the ethical maxim of Marxist philosophy, and since, of course, through the natural-historical process of socialization of production and property, it seemed too long to wait, the eradication of private property turned into the destruction of the owners themselves.

The theoretical basis for such questionable, from the point of view of humanity and morality, practical revolutionary transformations of society was the doctrine of the class essence of morality, its subordination to politics, the admissibility and even necessity of revolutionary violence and dictatorship.

Like primitive cannibals who feasted on human flesh in full confidence that the stranger was not a person, class morality demanded the destruction of people who did not agree with the historical necessity of eliminating private property, and therefore placed themselves outside human society and outside the morality of the progressive class.

Whoever is not with us is against us, and whoever is against us is an enemy, not a person - this is the logic of the class understanding of morality.

In accordance with this logic, “individuals and social groups become the object of struggle and revolutionary violence only to the extent that they identify themselves with reactionary social relations and act as their conscious and active bearers.”

It is unnecessary to add that both “reactionality” and “measure” are determined by the rapist himself.

The class essence of morality necessarily leads to its subordination to politics as a more direct and definite way of realizing class interests.

As a result, progressive morality is “derived from the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat,” and at its basis “lies the struggle for the strengthening and completion of communism.”

Thus, morality was deprived of its originality, specificity, and turned into a means of justifying the utilitarian practice of those socio-political forces that, at a given historical moment, were operating on behalf of the historical necessity of progressive development.

Such morality was necessary to justify the dictatorship of the revolutionary class, that is, for power not bound by any laws, neither divine nor human, based on open violence, and supposedly necessary for a reasonable reorganization of social relations and thereby for the transformation of human nature.

It is not surprising that this concept of morality could not find enough followers in industrialized countries, where private property has demonstrated economic efficiency and the ability to act as a condition of human autonomy, not only for those who own this property, but also for those who do not own it. For only because control over the social means of production is dispersed among many unrelated owners, no one has undivided power over the individual, and he can act relatively independently. But if all the means of production are concentrated in one hand, even if these are representatives of the entire society, literally all members of society fall into the grip of absolute dependence.

The development of private property relations in industrial countries not only led to the emergence of effective self-developing and self-regulating market production, ensuring satisfaction material needs of the entire society, but also made it possible to decentralize and depersonalize political and ideological power.

The clash of interests of owners led to the need to develop a state structure and laws that would protect not one from the other and against others, but the interests and rights of an abstract person as an owner in general, even if he had no other property except his working hands and head.

The social injustice of capitalism with its economic and property inequality was compensated by the legal and moral equality of citizens and turned out to be incomparably more attractive than the “justice” inherent in feudalism, according to which only those who have power and strength should be rich, and everyone else should vegetate under oppression in lawlessness and fear.

Oddly enough, it was Marx who was the first, looking back, to discover that the development of capitalism and private property prepared the development of all democratic freedoms and ensured the rights and dignity of the abstract human person.

But, peering into the future, he never thought about the question: if this is so, will all these values ​​disappear along with the destruction of private property?

It is natural that the practical test of Marxist theory took place in Russia - a poor, backward feudal country with centuries-old autocratic-despotic and patriarchal-communal traditions, where private property never existed for the vast majority of the population, where they never heard of any rights except those what is allowed by the authorities.

The theory according to which private property turns into public property by the logic of its development began to be implemented in a country that had not yet lived up to private property and the corresponding economic, political and legal culture and moral superstructure in the form of democratic institutions and values ​​expressing human rights and dignity.

Therefore, the inevitable, although, I would like to believe, unforeseen result of the bold revolutionary transformations of society according to Marxist-Leninist blueprints was the construction of a totalitarian society of tyranny and lack of freedom - with despotic power, an effectively operating repressive and ideological apparatus and the transformation of people into the wheels and cogs of the state machine.

The abolition of private property and its replacement with “public”, and in fact state, property, carried out in the name of historical necessity and in the interests of the oppressed and exploited people, turned into an unprecedented concentration state power in the hands of the party-state apparatus. This led to even greater oppression and exploitation of people by the state.

Collective freedom of united people" appeared as the absolute dependence of a person before the state and the officials representing it and all the horrors of a totalitarian society - intolerance and gross suppression of any dissent and independence, complete disregard for the life and happiness of an individual.

Social production, based on state centralized planning and management of all processes, created to overcome private competition and rationalize production, actually deprived it of internal incentives for self-development and required a return to methods of non-economic coercion in the form of repression and ideological indoctrination. Ultimately, such production created for the bulk of the population a way of life that did not even remotely resemble a civilized level.

The result of such a forced imposition of equality and brotherhood, solidarity and collectivism, consciousness and selflessness was the real equality of all in lawlessness and poverty, complete indifference and even aversion of man to social useful work, the public good and generally collectivist values.

An attempt to overcome idealistic moralization in relation to reality by introducing practice into ethical theory turned into even greater utopianism, when the most grandiose and brilliant plans of the classics turned out to be terrible caricatures of the ideals of a decent and moral life.

All this greatly compromised Marxist ethics in the eyes of thinking people and forced it to retreat to its roots. Having created one of the most fruitful concepts of morality - socio-historical, it, in full accordance with the recognition of practice as a criterion of truth, has now found itself busy rethinking its premises, content and conclusions.

Naturalistic ethics tried to maintain fidelity to scientific traditions late XIX century, which, unlike its previous varieties, received, as it seemed to its creators, a reliable natural science foundation in the form of Darwin’s evolutionary theory. Thus, evolutionary ethics had to scientifically overcome the speculative nature of previous discussions about “human nature” and reveal its real content.

Darwin's theory showed that the basis of organic evolution is natural selection. Darwin revealed the patterns of evolutionary development of living nature, demonstrating that in the process of adaptation of organisms to a changing environment, those who managed to acquire useful traits that are inherited survive and reproduce. Those who fail to adapt die in the struggle for existence.

This is how natural selection occurs and the accumulation of properties and qualities of living organisms valuable for life, which are inherited and improved.

Thus, this theory dealt a blow to the religious-idealistic concept of man and made it possible to consider the highest human abilities - thinking, language, consciousness, morality - as a result of natural development, a product of natural evolution.

The founders of evolutionary ethics were G. Spencer and P.A. Kropotkin. The first of them considered social life and morality from the point of view of the operation of the laws of organic life and the processes of its evolution. He believed that man, like all animal organisms, adapts to the environment and his actions are aimed at satisfying his needs, and thereby satisfying the needs of the entire society and its organic evolution.

He represented social evolution as a long and gradual process of adaptation of human biological nature to the natural and social environment, during which the survival of the most capable people, due to which the whole society is improved. The criterion of human behavior is the satisfaction of his needs and a pleasant life for his own pleasure, and since this is possible only in a prosperous, stable society, truly moral behavior is one that leads to a state of social harmony and solidarity between members of society.

Therefore, any attempt to transform or break social relations was regarded by him as pathological and unnatural, disrupting the smooth course of natural evolution. No social alchemy, Spencer believed, could turn lead morals into gold. Only time and the natural course of events can eliminate antisocial elements that are not capable of living in this society and the morals of which they are bearers. This is the only way social progress is possible.

Kropotkin believed that the basic law of nature and the main factor of organic evolution is the principle of mutual assistance, which promotes the survival of species of living beings in their struggle with the forces of nature or other species. It is sociability and mutual assistance that serve as a natural basis for the development of moral abilities and morality in general. From this sociability comes the habit of not doing to others what you don’t want for yourself, which means recognition of the equality of all people and the idea of ​​justice.

Kropotkin's conclusion is that the concepts of good and evil, justice, the moral inclinations of man and his ability to self-sacrifice are deeply rooted in nature, must be derived from there and justified by it.

It must be said that Kropotkin’s energetic defense of these provisions was a forced measure aimed at protecting naturalistic evolutionary ethics from... no, not opponents, but the same consistent supporters of Darwin’s teaching. For the weakness of the naturalistic ethics of the past, when both his inclination to good and to evil was deduced from human nature, was also manifested in evolutionary ethics. Kropotkin was forced to argue with the English professor Huxley, the most prominent follower of Darwin and the founder of social Darwinism.

Huxley's main idea was that in the process of the evolution of nature, its main content is the “struggle for existence.” The entire life of nature, including plants, animals and humans, is nothing more, according to Huxley, than “a bloody fight of teeth and claws,” a desperate “struggle for existence, denying all moral principles.” The methods of struggle for existence characteristic of wild animals are the essence of this process, which captures even man with his unscrupulous desire to appropriate and retain everything he can, using the most cruel means.

Therefore, the lesson of nature is “the lesson of organic evil,” for nature is definitely immoral.

Nevertheless, the result of evolution is the emergence of man and society. At the same time, it is unknown where the “ethical process” comes from, which is certainly opposite to the lessons of the evolution of nature and is aimed at the development of civilization and human relationships.

In this case, if the moral principle could in no way be of natural origin, the only possible explanation for its appearance remains a supernatural, divine origin. And we have to congratulate the unbelieving naturalist Huxley on coming to the teachings of the church.

Social Darwinists went even further and extended the principles of biological evolution - natural selection and the struggle for existence - to society. Social life began to be seen as an arena of struggle between individuals and social groups for survival, where the strongest and most adapted to the laws of natural selection, distinguished by cruelty and cunning, achieve success.

This sanctioned the natural nature and insurmountability of social inequality, oppression and exploitation, aggression and violence both in public and in privacy. The artificial weakening of the struggle for existence under the influence of civilization, culture and traditional “humane” morality leads, in their opinion, to the spread of “inferior” and degenerate individuals and entire social groups, which is why all social ills occur.

And although social Darwinist sociology did not directly touch upon the issues of the origin and essence of morality, with its understanding of man and society it demonstrated the weaknesses of evolutionary ethics and its internal inconsistency.

At the same time, Social Darwinism became, perhaps, the first attack on humanistic ideals from the standpoint of real natural science, and not from speculative metaphysical reasoning. In terms of its content, it almost coincided with the philosophy of life of F. Nietzsche, which marked the final “revaluation of all values” of previous philosophy, culture and morality.

With his concept of radical nihilism, Nietzsche continued and developed the line of irrationalism in the philosophy of the 19th century, associated with the names of Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Stirner.

This line arose as a reaction to the unjustified optimism of classical philosophy with its belief in the reasonableness of the world and the improvement of society. In fact, the “unreasonable” and unnatural relations of feudalism were replaced by capitalism, with its inherent social contradictions, giving rise to ever new clashes, vices and ulcers in social life, which in no way contributed to complacent illusions about the progress of reason in history. Humanity is afraid of losing these illusions, with which it is easier for it to live, but faith in the rationality of what is happening and its humanistic orientation can only deepen the crisis from which it cannot emerge.

Therefore, in rationalism and traditional humanism, in its optimistic belief in the possibility of reorganizing life on the principles of humanity, these philosophers saw a merciless mockery, the oblivion of the individual and his personal freedom, his transformation into a particle of a universal process, subordinate to natural necessity.

They contrasted the thesis about the regularity and necessity of the structure of the world with the assertion that the world is unreasonable, human knowledge is limited, and he is driven by instinctive life aspirations, blind will, fear and despair of finitude, the meaninglessness and doom of his own existence.

Of course, the most noticeable and striking figure in this series was F. Nietzsche, whose work had a strong influence on the development of philosophy, culture and mass consciousness in the 20th century.

This was not least a consequence of his creative talent, the bright, figurative, catchy and aphoristic style of his works, and his conscious rejection of the ponderous “scientific” nature of official philosophy in favor of his “fun science.” But to an incomparably greater extent, his influence was determined by the content and ideological orientation of his work.

Nietzsche saw his task precisely in waking up humanity, dispelling its illusions, in which it was sinking deeper and deeper into a state of crisis and degeneration. This required powerful drugs that could shock and excite the public.

Therefore, Nietzsche does not skimp on biting statements, harsh assessments, philosophical paradoxes and scandals. He considered his works a real “school of courage and audacity,” and himself a true philosopher of “unpleasant,” “terrible truths,” an overthrower of “idols,” by which he understood traditional values ​​and ideals, and an exposer of errors rooted not even in weakness of knowledge , and above all in human cowardice!

Many times he calls himself “the first immoralist,” a real atheist, “Antichrist,” “a world-historical monster,” dynamite designed to explode the swamp of established ideas.

Nietzsche strives beyond the ordinary ideas of cultural consciousness, beyond the “values” of civilization and culture - religion, morality, science, to comprehend the true essence of being - the instinctive desire of life for self-affirmation.

He understands life as a disordered and chaotic deployment of the energy of chaos inherent in being, a flow that is not derived from anywhere and is not directed anywhere, subject to the madness of the orgiastic principle and completely free from any moral characteristics and evaluations. In ancient culture, Nietzsche considered the symbol of such an understanding of life to be the ecstasy of the god of wine, the daring revelry and fun of Dionysus, symbolizing for a person a feeling of strength and power, the bliss of delight and horror from his emancipation and complete merging with nature.

However, it is inherent in the energy of life to go through periods of rise and fall, creation and destruction of life forms, strengthening and weakening of the instinctive desire for self-fulfillment. In general, this is a harsh and merciless struggle between various manifestations of life, distinguished by the presence in them of the “will to live” and “will to power” over its other manifestations.

Therefore, according to Nietzsche, “life itself is essentially appropriation, harm, overcoming the alien and weaker, oppression, severity, the violent imposition of one’s own forms, annexation and... exploitation.”

Exploitation, oppression, violence are not, therefore, belonging to some imperfect, unreasonable society, but are a necessary manifestation of living life, a consequence of the will to power, which is precisely the will to life.

The stronger will to life and power suppresses the weakened will and dominates it. This is the law of life, but it can be distorted in human society.

Man is one of the imperfect manifestations of life, which, although superior to other animals in cunning and forethought, and in his ingenuity, is immeasurably inferior to them in other respects. He is unable to live a completely immediate instinctive life, obeying its cruel laws, because under the influence of consciousness and its illusory ideas about his “goals” and “destiny” his life instincts weaken, and he himself turns into a failed, sick beast.

Consciousness and reason strive to organize the vital energy of existence, to shape and direct the flow of life in a certain direction and subordinate it to the rational principle, the symbol of which in antiquity was the god Apollo, and if this succeeds, then life weakens and rushes to self-destruction.

Social life is the struggle of the Dionysian and Apollonian principles in culture, the first of which symbolized the triumph of healthy instincts of life, and the second - the decadence experienced by Europe, that is, the weakening of the will to power taken to the extreme, which led to the dominance in European culture of unnatural values ​​that undermine the very sources of life.

The decomposition and degradation of European culture are caused, according to Nietzsche, by its cornerstone foundations - the Christian morality of love of humanity, the exorbitant ambitions of reason and science, “deriving” ideas from historical necessity social equality, democracy, socialism and, in general, the ideals of the optimal structure of society on the basis of justice and reasonableness.

Nietzsche attacks these values ​​of traditional humanism with all his force, showing their unnatural orientation and nihilistic character. Following them weakens humanity and directs the will to live towards Nothing, towards self-destruction.

It was in the values ​​of Christian morality, the ideals of reason and science that Nietzsche discerned “fraud of the highest order,” which he tirelessly denounced throughout his life, putting forward the slogan “revaluation of all values.”

Christianity is a “monstrous disease of the will” and arises out of fear and need, among the weakest and most wretched bearers of the weakened will to live. It is therefore permeated with hatred and disgust for a healthy life, masked by faith in a “perfect heavenly life,” which was invented only in order to better slander this earthly one. All Christian fantasies, according to Nietzsche, are a sign of deep exhaustion and impoverishment of real life, its illness and fatigue, so that Christianity itself lives by the narcotization of human misfortunes.

However, remaining a manifestation, albeit sick, but still of the will to live, Christianity, in order to survive among the strong and cruel, invents a bridle for the strong and fearless through the most unbridled moralizing, identifying itself with morality. Through the cultivation of the moral values ​​of Christianity, a sick life catches a healthy one and destroys it, and the more truly, the deeper the ideals of self-denial, self-sacrifice, mercy and love for one’s neighbor spread.

Such traditional humane morality is interpreted by Nietzsche as the will to deny life, “the hidden instinct of destruction, the principle of decline, humiliation.” Christian morality is initially permeated with sacrifice; it grows out of a slave state and seeks to extend it to its enslavers, inventing God for this.

Faith in the Christian God requires the conscious sacrifice of one's freedom, pride, dignity, and open self-abasement to him, promising in return heavenly bliss.

Nietzsche very subtly plays on the basic tenets of Christian morality, revealing its hypocritical and deceitful nature. “He who humiliates himself wants to rise,” he corrects Christ’s sermon.

He deciphers the requirement of selflessness and selflessness, “not to seek benefit,” as a moral fig leaf to express powerlessness - I no longer know how to find my benefit.

The consciousness, unbearable for a weak will: “I am worth nothing,” takes on the form in Christian morality: “everything is worth nothing, and this life is also worth nothing.”

The ascetic ideal of holiness, the cultivation of dispassion and suffering is for him an attempt to give meaning to the meaninglessness of suffering, when it is impossible to get rid of it due to one’s own weakness, for any meaning is better than complete meaninglessness. Dispassion is only the spiritual castration of a person, and by undermining the root of human passions, one can only destroy life itself.

Compassion and love for one's neighbor is only the other side of painful self-hatred, for these and other virtues are clearly harmful to their owner. They are obviously useful and therefore hypocritically praised by his competitors, who seek to bind their owner with their help. Therefore, Nietzsche concludes, “if you have virtue, then you are its victim!”

Moreover, through mercy and compassion, Christian morality artificially supports too much of what should perish and give way to more powerful manifestations of life.

According to Nietzsche, one thing is essential in morality - that it is always a “long oppression” and a manifestation of the herd instinct in an individual person.

And although the Christian religion and the morality it preaches are necessary and useful for the overwhelming mass, for the herd, for strong and independent people who represent the dominant race, all this becomes unnecessary. Nevertheless, they can use this additional means of their domination over the herd in order to better force it into obedience, without becoming prisoners of wretched morality.

For along with this wretched morality, which requires the sacrifice of man to God, there are other higher “morals” in which God himself is sacrificed!

We must free ourselves from morality in order to be able to live morally!” exclaims Nietzsche, proclaiming the need to reassess “eternal values,” abandon slave morality and restore the rights of life.

This is available only to rulers, strong and “free minds”, holders of an indestructible will, who own their own standard of values ​​and assign themselves a measure of respect and contempt for others. They are genuine aristocrats of the spirit who do not seek unanimity with others, retain the “pathos of distance” and the habit of “looking down on them.” They remain independent from the dogmas of ordinary morality, free from its fetters and have an aversion to all moral chatter about duty, selflessness, holiness, for they make their own laws.

This “master morality” is a morality of power and egoism, which “is the most essential property of a noble soul,” by which Nietzsche meant the unshakable belief that a being “like us” must naturally be subordinated and sacrificed by other beings.”

This morality also has certain duties, but only in relation to one’s own kind and equals; in relation to beings of a lower rank, “one can act according to discretion... being on the other side of good and evil.” “In every act of a superior person,” Nietzsche throws contemptuously towards the ordinary man in the street, “your moral law is violated a hundredfold.”

Nietzsche easily and originally deals with the problem of “free will”, which plagued previous ethics. Every will is a manifestation of the instincts of life, and in this sense it is not free and not rational. We need to talk not about free and unfree will, but about a strong will, which rules and commands and takes responsibility, and a weak will, which only obeys and executes. The first is free to the extent that it is strong, and the second is unfree in the same sense.

Therefore, the morality of freedom and dignity exists only for higher people, and for others only a slave morality of self-denial and asceticism is available, in which the weakened instincts of life are discharged not externally, but internally into the human soul with the aggression of self-destruction.

From the same positions, Nietzsche dealt with the “scientific” humanism of socialists and democrats. “Fanatics of brotherhood,” as he called them, just like Christian morality, ignore the laws of nature, striving to eliminate exploitation, overcome the natural inequality of people and impose on them “the common herd happiness of green pastures.” This will inevitably lead to the same result - the weakening and degradation of humanity, for man always develops in struggle and competition, and inequality and exploitation are necessary condition life.

In the morality of a socialist society, the will of God is replaced by social benefit derived from history and the common good, guarded by the state. At the same time, the interests of an individual do not mean anything, which is why Nietzsche views socialism as the younger brother of despotism, in which the state seeks to transform a person from an individual into an organ of the collective. A person, naturally, tries to resist this, and then state terrorism becomes an obligatory means of instilling loyal feelings, consciousness and obedience in actions.

In such a morality, everything that singles out and elevates an individual person above the general level frightens everyone, is condemned by everyone and is subject to punishment. The state pursues an equalizing policy, leveling everyone, naturally, to a lower level, as a result of which the democratic form of government is, according to Nietzsche, a form of crushing and devaluing a person and reducing him to the level of mediocrity.

Thus, Nietzsche's philosophy was a kind of revelation and a tub of cold water for traditional classical ethics, oriented towards humanistic ideals and the progress of reason. His idea that “there is no pre-established harmony between the promotion of truth and the good of humanity” became one of the central values ​​in philosophy in the 20th century.

With his “philosophy of life” he passionately sought to destroy the idea of ​​man as a “creature”, as an object and a means to achieve goals alien to him and to help the self-creation in him of a “creator”, a free agent.

Nietzsche tried to overcome the idea of ​​morality as an objective system of compulsions, norms and prohibitions, independent of man, alienated from him and suppressing him, and to present it as a sphere of freedom.

With his work, he defended the vitality and value of individualism, with which he associated a new understanding of humanism, but inevitably coming on this path to the absolutization of subjectivism and the relativity of moral values, to the opposition of aristocratic morality (“everything is allowed”) and the morality of lower beings.

Nietzsche was able to theoretically foresee and express the essential characteristics of the moral practice of the socialist reorganization of society, but did not see the internal kinship of his “new order” with totalitarian social systems.

For the rights and moral freedoms of Nietzsche’s chosen ones were compensated by the lack of rights and ruthless suppression of the plebeians. The morality of the “supermans” turned out to be a superhuman morality, free from moral obligations to humanity and permeated with contempt for universal human values.

Dissatisfaction with the state of ethics against the backdrop of the successes of the natural and exact sciences, the development of scientific methodology based on description, systematization of facts, experiments and the construction of theories based on the principles and rules of logic, led in the 20th century. to a radical turn in the development of ethics. Ethics turned to the logical and methodological foundations of its own knowledge and took up the question of how ethical theories are generally constructed and in what sense they can claim scientific status.

The desire to overcome the “bad pluralism” of ethical theories, arising from the speculative nature of philosophical reasoning about human behavior, about its aspirations and values, its “essence” and from the oblivion of the basic principles of truly scientific methodology, led ethics to transform from “practical philosophy” into metaethics .

This name meant that ethics began to be viewed as a metatheory, that is, a theory about theory, about why and how ethical theories are built and why they are not able to reach generally valid conclusions. This meant a conscious refusal to study the phenomena of moral life and human behavior, at least until the nature of ethical knowledge and the possibilities of ethics to comply with the general principles of science are understood.

Metaethics was based on the methodology of neopositivism, which seeks to cleanse philosophy of metaphysical speculation about what cannot be the subject of scientific knowledge, and considers it not as a theory about the world, but only as a method of reasoning.

Metaethics did not deny the existence of ethical theories about moral values ​​and ideals derived from human nature, the will of God, absolute ideas or even mystical historical necessity, with corresponding practical, i.e. normative, conclusions, but it strongly objected to these theories claiming to be the authority of scientific knowledge and objective truth. Understanding truth as the correspondence of theoretical judgments to the actual state of affairs, metaethics set the task of analyzing the nature of ethical and moral judgments before ascribing truth to them and demanding their implementation.

On this path, it practically withdrew from knowledge of the nature of morality, the justification of its values ​​and ideals and was reduced to the analysis of moral judgments and assessments expressed in language - to the analysis of the language of morality.

By this, she greatly disappointed those who expected and demanded from ethics precisely the solution of moral problems, obtaining certain answers to the questions of how to live, what to do, what is the meaning of human life, not realizing that scientific answers to them, common to all and only true ones, from the point of view of metaethics, do not exist.

The beginning of metaethics is associated with the work of J. Moore, who is credited with the merit of exposing the “naturalistic error” of all previous ethics, which led to its scientific inconsistency.

In his autobiography, Moore himself admits that the motive of his activity was not the desire to add one more to the numerous theories about human behavior and his happiness, but rather bewilderment at what was said and written by other philosophers seeking to make humanity happy, which nevertheless continues to live as if these theories have nothing to do with him. At the same time, Moore did not yet deny the possibility of the existence of normative ethics, the objectivity of the existence of moral values, demanding only that scientific ethics be aware of each step on the path to their comprehension and avoid mistakes.

He considered the most important, fundamental mistake of all previous ethics to be the unlawful identification of moral value, good as it is in itself, with the objective properties of existing reality - natural or supernatural, supersensible, metaphysical reality.

He called the first of them naturalistic ethics, which defines the concept of good through its correlation with the phenomena and properties of the natural world, and the second - metaphysical ethics, which defines good by pointing to a supersensible reality not given in sensory experience.

Varieties of naturalistic ethics are the ethics of hedonism, utilitarianism, evolutionism and all others, which derive the value and obligation of good from the natural manifestations of man, which can be revealed through experience.

Varieties of metaphysical ethics are religious concepts of good and duty and speculative philosophical doctrines that ignore experimental scientific knowledge and speculatively penetrate into supersensible reality, enthusiastically describing the structure of the “world of ideas”, “the self-development of an absolute idea” or even revealing a mystical idea that is not given in any experience. historical necessity,” which cannot be seen or felt. Moore himself did not bring his reasoning to such conclusions, but they inevitably followed from his concept.

It is clear that metaphysical ethics cannot in any way claim to be scientific, because, first of all, it relies on the heated imagination of its creators, which does not allow any experimental verification. Moore's point is deeper, however. He believes that even if there were experimental means of cognition of super-experienced reality, metaphysical ethics would only share the fate of naturalistic ethics, falling into the notorious “naturalistic error”, which defines good by pointing to some phenomena and properties of reality that a person values, to which strives, but which are not at all good in themselves.

Here an erroneous inversion occurs in consciousness - from the common ideas that pleasure, benefit, health, wealth, fame, money are something desirable and valuable, and therefore are good for the subject, ethics inverts the judgment and concludes that good is pleasure, benefit, health, wealth, money...

It is obvious that goodness defined in this way is beginning to more and more resemble that anecdotal goodness about which it was said in one epitaph: “Here lies a man who experienced an irresistible craving for goodness, especially that of others!”

Indeed, as soon as as a result of such a procedure a person identifies good with some thing or property of reality and rushes to pursue it, there will be no need to talk about morality, all means will be justified, and good will easily turn into evil.

Even such a value as health, which at first glance seems to be an absolute good, cannot, according to Moore, be identified with moral goodness, because health characterizes only the normal and energetic state of the body, but not the direction of its activity. And not everything that is normal is good, so there are cases when, in the name of the ideals of goodness, one has to sacrifice not only health, but even life.

For example, evolutionary ethics makes a naturalistic mistake when it tries, on the basis of the presence in nature of an experimentally established evolutionary process, to derive objective criteria of good from the development of nature, identifying it with “increasing life,” “spreading life in breadth and depth,” “improving adaptability to survival.” .

But “survival of the fittest does not mean, as one might think, that those who are better equipped to achieve good ends survive.” For there are no goals in nature, and the evolutionary theory only establishes what causes cause such and such consequences, and “whether they are good or evil, this theory does not pretend to judge this.”

In all attempts to derive the content of the concept of good from the properties of nature, Moore mercilessly reveals the unlawful and unconscious endowment of nature with value content inherent in consciousness, and then the alleged derivation of this content through observation and experience.

But where then does this concept of good come from in consciousness, how can it be defined differently?

The fact that it exists and people use the concept of good is obvious. Now it becomes clear that it cannot be defined scientifically, through pointing to something different from good itself, through identifying it with something else that defines good: pleasure, enjoyment, benefit, health, wealth, preservation and strengthening of life - all this can lie at the basis of both good and evil (selfishness, evil will).

Therefore, Moore is forced to admit that good is indeterminable through empirical or logical procedures, for it is a simple, indecomposable, primary concept, intuitively represented in consciousness.

In this respect, the concept of good resembles the concept of “yellow,” the content of which is impossible to explain to a blind person, to someone who does not yet know what “yellow” is. The concept of good is intuitively self-evident, but scientifically indefinable. The first should ensure the universal validity of morality and protect moral judgments from subjectivism, for intuition is the same for all people, and the second leaves a person with freedom of moral self-determination.

However, it is obvious that such a position did not contribute in any way to the justification of humanistic morality, because intuition is too shaky a support for such a justification. Moore actually gave negative definitions of good, leaving its positive content to the discretion of the subject, which opened the way to subjectivism, relativism and even irrationalism in the understanding of moral values.

Moore's appearance was symbolic, for it marked the emergence of a new type of philosopher - not an exposer-moralist, but a sober, rational analyst, free from all prejudices, from the pressure of religious authorities, public opinion, even from pseudoscientific considerations. Such a thinker relies only on common sense and logic and at the same time leaves a person scope for value self-determination, without imposing final conclusions on anyone. In the context of the unfolding ideological onslaught on people, such a philosophy left the intellectual with a rational mindset the possibility of a critical attitude towards imposed values ​​and freedom of moral choice. All this predetermined the popularity of neopositivist metaethics, which grew out of Moore’s concept.

In its further development, metaethics went through the stages of emotivism (A. Ayer, B. Russell, R. Carnap) and linguistic analysis of the language of morality (S. Toulmin, R. Hear, P. Nowell-Smith), between which L. Wittgenstein can be placed. In their work, the formal analysis of moral judgments, which Moore considered as a means of solving ethical problems, turns into an end in itself and becomes the only task of ethics, which strives to be scientific.

Emotivism, in its analysis of moral judgments, came to the conclusion that they do not express anything about the state of things in the world, but are only an expression of the emotional state of the subject, express the inclinations and desires of the speaker and at the same time serve as a command for the listener. Therefore, they cannot be verified empirically; they are neither true nor false, because they do not assert anything factual. These judgments therefore cannot be substantiated, proven or refuted.

Their functions are to express the emotions and attitudes of the speaker and influence the emotions of others. All moral judgments in general can be represented, emotivism believes, as irrational reactions to a situation. They are devoid of internal structure and can even be collapsed, replaced by a gesture, intonation, or simply a facial expression.

It is clear that such a position is a deepening of the subjectivist understanding of morality, a complete loss of the objective basis of moral judgments and any criterion for comparing and evaluating moral positions.

Therefore, emotivism was inevitably supplemented by the principle of tolerance in ethics, the requirement to abandon attempts to compare moral positions, which ultimately led to moral nihilism and cynicism, recognizing the equivalence of the moral and the immoral.

Such odious conclusions and the inability to substantiate the general validity of moral values ​​served as the impetus for the creation of a new form of metaethics - a school of linguistic analysis that seeks to soften the nihilistic conclusions of emotivist ethics.

However, analysts came to the same conclusions in a different way: moral judgments cannot be true or false, they cannot be proven with the help of factual knowledge, normative ethics cannot be constructed in a scientific way.

An example of a linguistic analysis of moral language is given by L. Wittgenstein in his “Lecture on Ethics”.

The purpose of his reasoning is to clarify the characteristics of “good” and, in general, what is important, valuable, what “makes life worth living.” In language, people use value or imperative judgments to express this content. What is behind these judgments, whether they have objective content that can be recorded, compared with the actual state of affairs and thereby determine their truth or falsity - this is the task for analysis.

First of all, you can see that imperative and value judgments are easily correlated with each other: “do this because it is right, good” or “this is good, so do it that way.” By expressing only the first half, we seem to imply the second.

But is it possible to establish the actual truth of a value judgment, that is, by reformulating it so that it affirms or denies something? What can be checked and verified purely experimentally without unnecessary discussions and appeals to God, world reason, or the “course of history”? It turns out that in one sense it is possible, but in another sense it is impossible.

Value judgments are expressed by people in the ordinary, trivial, relative sense and in the ethical, absolute sense.

When we say “a good chair”, “a wonderful pianist”, the right road, we are expressing value judgments about the relative value of an object or phenomenon, meaning suitability, suitability for a specific purpose.

Thus, a good chair is one that is most suitable for sitting on firmly and comfortably, beautifully, firmly and skillfully made, suitable for the interior, etc. A wonderful pianist means assessing the degree of skill, talent, technical capabilities of the pianist, his success with the public, etc.

All these characteristics, which reveal the meaning of our judgment, can be verified by comparing them with the actual state of affairs.

The situation is even clearer when people talk about the correctness of a certain road, having in mind a certain goal - the path will be correct in relation to this goal, which can be verified.

It turns out that “every judgment of relative value is simply a judgment of fact, and can be formulated in such a way that it ceases to appear to be a judgment of value at all.”

The right road the right way- this is “a path along which you will get there,” and the wrong one is “a path along which you will not get there.”

In morality, value judgments are used not in a relative, but in an absolute sense, that is, without reference to a specific goal that has empirical characteristics and allows experimental verification.

Instead of the judgments “a good tennis player” or “a good runner”, which evaluate certain qualities in relation to a specific goal, here they say “a good person”, not meaning a specific goal, but as if appealing to the absolute ideal of a person who does not exist in the empirical world and which precisely therefore allows for all sorts of arbitrary speculative interpretations.

The right path in the ethical, absolute sense means nothing more than the judgment “the absolutely right road,” that is, one that, seeing which, everyone would either follow it, or feel shame if they did not go.

All these ethical judgments are expressed precisely in an absolute sense, appealing precisely to such goals that everyone must recognize and follow. But it is obvious that this is a chimera, because no factual state of affairs has in itself the coercive force of absolute value, some kind of absolute truth and the same persuasiveness for everyone.

It is with such chimeras that religion and ethics deal, whose judgments seem to make sense only by analogy with judgments about relative values. And if these latter have a factual basis, as a result of which they can be of interest to science, then ethical and religious judgments do not have such a meaning and mean going beyond the boundaries of language that has a natural meaning.

The conclusion that Wittgenstein draws is fully consistent with neo-positivist philosophy: “Ethics, insofar as it stems from the desire to say something about the original meaning of life, about the absolute good and the absolutely valuable, cannot be a science... But it is still evidence of a certain desire of human consciousness , which I personally cannot stop deeply respecting and which I will never ridicule in my life."

The sphere of moral values ​​is the sphere of the “inexpressible,” mystical, very important for human life, but located beyond the boundaries of scientific knowledge, as a result of which scientific ethics cannot be normative, and normative ethics is not scientific.

Ethics should be concerned with theoretical analysis, and not with the solution of practical problems that have no scientific solution. Moral values, norms, principles, ideals cannot be substantiated scientifically in principle, because such is their nature; they can be accepted or rejected, but it is impossible to determine their truth and the preference of one to another.

This position was clearly directed against scientific moralizing, for the objectivity of the scientific view of the world, and therefore for neutrality in ideological and value issues, and tolerance of other people’s views, positions, and beliefs.

She expressed the point of view of liberal individualism, striving from a rational-critical position to maintain independence in ideological and moral issues in the face of growing trends towards an increasingly total socialization of human life in the 20th century. But this practical goal was achieved precisely through the rejection of a scientific solution to moral problems and turned into a theoretical justification for subjectivism and relativism in morality. Since morality is the sphere of the mystical and inexpressible, then there are no objective criteria of good and evil, and everyone can live as they please.

Although such a conclusion was never made by “analytic” philosophers, it inevitably followed from their theoretical concepts.

The liberalism of all metaethics consisted in its desire to overcome speculative metaphysical methodology and rationalistic philosophical tradition, the essence of which was the subordination of the individual as part of the dominance of the “universal” - human nature,” “will,” “Reason,” “idea,” “reasonable and planned organization of public life."

Personal independence, autonomy and freedom of moral orientation are the only absolute values, understandable and self-evident to every person, which scientific ethics must protect.

Metaethics in this regard can be called the ethics of individual reason, which protects a person from both illusory hopes and despair.

However, the universal nature of the intellect, which, like language, cannot be individual, as well as the desire to get to the primary foundations of human existence, stimulated powerful trends in the philosophical and ethical thought of the 20th century, associated with the desire to completely discredit the mind and the ability of man and society to conscious improvement.

This seemed to be facilitated by the very course of social development, which clearly demonstrated the final triumph and at the same time the impotence of reason and science. The mastery of humanity by the forces of nature and social development with the help of science turned into self-destructive world wars, the creation of totalitarian, despotic regimes over vast territories, an explicit or implicit attack on human freedom and dignity, rampant consumerism and lack of spirituality, poverty, poverty and cruelty, and the increasing alienation of man from society.

All this contributed to the growth of irrationalistic tendencies in philosophy, laid down by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, continued in the psychological concept of man by Z. Freud and in the philosophy of existentialism. At the same time, the matter should not be understood to mean that most philosophers of the 20th century. were mystics who despised rational logic and the methodology of knowledge.

No, many of them, like Freud, were rational scientists who sought to find objective truth.

A feature of the 20th century. it was that for the first time he gave birth to irrationalism, based not only on the failures of reason, but also on its successes.

Thus, the onslaught of ethical irrationalism in the 20th century. was a natural reaction to the failures of reason - “truly scientific” Marxist ethics with its class essence of morality, “scientific naturalism” of evolutionary ethics leading to social Darwinist conclusions, conscious self-restraint of metaethics in matters of scientific substantiation of humanistic ideas. In addition to these concepts, varieties of theories of “reasonable egoism” were widely circulated in the form of utilitarianism, pragmatism, etc., conformist doctrines that teach a person not greatness of spirit and moral dignity, but the ability to calculate and adapt.

However, ethical irrationalism owes its popularity no less to the successes of reason and science, which clearly demonstrated and proved the inhumanity of the world and the cruelty of history, and revealed the futility of human hopes for the possibility of a reasonable and fair reorganization of life.

This is already a kind of “new irrationalism” in ethics, which consists not simply in the rejection of rational, scientific methodology or in limiting the capabilities of reason in knowing and justifying morality, but often not even that at all.

It consisted in the fundamental position that, according to objective laws, the moral existence of a person is impossible, that morality generally belongs to the sphere of transcendental existence and draws strength and content from the depths of the irrational. With this understanding of ethical irrationalism, it is necessary to include not only metaethics developing in line with the “philosophy of science,” but even the “rationalist” Kant. After all, it was he who first showed that reason and science are not omnipotent, that there are objectively impossible things, practically insoluble problems and uncertain life situations when other ways of orientation in the world come into play.

The most significant contribution to the revision of views on the nature of man as a rationally acting being was made by 3. Freud, who for a long time had a trail of reputation as a sexually preoccupied irrationalist-myth-maker, who created the concept of man and morality on the basis of the absolute dominance of the instincts of sexuality and aggressiveness.

In fact, he sought to understand the true nature of human behavior, overcoming, with the help of impartial science, man’s illusions about himself, penetrating into the most intimate motives, motivations and experiences of man, revealing the content of contradictions and conflicts in man himself and his clash with reality.

Using the methods of scientific psychological analysis, he was able to demonstrate with experimental certainty that a person’s conscious impulses represent a secondary rationalization of deeper motives, over which the person himself has no control and the source of which is not aware.

In the collision of consciousness and its true irrational foundations, Freud saw the source of all illusions, illnesses and, in general, all human misfortunes, overcoming which is impossible, but some relief is possible through the use of psychoanalysis, which explains to consciousness its true content and softens the tension from their collision.

In contrast to metaphysical philosophers with their understanding of the determination of the content of consciousness by more fundamental factors than empirical reality, using speculative and arbitrary constructions (like divine grace, Pure and Practical Reason, World Will, Absolute Idea, Will to Life or Will to Power), Freud relied on the results of his psychotherapeutic practice, which led him to a certain conclusion.

Analyzing clinical cases of neuroses, phobias, perversions, encountering the hidden meaning of slips of the tongue, slips of the tongue, dreams, with the facts of weakening of painful symptoms as a result of analytical conversations with patients experiencing a kind of catharsis, cleansing from speaking, relieving internal tension, he came to an interesting conclusion. Freud concluded that in the human psyche there is an unconscious energetic force that puts pressure on the psyche from the inside, determines its experiences and their awareness.

The most clear evidence of this can be considered the facts of post-hypnotic suggestion, when a person who has the fullness of conscious orientation, nevertheless commits absurd and therefore unmotivated actions suggested to him, followed by an attempt to rationally motivate them.

In this way, Freud came to the discovery of an energetic unconscious principle in human nature, which is irrational in nature and determines the entire structure of the human psyche, the content of consciousness and all forms of cultural activity, including religion and morality.

Freud explained the irrational nature of the unconscious by the dominance in psychic energy of the passionate instinctive desire of life for immediate satisfaction, regardless of any circumstances. The unconscious therefore drives all the impulses and actions of a living being, represents the basic, primary level of mental life and is inherently immoral and irrational. The unconscious connects the human psyche with the animal psyche, indicates the unity of organic life and the animal nature in man. Its content is the inherent desire for self-preservation of all living things - individual and generic.

Both of these desires find full expression in the sexual instinct, in which the desire for procreation and intense pleasure coincide.

Therefore, the initial level of mental life, according to Freud, is subject to the principle of pleasure, and the essence of the unconscious is libido, the strongest sexual desire, the desire for pleasure and relief from suffering caused by the tension of undischarged mental energy.

Later, observing the conflicts, clashes and wars inherent in social life, Freud added to the content of the unconscious erotic, libidinal instincts aimed at preserving life, instincts of destruction and death, seeking to return matter to an inorganic state. Leaving the language of the scientist, he spoke like a real metaphysician in mythological dialect, declaring Eros and Thantos the essence of the unconscious.

But how does the conscious emerge from the unconscious?

It does not arise where life's aspirations find their satisfaction at the initial level of the psyche of a living being, where instinct finds ways of immediate satisfaction, and the psychic energy of the unconscious finds temporary relaxation and calm.

But if, under the influence of social conditions, instinctive aspirations are blocked when faced with reality, the psychic energy of the unconscious cannot be discharged externally and turns inside the psyche, begins to look for workarounds to compensate for the impossibility of immediate satisfaction.

It is from this collision of the pleasure principle with the reality principle that the need arises to mediate the satisfaction of instinctive aspirations, to take into account real circumstances and conditions, and thereby complicate the mental and real activity of a person. From the energy of the unconscious, forced to look for roundabout roads to satisfaction, is born the ability to realize one’s desires and experiences and correlate them with reality, the ability to calculate and correct one’s objective consciousness and behavior.

It is in this way that the conscious arises from the unconscious, correlating its “I” with reality.

Having designated the unconscious as “it” and the conscious as “I,” Freud considers the former to be the true source of all mental and spiritual life, and the latter to be a manifestation of the differentiation of the unconscious, associated with the need to reckon with reality and control drives and passions through their rationalization.

Consciousness is called upon to combine, as it were, the innate energy of unconscious instinctive aspirations with reality, which does not allow them to run rampant uncontrollably. It adapts a person’s personality to reality, trying to suppress unconscious instinctive aspirations and drives that make a person incapable of living in society due to their asocial orientation, and trying to balance the pressure on the psyche from within by strengthening conscious self-control.

Therefore, consciousness is constantly in a struggle with unconscious aspirations, which it tries to suppress and push back into the sphere of the unconscious. But, being itself a product of the unconscious and feeding on its energy, consciousness can only temporarily suppress and repress, delay the manifestation of the unconscious, which is the true master of human destiny.

The action of consciousness is extremely narrowed - it is conscious and rational only as a means of serving the goals and aspirations of the unconscious, looking for time-delayed, but more reliable and less risky ways to satisfy the latter.

However, in the case of a complete inability to find satisfaction in the unconscious instincts, either due to an unfavorable reality or due to a weakening of the “I,” the unconscious can throw away all covers and break through in a person’s behavior with a psychological breakdown and illness or antisocial behavior.

Consciousness, along with the search for workarounds and rational means to satisfy its owner, i.e. unconscious, can also seek satisfaction through substituting the goals of activity.

Thus, the impossibility, due to a collision with reality, of satisfying sexual instincts and the reluctance of the “I” to look for workarounds for this by attracting prudence, cunning, seduction and deception, which, in fact, constitute the essence of consciousness according to Freud, can result in either neurosis and illness, or sublimate the energy of the unconscious into other, non-sexual areas of creative activity.

It is sublimation, i.e. the unconscious repression and replacement of sexual instincts, substitution of the goal of their aspirations and the direction of their strength and energy on non-sexual objects, that underlies human cultural activity, which forms the entire diversity of everyday life.

At the same time, society, trying to limit the destructive forces contained in the unconscious and strengthen the consciousness of “I”, develops in its development mechanisms of social regulation of the human generation - customs, prohibitions, traditions, religious requirements and moral norms that are instilled in a person from childhood. They form in his psyche a superstructure over his “I”, its modification in the form of a “super-ego”.

The super-ego, or the sphere of culture and social consciousness, is born in the same way as individual consciousness, from the collision of the energy of the unconscious with the reality of social life, from the desire to suppress and curb the destructive potential of the unconscious in a person and direct it to cultural goals.

For Freud, the superego turns out to be both the result of the sublimation of the unconscious and its further prerequisite. It is generated by the struggle of consciousness with unconscious drives and the switching of their energy to cultural activities, but it increasingly subjugates and binds a person, imposing on him authoritarian dogmas of religion and morality, a sense of duty and conscience, guilt and shame, entangling him with moral obligations and depriving him of the main thing. - satisfaction and happiness.

Morality, according to Freud, is initially a sphere of pressure, coercion and lack of freedom, like, in fact, the entire civilization and culture, with which society seeks to protect itself from the rampant elements of the unconscious.

Culture, religion, morality grow from the suppression and repression of instincts, from the sublimation of the energy of the unconscious and serve to suppress it in each individual person. Therefore, consciousness, both the individual “I” and the social “super-ego,” comes down not to expanding the scope of a person’s freedom and responsibility, his creative capabilities, but to the suppression of himself, his natural desires and aspirations.

The result of such suppression is a repressive culture and morality and a depressed, unhappy individual. While a person is alive, he is not able to free himself from the pressure on him of the unconscious, which persistently demands satisfaction.

Therefore, a person can never completely get rid of his greed and lust, greed and aggressiveness, the desire to subjugate others and rise above them by any means - power, wealth, violence, deception, slander. Human nature remains, according to Freud, egoistic and antisocial, and every person, deep down in his soul, is an opponent of the culture and morality that restrains him.

However, the presence of a person’s consciousness of “I” and “super-ego” helps him restrain his instincts, repress and block the energy of the unconscious, which, finding no outlet or release, is concentrated in his subconscious and can at any moment erupt in explosions of supposedly causeless aggressiveness and violence , neuroses, psychoses or sexual perversions.

A person is constantly under pressure from the indomitable force of the unconscious and the force of individual and social consciousness, which strives to restrain it. He feels like a hostage to these forces that are beyond his control and control his destiny, and in any case he turns out to be unhappy. If instincts win, a person turns out to be a criminal, and if they can be suppressed, he becomes a neurotic and a psychopath, retreating from unbearable and tearing pressure into illness.

Relatively normal behavior turns out to be possible only as a result of a temporary compromise, a balance between the demands of the unconscious and the consciousness that restrains it, seeking to sublimate instincts. This is a precarious balance that requires mental stress, moral hypocrisy and self-deception from a person, depriving him of true satisfaction and replacing it with illusory satisfaction with surrogates.

In fact, a person lives between two alternatives: either try to be happy, throwing away the conventions of consciousness and culture, crossing all barriers and freely realizing his desires, or enjoy the achievements of civilization and culture, constantly bumping into restrictions and prohibitions, feeling depressed, unfree and unhappy .

Freud pessimistically assessed the possibility of a favorable resolution for man and humanity of this contradiction of unconscious instinctive aspirations and demands of social organization and rationality. Sometimes he expressed opinions about rejecting the benefits of culture in the name of satisfying the natural desire for happiness, but more often he turned to the theory and practice of psychoanalysis he created, through which it is possible to penetrate into the depths of spiritual life and realize the dangers contained in it.

His entire teaching can therefore be presented as an attempt to rationally analyze the irrational and hidden impulses rooted in human nature and subjugate him, and on this basis to get rid of their power, at least partially, primarily through the demystification and de-fetishization of reason, culture, morality and the very existence of man.

A scientist, according to Freud, cannot and should not engage in social reform or preaching; his task is to penetrate into the essence of what is happening, demonstrate the dangers arising from it and the possibilities of avoiding them, if any.

With his teaching about the role of unconscious impulses in the life of human society and especially about their sexual origin, he for the first time openly expressed what people have always felt and experienced, what they suffered from internal self-destruction, but did not dare to admit in their thoughts to their secret desires, thereby only increasing your suffering.

Freud's teaching therefore had the effect of a bomb exploding, largely predetermining the directions of development of culture and ways of understanding it in the 20th century. At the same time, by its very appearance it demonstrated the effect of catharsis - liberation from the pressure of one’s own prejudices, prohibitions and censorship contained in classical, rationalistic and humanistic philosophy, culture, religion and morality.

Freud's interpretation of the relationship between the natural principle and consciousness in man, man's relationship to social institutions and values ​​began to be used for a grandiose attack on this repressive culture and morality and the consciousness that oppresses the inner impulses of man.

In the name of emancipation and liberation of man, the affirmation of individual freedom, self-determination and the dignity of the individual, his right to happiness, literature, art, and science attacked lies, hypocrisy, absurdity and the repressive nature of society, its culture and morality. They penetrated into the dark abyss of human instincts, secret and hidden desires, vicious passions that possess a person, but not in order to overcome them, since this is impossible, but only to weaken their demonic power over a person due to their open awareness and recognition, conscious search for ways of their sublimation.

And if Freud himself admitted the possibility of achieving, on the basis of psychoanalysis, the relative well-being and satisfaction of a person who finds an optimal balance between the unconscious and the demands of consciousness and culture (which, by the way, is demonstrated by the positive results of the sexual revolution that took place in the West, which allowed millions of people to become much happier), then for The goal of most cultural figures who took the position of Freudianism was the destruction of culture itself.

The morality of duty and responsibility, mutual obligations and rights, feelings of conscience and shame was declared a false and interfering prejudice, getting rid of which supposedly liberates a person and makes him happy, or at least free and worthy in his tragedy.

It is clear that on this path society is threatened by cultural and moral degradation and self-disintegration, and that this threat is not empty is confirmed by the widest revelry in modern society anarchy and self-will, irresponsibility and licentiousness, violence and cruelty. Will he be able to modern man to find the intellectual and moral strength to resist the rampant nature of this element and at the same time humanize public morality and culture, or is society destined to plunge into a “new barbarism” and savagery, the metastases of which are already sweeping over entire regions even in the most developed countries?

So far this question does not have a clear answer, on which the future fate of humanity depends.

Without exaggeration, another great variety of ethical irrationalism that had a huge influence on the development of Western culture in the 20th century was the philosophy of existentialism (existence). Existentialism made a claim to revise the traditional classical philosophical canons and replace the “philosophy of being”, the philosophy of things with the philosophy of man, the philosophy of “universal essences” with the philosophy of the existence of an individual person.

The old humanism of classical philosophy was recognized as untenable and refuted by the entire course of social development. It was metaphysical, because it was built on one or another metaphysics of existence, at the basis of which were placed nature, God, reason, the laws of history, from which the essence of man was already deduced. His hostility to man was explained by the fact that he viewed man as a thing among things, and sought to impose his schemes on him and subordinate him to his metaphysical constructs.

Old humanism saw its task in comprehending the essence of man, his purpose, the ideal, expressing the proper modality of human life, and finding the reasons and ways to overcome the alienation of the real empirical existence of a person from his essence, what is from what should be.

Such an “essential” interpretation of man inevitably deprived him of self-determination, freedom and dignity and caused rejection and rejection of all philosophical programs for the reconstruction of society and man.

These programs initially turned out to be stillborn not even because knowledge was unable to comprehend the metaphysics of being and man, but because it always dealt with the “inauthentic” existence of man, while the “genuine” existence of man remained elusive to it.

Therefore, it was necessary to turn over the old humanism so that man himself became the basis of metaphysics, the understanding of existence as the existence of the human spirit.

Existentialism proceeds from the subjectivity of an individual, drawing a phenomenological picture of a person’s experience of his “being in the world,” which at the same time is comprehension of the “meaning of being from within.” Human existence is described in rather gloomy colors: it is always “immersed,” “involved,” “thrown” into “the other,” something that “is not itself.” A person is doomed to feel “drawn into a situation” contrary to his desires and will and to feel lonely and abandoned in these circumstances not chosen by him, where no one can relieve him of the doom to live and act in conditions beyond his control.

Therefore, his position in the world is characterized by uncertainty, a feeling of homelessness and disorientation, and defenselessness in the face of circumstances. He experiences fear, melancholy, anxiety, nausea - experiences characteristic of a person before a decisive test, the outcome of which is unpredictable and often determined by the random arbitrariness of certain “forces” and “authorities”.

And this is not a random coincidence of circumstances, but a manifestation of the essence of human destiny, which appears to one in an accident, catastrophe, betrayal, betrayal, and to another - in ruin, loss of a loved one, in everyday failures, disappointments, or before everyone - in historical cataclysms and disasters. Not a single person can live life without experiencing the feeling when the ground disappears from under one’s feet, when there is nothing to rely on and nothing to hope for, when one has to make a decision oneself in a situation of uncertainty, the absence of a sign or a hint. After all, even their presence does not relieve a person from the need to interpret their meaning himself and make a decision.

These unpleasant experiences are, from the point of view of existentialism, a sensory-intuitive awareness of the specifics of human existence - its illegality, randomness, and problematic nature.

For man is the only creature in the world whose existence precedes the essence, the cause, that which determines him. A person first exists, appears, acts, and only then is he defined, that is, receives characteristics and definitions. Human reality is therefore not a “fact”, an “event”, a certain “solid substance” that has a cause and essence, it is a dynamically unfolding process of self-creation and self-determination of its factuality.

This is a kind of emptiness, a crevice, a gap that exists in the clearing of being,” from which a person exists, from himself fills this being with his existence, his decisions and actions, giving this or that meaning to the being created by him.

Man is open to the future, and he projects himself into the future himself, so that incompleteness, incompleteness, and aspiration to the future belong to the structure of his existence. In fact, only death slams the doors, presenting a person as a complete being who has received its completeness and certainty, and therefore has acquired its essence. Therefore, any attempt at an essential interpretation of man, which is what the old humanism did, is “the burial of us during our lifetime” (Sartre).

It is this openness to the future, internal emptiness and initial readiness for free self-determination from oneself that is true existence, existence, identical to freedom.

Freedom as “self-thinking and self-action at one’s own discretion” is identical to human “selfhood,” existence, his authentic existence.”

And if in the world of things and objects determinism dominates, then in the world of existence, “being for oneself,” a person chooses himself. Here “there is no determinism, man is free, man is freedom” (Sartre). After all, all the causes and factors affecting a person are necessarily mediated by his free choice, consent to these reasons or refusal to agree with them.

Therefore, Sartre declares that “determinism is the philosophy of scoundrels and opportunists” who seek to justify their weakness or betrayal by objective reasons.

Man is not free from freedom, he is in fact “condemned to be free.” Condemned because he did not initially create himself, and yet he is free, because in the future he creates himself and the world around him and bears responsibility for this.

Heidegger goes even further, declaring that a person generally exists only insofar as he exists. If he does not exist, he simply does not exist as a person, even if he continues to exist as a material object.

However, for most people who have realized their loneliness and abandonment, the lack of any support or guidance in the face of an unknown future, that is, true existence, turns out to be an unbearable burden. After all, freedom requires independence and courage from a person, it presupposes responsibility for choices that give one or another meaning to the future, which determines what the world will be like in the future. It is these circumstances that cause those unpleasant experiences of metaphysical fear and anxiety, constant worry that push a person into the sphere of “inauthentic existence.”

This is the sphere of a kind of sublimation of existence, renunciation of oneself and one’s freedom, from uncertainty, uncertainty and responsibility due to the dissolution of one’s own existence in the “way of existence of others”, “in the hectic everyday life” of public life.

This is the sphere of impersonal-anonymous existence, where everyone lives not as a unique person, but “like everyone else,” as an averaged and massed unit, whose existence is given, and whose behavior is scheduled and regulated.

This is the world of social organization, rationality and expediency, where a person takes on a social role and turns into a cog of a machine, an object of influence of mechanical forces on him. Therefore, here he does not experience painful uncertainty about his choice and is freed from responsibility. Here everyone is destined for his role, rules of behavior, life interests and goals, here you can forget yourself, identifying yourself with the team and becoming “like others.”

This is a world of fundamental conformism, where everyone lives by someone else’s rules, thinks someone else’s thoughts and experiences other people’s desires, finding stability and certainty in the renunciation of one’s own “self”, liberation from the feeling of loneliness and abandonment.

This situation is constantly getting worse due to scientific and technological progress, concentration and socialization of production and all human life. The progress of science and technology has unleashed a “diabolical attack on human existence” (Heidegger), so that the most important feature of recent times has been the desire of man to go “where in the name of freedom one is freed from freedom” (Jaspers). However, an attempt to escape from one’s freedom and responsibility turns for a person into an exacerbation of torment from the loss of one’s personality, loss of independence, the impossibility of creative self-realization and, ultimately, the loss of the meaning of life and self-destruction. For, as Heidegger explains, “present being, dissolved in a preoccupied world, is not itself,” existential being turns into inauthentic existence only at the cost of its destruction.

Heidegger himself associated the return of man to existence with such a hieroglyph of freedom as physical death, the most “fundamental generalization of existence.” For if life can be “not mine,” dissolved in the way of being of others, then death is always my death.”

Therefore, everyone lives with a deeply hidden, but the only absolutely true thought that “no one can die instead of me,” coming to which, he realizes the real price of all social life and its values.

The pathos of existentialism lies in the need to resist all forms of collectivism, which is always a way of enslaving the individual - directly, through violence and suppression, blackmail and threats, or indirectly - by capturing illusory hopes for the possibility of a rational and effective, fair and humane reconstruction of life. It is obvious to him that any identification of oneself with others - a collective, a class, a party, a nation - although it gives temporary oblivion, the illusion of calm and stability, in reality imposes alien interests on a person and makes him an object of manipulation by hostile forces.

Therefore, it is necessary to openly realize your loneliness and abandonment, freedom and responsibility, the meaninglessness and tragedy of your own existence, gain strength and courage to live and act in the most unfavorable situations of futility and hopelessness.

Existentialism never tires of proving in different ways that human life is not a fairy tale with happy ending, and it is therefore necessary to be prepared for the most unexpected turn of events, accumulating spiritual strength in order not to break down morally, to maintain your dignity and self-respect.

The logic of existentialism reproduces the logic of stoicism, it was not for nothing that it was called “new stoicism” - the moral confusion and despair of a person, the loss of his dignity and strength of spirit is not so much the result of the collision of our mind and morality with the meaninglessness of human life and the inability to achieve well-being in it, but the result disappointment in our hopes.

As long as a person wishes and hopes for a successful outcome of his endeavors, he will suffer failures and fall into despair, because the course of life is not in his control.

It does not depend on a person what situations he may find himself in, but it is entirely up to him how he gets out of them - by breaking down and abandoning his self, self-respect and dignity, or by maintaining greatness of spirit and dignity even at the cost of physical death. To do this, all he needs is what is in his power, to arm himself with the awareness of the inevitability of the tragedy of human existence and the readiness to preserve inner nobility, decency, honesty in the face of the constant threat of physical or moral death, the constant temptation to betray oneself or others.

For although man can be destroyed, he can never be defeated as long as he resists. Any resistance, struggle is an internal victory, even in defeat itself.

And if cynicism, immoralism, lack of spirituality and selfish prudence grow out of disappointment in morality, humanistic ideals, and the possibilities of reason, then moral fortitude turns out to be possible only at the cost of abandoning meaningless hopes, from the initial consciousness of the complete hopelessness of any action and the desire to resist spiritually, to preserve oneself morally.

The main thing here is not the effectiveness of our efforts in terms of achieving visible objective results, but the effect of self-affirmation, one’s own self-realization, in the ability to remain human, despite any threats and temptations.

In its most extreme forms, existentialism did not leave man any positive options for creating his life, because his choice always turned out to be forced and tragic. In life, unfortunately, people can only be divided into two categories - executioners and victims, so if you don’t want to be an executioner, then there is nothing else to do but consciously always take the side of the victims!

Softer versions of this teaching left a person the opportunity to try to be happy in the manner best expressed by the bohemian artists and writers of the “lost generation” after the first and second world wars: Remarque, Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway.

At the center of their work is a loner, an outsider who does not trust society, the state, or religion, who ignores hypocritical public morality with its calls to serve the good of society, the fatherland, and progress, who does not complain about fate and does not count on anyone’s help. At the same time, this is always a person who has preserved purity in his soul, inner honesty, and loyalty to his moral values, the most important of which is human dignity.

He is capable of selfless friendship and love as the only types of spiritual communication with which he can overcome his own loneliness and closeness and, as it were, feel the soul of another person and support him in this dangerous world. At the same time, the existential hero is always internally prepared for the fact that at any moment everything will end, for parting, for the loss of what is most precious, simply because everything always ends.

The understanding that in this world one cannot be attached to anything, one cannot rely on anything, one cannot believe in anything, constantly encounters in his soul the need for spiritual communication, for a “thread” of trust and mutual understanding. After all, only thanks to it can you fill your existence with objective content and meaning, and feel that your life is needed by someone.

And the resolution of this contradiction is in an attempt to learn to live and love with a constant awareness of the fragility, finitude, insecurity of everything that a person loves, with the deeply hidden pain of doom, which gives human feelings a special purity and spirituality.

Thus, growing out of a situation of crisis, existentialism offers as a way out a proud awareness of the original hopelessness, giving a person the strength to rise above circumstances and assert his dignity in the face of an alien and hostile world.

The romantic spirit inherent in existentialism has always turned out to be extremely relevant in times of crisis, general instability, loss of support for at least something, accompanied by moral decline, the spread of lack of spirituality, moral unprincipledness and irresponsibility.

However, the fundamentally antisocial position of existentialism does not allow it to find and justify objective substantive criteria for a moral position, and it remains in the positions of formalism, subjectivism and ethical relativism.

The only criterion of human dignity here remains formal loyalty to one’s own ideals, inner sincerity and willingness to act freely and responsibly, without being guided by anything external, objective.

Action without hope of success, readiness to fail, of course, demonstrate the fundamental steadfastness and unselfishness of a person; they correspond to the logic of a moral act with its focus not so much on the objective result of the action, but on the moral effect. However, the absolutization of this aspect of human moral practice deprives it of any prospects at all.

The formalism of metaethics, the subjectivism and pessimism of existentialism, the dissatisfaction of scientists with the prospects of psychoanalysis against the backdrop of the rapid development of science gave birth in the 20th century. revival of interest in naturalistic concepts of man and morality. If earlier it was mainly based on data from biology and psychology, now evolutionary ethics seeks to use modern achievements of physiology, molecular biology and genetics in order to substantiate the objective nature of moral values.

However, the essence of the naturalistic concept of morality remains the same. His first characteristic lies in the idea of ​​rejecting the supernatural and irrational source of moral values, in the desire to find their objective content in “human nature”, which is still interpreted in the spirit of reductionism - the reduction of purely human properties and qualities to natural phenomena, explanation top level development of the material world by the laws of the lower.

The second feature of modern naturalism is the widespread use of methods of the natural sciences, especially psychology, physiology, molecular biology, and genetics to understand social phenomena. It is characterized by the identification of biological values ​​with moral values ​​and a clear exaggeration of the role of natural sciences. It is brought to the recognition of the possibility of their influence on the moral nature of man, on changes in human behavior with the help of genetic engineering or the technology of “operant behavior”.

The unsatisfactory nature of naturalistic ethics is demonstrated by naturalism itself, on the basis of which arise such different and contradictory theories of “human nature.”

Thus, K. Garnet, K. Lamont, A. Edel, T. Clements develop the ideas of humanistic naturalism, seeing in biology only the prerequisites for understanding human values, which they associate with a healthy, fulfilling life within certain cultural and social conditions.

They try to overcome the limitations of purely biologizing concepts of morality by including in scientific analysis the social factors of “good human life”, “healthy lifestyle”, but do not go further than recognizing the positive or negative influence of social factors on the unchanging “human nature”, do not reveal patterns social development as the true substance of moral life.

Others, first of all, the famous ethologist K. Lorenz, as well as R. Ardrey, from the same methodological grounds, develop social Darwinist motives, insisting on the innateness of “endogenous aggressive instincts” in humans and explaining social contradictions and clashes by the original aggressiveness of human nature, inherited them from animals.

And if humanistically oriented scientists, taking the position of naturalism, saw in genetic engineering and modern psychosurgery a powerful means of improving the moral nature of man and the morality of society, then the developers of various theories of “behavior modification” of a person saw in genetic engineering or the scalpel of a psychosurgeon a wonderful means for suppressing the “undesirable” behavior" and establishing one's own social control.

Indeed, if humanistic proponents of creating an ethic of genetic control seek to help a person become better than his genetic inheritance or brain disorders allow him, by influencing these physiological mechanisms of his behavior in order to correct and improve them, then why not extend this approach to criminals?

And if it is possible to “treat” people with antisocial criminal behavior in this way, then why can’t it be used for preventive purposes in relation to all “dissatisfied”, “prone to violence” and in general persons with orientations “undesirable” for the authorities? Having taken this path, it is gradually possible to extend this “treatment” to an increasingly significant number of people whose behavior “does not correspond” to the norms and who, although they are not yet “violators,” but clearly can become one, because “they do not behave that way.” ", "they don't dress like that", "they don't speak like that" and "they don't think like that".

If there is a developed technique and technology for influencing the physiological mechanisms of human behavior, such people can be treated, and in fact, their personality can be crippled with the goal of complete subjugation, and with technical and technological backwardness, they can be forcibly isolated in psychiatric hospitals and “treated” with more traditional psychotropic drugs, achieving the same goals.

Ethical naturalism, thus, in any of its varieties, turns out to be contradictory in scientific and technical terms and socially dangerous in practical terms. For, looking for the sources of moral and immoral behavior of a person in his physicality and naturalness, he actually removes responsibility for them from social reality, which is the true source of all moral life of a person.

The entire history of ethics testifies that no matter how differently morality is interpreted, it is always understood as something that is beyond the action of natural factors, that rises above nature.

The question here can be as Kant put it: either morality exists, and then it is not determined by human nature, or, if it is determined by this nature, then it simply does not exist.

Both moral and immoral behavior of a person, and his conscious and unconscious moral behavior are always socially mediated both by his individual life experience and by the course of the historical process of the entire society. It can be comprehended only by using the data of all sciences based on the methodology of socio-historical knowledge.

ethics morality samsara karma

Twentieth-century ethics can be called an intellectual response to the social catastrophes that occurred in this century. Two world wars and regional conflicts, totalitarian regimes and terrorism prompt us to think about the very possibility of ethics in a world so openly alien to goodness. Of the great variety of ethical teachings created in the twentieth century, we will consider only two. Their representatives not only constructed theoretical models of morality, but also drew practical normative conclusions from them.

Another very significant type of ethical teaching that has had a huge influence on the development of Western culture is ethics of existentialism (philosophy of existence). Representatives of existentialism are French philosophers J.P. Sartre (1905–1980), G. Marseille (1889–1973) A. Camus (1913–1960), German philosophers M. Heidegger (1889–1976) K. Jaspers (1883–1969). Existentialism emerged in Western Europe during the period between the two world wars. Its representatives tried to comprehend the situation of a person in crisis situations and develop certain value systems that would allow him to come out of a crisis situation with dignity.

The starting point of existentialism is that existence precedes essence, the reason that determines it. A person first exists, appears, acts, and only then is he defined, i.e. receives characteristics and definitions. Openness to the future, internal emptiness and initial readiness for free self-determination from oneself is true existence, existence.

Existentialist ethics believes freedom to be the basis of human moral behavior. Man is freedom. Freedom is the most fundamental characteristic of man. Freedom in existentialism – this is, first of all, freedom of consciousness, freedom to choose the spiritual and moral position of the individual. All causes and factors affecting a person are necessarily mediated by his free choice. A person must constantly choose one or another line of his behavior, focus on certain values ​​and ideals. By their formulation of the problem of freedom, the existentialists reflected the main basis of morality. Existentialists rightly emphasize that people’s activities are guided mainly not by external circumstances, but by internal motivations, that each person in certain circumstances mentally reacts differently. A lot depends on each person, and in case of negative developments of events one should not refer to “circumstances”. People have considerable freedom in determining the goals of their activities. At each specific historical moment there is not one, but several possibilities. Given the presence of real possibilities for the development of events, it is no less important that people are free to choose the means to achieve their goals. And the goals and means, embodied in actions, already create a certain situation, which itself begins to have an impact.

Human responsibility is closely related to freedom.. Without freedom there is no responsibility. If a person is not free, if he is constantly determined in his actions, determined by some spiritual or material factors, then, from the point of view of existentialists, he is not responsible for his actions, and therefore is not a subject of moral relations. Moreover, an individual who does not exercise free choice, who has renounced freedom, thereby loses the main quality of a person and turns into a simple material object. In other words, such an individual can no longer be considered a person in the true sense of the word, because he has lost the quality of true existence.

At the same time, real life shows that for many people, authentic existence turns out to be an unbearable burden. After all, freedom requires independence and courage from a person, it presupposes responsibility for choices that give one or another meaning to the future, which determines what the distant world will be like. It is these circumstances that cause those unpleasant experiences of metaphysical fear and anxiety, constant anxiety that push a person and the sphere of “inauthentic existence”.

Existentialist ethics calls for opposition to all forms of collectivism. It is necessary to openly realize your loneliness and abandonment, freedom and responsibility, the meaninglessness and tragedy of your own existence, gain strength and courage to live in the most unfavorable situations of futility and hopelessness.

Existentialist ethics develops in the mainstream of stoicism: moral confusion and despair of a person, the loss of his dignity and strength of spirit is not so much the result of the collision of our mind and morality with the meaninglessness of human life and the inability to achieve well-being in it, but rather the result of disappointment in these our hopes. As long as a person wishes and hopes for a successful outcome of his endeavors, he will suffer failures and fall into despair, because the course of life is not in his control. It does not depend on a person what situations he may find himself in, but it is entirely up to him how he gets out of them.

Among the moral theories of the 20th century. attention should be paid to "ethics of non-violence". All ethics considers non-violence necessary. Since violence begets counter-violence, it is inherently ineffective method of solving any problem. Nonviolence is not passivity, but specific nonviolent actions (sit-ins, marches, hunger strikes, distributing leaflets and speaking in the media to popularize their position - supporters of nonviolence have developed dozens of such methods). Only morally strong and courageous people are capable of carrying out such actions, capable, thanks to faith in their rightness, not to respond blow to blow. The motive of nonviolence is love for enemies and faith in their best moral qualities. Enemies must be convinced of the wrongness, ineffectiveness and immorality of forceful methods and a compromise must be reached with them. The “ethics of nonviolence” considers morality not a weakness, but a human strength, the ability to achieve goals.

In the 20th century developed ethics of reverence for life, the founder of which was the modern humanist A. Schweitzer. It equalizes the moral value of all existing forms of life. However, it allows for a situation of moral choice. If a person is guided by the ethic of reverence for life, then he harms and destroys life only under the pressure of necessity and never does it thoughtlessly. But where he is free to choose, man seeks a position in which he could help life and avert from it the threat of suffering and destruction. Schweitzer rejects evil.

Modern ethics is faced with a rather difficult situation in which many traditional moral values ​​have been revised. Traditions, which previously were largely seen as the basis of the original moral principles, often turned out to be destroyed. They have lost their importance due to global processes developing in society and the rapid pace of change in production, its reorientation towards mass consumption. As a result, a situation arose in which opposing moral principles appeared as equally valid, equally deducible from reason. This, according to A. MacIntyre, led to the fact that rational arguments in morality mainly began to be used to prove theses that those who presented these arguments already had in advance.

This, on the one hand, led to an anti-normative turn in ethics, expressed in the desire to proclaim an individual person as a full-fledged and self-sufficient subject of moral demands, to place on him the full burden of responsibility for independently made decisions. The anti-normative tendency is represented in the ideas of F. Nietzsche, in existentialism, in postmodern philosophy. On the other hand, there was a desire to limit the area of ​​ethics to a fairly narrow range of issues related to the formulation of such rules of behavior that can be accepted by people with different life orientations, with different understandings of the goals of human existence, and the ideals of self-improvement. As a result, the category of good, traditional for ethics, seemed to be taken beyond the boundaries of morality, and the latter began to develop mainly as an ethics of rules. In line with this trend, the topic of human rights is further developed, and new attempts are made to build ethics as a theory of justice. One such attempt is presented in J. Rawls’s book “A Theory of Justice.”

New scientific discoveries and new technologies have given a powerful boost to the development of applied ethics. In the 20th century Many new professional codes of morality were developed, business ethics, bioethics, legal ethics, media workers, etc. were developed. Scientists, doctors, and philosophers began to discuss problems such as organ transplants, euthanasia, the creation of transgenic animals, and human cloning. Man, to a much greater extent than before, felt his responsibility for the development of all life on Earth and began to discuss these problems not only from the point of view of his own interests of survival, but also from the point of view of recognizing the intrinsic value of the fact of life, the fact of existence as such (Schweitzer, moral realism).

Professional ethics acts as an ethics of rules and works at the level of creating deontological principles of behavior for those who belong to a given profession. It constitutes a significant area of ​​applied ethics. But there are other areas as well. This is a corporate ethics in which codes and organizations that enforce them are created for the members of certain corporations. The field of applied ethics also includes what is associated with social threats of a global nature. To prevent these threats, humanitarian examinations are being carried out, and mechanisms for democratic procedures for making important public decisions are being worked out.

An important step representing a reaction to current situation in the development of society, there was an attempt to understand morality as an endless discourse - a conversation of humanity aimed at developing solutions acceptable to all its participants. This is developed in the works of K.O. Apel, J. Habermas, R. Alexi and others. The ethics of discourse is directed against anti-normativism; it tries to develop common guidelines that can unite people in the fight against the global threats facing humanity. Discursive ethics assumes that all decisions in the future of the development of society should become communicative. These are decisions that people agree to voluntarily make because they are convinced of their appropriateness, and not because they are promised something or are intimidated with something (strategic decisions). Communicative solutions mean that people's interests are not suppressed or eliminated in the name of other interests, and those who become the object of planned management agree to the manipulations made with their interests.

Another characteristic feature of modern morality is the incredible expansion of the public sphere, i.e. spheres where the interests of large groups of people are represented, where actions are assessed from the point of view of the perfection of performing certain social functions. In this area, we are faced with the activities of politicians, leaders of political parties, economic managers, and the mechanism for making global decisions. It turned out that traditional ethics is largely not applicable to this area, because it is clear that, say, a lawyer cannot treat a prosecutor as himself. During the trial, they act as opponents.

Therefore, theorists raise the question of developing a new ethics related to the adoption of fair rules of a certain game, a new understanding of justice, including the inclusion in this concept of issues of international justice, attitude towards future generations, attitude towards animals, attitude towards people with disabilities from birth, etc. .

Questions:

1. What is the origin of the term ethics?

2. What is motivation?

3. How does the “golden rule” differ from the “talion”?

4. What is moral justification?

5. What was specific to ancient ethics?

6. What are the specifics of the ethics of the New Time

7. What are good and evil? Can these categories be opposed in an absolute sense?

8. How can morality be defined?

9. How does morality differ from other means of social regulation?

10. What is the situation in modern ethics?

11. What is discourse ethics?

Abstract topics:

1. The emergence of morality

2. Golden Rule morality

3. Aristotle's ethics

5. Justification of morality: possibilities and limits

7. Love as a principle of moral relationships

8. Ethics of Discourse

Literature:

1. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics //Aristotle. Works in four volumes. T.4. M.: Myso 1984.

2. I. Kant Fundamentals of the metaphysics of morals // Kant I. Sobr. Op. in 8 vols. T. 4. M.: CHORO, 1994.

3. Apel K.-O. Transformation of philosophy. M.: Logos, 2001.

4. Guseinov A.A. Great prophets and thinkers. Moral teachings from Moses to the present day. M.: Veche, 2009.

5. Guseinov A.A. Apresyan R.G. Ethics. M.: Gardariki, 2000.

6. MacIntyre A. After virtue. M.: Academic project; Ekaterinburg: Business book, 2000.

7. Razin A.V. Ethics. M.: INFRA-M, 2012.

8. Habermas Yu. Moral consciousness and communicative action. Per with him. St. Petersburg: Nauka, 2000.

A.A. Guseinov. Ethics and morality in the modern world

The topic of these notes is formulated as if we know what “ethics and morals” are, and we know what the “modern world” is. And the task is only to establish a correlation between them, to determine what changes ethics and morality are undergoing in the modern world and how the modern world itself looks in the light of the requirements of ethics and morality. It's actually not that simple. And not only because of the polysemy of the concepts of ethics and morality - a polysemy that is familiar and even to some extent characterizes the essence of these phenomena themselves, their special role in culture. The concept of the modern world, modernity, has also become uncertain. For example, if earlier (say, 500 or more years ago), changes that turned people’s everyday life upside down occurred in a time frame that far exceeded the lifetime of individual individuals and human generations, and therefore people were not very concerned about the question of what modernity is and where it begins , then today such changes occur in periods that are much shorter than the life spans of individual individuals and generations, and the latter do not have time to keep up with modernity. Having barely gotten used to modernity, they discover that postmodernity has begun, and after it post-postmodernity... The question of modernity has recently become the subject of discussion in the sciences for which this concept is of paramount importance - primarily in history and political science. And within the framework of other sciences, the need to formulate our own understanding of modernity is maturing. I would like to remind you of one place from the Nicomachean Ethics, where Aristotle says that good, considered from the point of view of timeliness, will be different in different spheres of life and sciences - in military affairs, medicine, gymnastics, etc.

Ethics and morality have their own chronotope, their own modernity, which does not coincide with what is modern, for example for art, urban planning, transport, etc. Within ethics, the chronotope also differs depending on whether we are talking about specific social mores or about general moral principles. Morals are associated with external forms of life and can change quickly, over decades. Thus, before our eyes, the nature of relationships between generations has changed. Moral principles remain stable for centuries and millennia. For L.N. Tolstoy, for example, ethical-religious modernity covered the entire vast period of time from the moment when humanity, through the mouth of Jesus of Nazareth, proclaimed the truth of non-resistance to evil, to that indefinite future when this truth will become an everyday habit.

By the modern world I will mean that stage (type, formation) of the development of society, which is characterized by the transition from relations of personal dependence to relations of material dependence. This roughly corresponds to what Spengler called civilization (as opposed to culture), Western sociologists (W. Rostow and others) - industrial society (as opposed to traditional), Marxists - capitalism (as opposed to feudalism and other pre-capitalist forms of society) . The question that interests me is the following: do ethics and morality retain their effectiveness at the new stage (in the modern world) in the form in which they were formed in the depths of ancient culture and the Judeo-Christian religion, were theoretically comprehended and sanctioned in the classical philosophy from Aristotle to Kant.

Can ethics be trusted?

Public opinion, both at the level of everyday consciousness and at the level of persons who have explicit or implicit authority to speak on behalf of society, recognizes the high (one might even say, paramount) importance of morality. And at the same time, it is indifferent to ethics or even ignores it as a science. For example, in last years We have seen many cases where bankers, journalists, deputies, and other professional groups tried to comprehend the moral canons of their business conduct, draw up appropriate ethical codes, and, it seems, every time they did without certified ethics specialists. It turns out that no one needs ethics, except those who want to study the same ethics. At least this is true in relation to theoretical ethics. Why is this happening? The question is all the more relevant and dramatic because in such a formulation it does not arise before representatives of other fields of knowledge studying human behavior(psychologists, political scientists, etc.), who are in demand by society, have their own practical areas of professional activity.

When thinking about why in our scientifically scientific time real moral life proceeds without the direct participation of the science of ethics, one should keep in mind a number of general considerations related to the special role of philosophy in culture, in particular with the completely unique circumstance that the practicality of philosophy is rooted in its accentuated impracticality, self-sufficiency. This especially applies to moral philosophy, since the highest institution of morality is the individual and therefore ethics directly appeals to her self-awareness and rational will. Morality is the authority of the individual as a socially active being. Socrates also drew attention to the fact that there are teachers of various sciences and arts, but there is no teacher of virtue. This fact is not accidental, it expresses the essence of the matter. Philosophical ethics has always participated in real moral life, including the educational process, so indirectly that such participation was always assumed, but it was difficult to trace even in hindsight. And yet, subjective trust in her existed. We know from history the story of a young man who went from one wise man to another, wanting to learn the most important truth that could guide his whole life and which would be so brief that it could be learned while standing on one leg, until he heard from Hilela rule, which later received the name golden. We know that Aristophanes ridiculed the ethical lessons of Socrates, and Schiller - Kant, even J. Moore became the hero of satirical plays. All this was an expression of interest and a form of assimilation of what moral philosophers were saying. There is nothing like it today. Why? There are at least two additional circumstances that explain the distancing from ethics of those who think practically about moral issues. These are changes: a) the subject of ethics and b) the real mechanisms of the functioning of morality in society.

Can morality be trusted?

After Kant, the disposition of ethics in relation to morality as its subject changed. From a theory of morality it has become a critique of morality.

Classical ethics accepted the evidence of moral consciousness, as they say, at face value and saw its task as substantiating the morality predetermined to it and finding a more perfect formulation of its requirements. Aristotle's definition of virtue as a mean was the continuation and completion of the requirement of measure rooted in the ancient Greek consciousness. Medieval Christian ethics, both in essence and in subjective attitudes, was a commentary on evangelical morality. The starting point and essential basis of Kant's ethics is the conviction of moral consciousness that its law has absolute necessity. The situation has changed significantly since the middle of the 19th century. Marx and Nietzsche, independently of each other, from different theoretical positions and from different historical perspectives, come to the same conclusion, according to which morality in the form in which it reveals itself is a complete deception, hypocrisy, and Tartuffe. According to Marx, morality is an illusory, transformed form of social consciousness, designed to cover up the immorality of real life and to give a false outlet to the social indignation of the masses. It serves the interests of the ruling exploiting classes. Therefore, working people do not need a moral theory, but to free themselves from its sweet intoxication. And the only position worthy of a theorist in relation to morality is its criticism, its exposure. Just as the task of physicians is to eliminate diseases, so the task of the philosopher is to overcome morality as a kind of social illness. Communists, as Marx and Engels said, do not preach any morality, they reduce it to interests, overcome it, deny it. Nietzsche saw morality as an expression of slave psychology - a way through which the lower classes manage to put a good face on a bad game and pass off their defeat as a victory. She is the embodiment of a weak will, the self-aggrandizement of this weakness, a product of ressentiment, self-poisoning of the soul. Morality degrades man, and the task of the philosopher is to break through to the other side of good and evil, to become in this sense a superman. I do not intend to analyze the ethical views of Marx and Nietzsche, nor to compare them. I want to say only one thing: both of them took the position of radical denial of morality (however, for Marx such denial was only one of the minor fragments of his philosophical theory, and for Nietzsche it was the central point of philosophizing). Although the “Critique of Practical Reason” was written by Kant, the real scientific criticism of practical reason, if we understand by criticism to penetrate beyond the deceptive appearance of consciousness, to reveal its hidden and hidden meaning, was first given by Marx and Nietzsche. Now the theory of morality could not help but at the same time be its critical exposure. This is exactly how ethics began to understand its tasks, although never subsequently their formulation was as sharp and passionate as in Marx and Nietzsche. Even academically respectable analytical ethics is nothing more than a critique of the language of morality, its unfounded ambitions and pretensions.

Although ethics convincingly showed that morality does not say what it says, that the unconditional categoricalness of its demands cannot be justified in any way, hangs in the air, although it cultivated a suspiciously wary attitude towards moral statements, especially moral self-attestations, no less, morality in all its illusory and unfounded categoricalness has not gone away. Ethical criticism of morality does not abolish morality itself, just as heliocentric astronomy did not abolish the appearance that the Sun revolves around the Earth. Morality continues to function in all its “falsehood,” “alienation,” “hypocrisy,” etc., exactly as it functioned before the ethical revelations. In one interview, a correspondent, confused by B. Russell's ethical skepticism, asks the latter: “Do you even agree that some actions are immoral?” Russell responds, “I wouldn’t like to use that word.” Despite what Lord Russell thinks, people still continue to use the word “immoral” and some other much stronger and more dangerous words. Just as on desktop calendars, as if to spite Copernicus, the hours of sunrise and sunset are indicated every day, so people in Everyday life(especially parents, teachers, rulers and other high-ranking officials) continue to preach morality in defiance of Marx, Nietzsche, and Russell.

Society, if we assume that ethics speaks on its behalf, in its relations with morality finds itself in the position of a husband who is forced to live with his wife, whom he previously convicted of adultery. Both have no choice but to forget or pretend to have forgotten about the previous revelations and betrayals. Thus, to the extent that society appeals to people, it seems to forget about philosophical ethics, which considers morality unworthy of appealing to it. This way of behavior is quite natural, just as the actions of an ostrich are natural and understandable, which in moments of danger hides its head in the sand, leaving its body on the surface in the hope that it will be mistaken for something else. It can be assumed that the above-mentioned disregard for ethics is an unsuccessful way to get rid of the contradiction between the ethical “head” of morality and its social body.

Where is the place of morality in the modern world?

The transition from the primary apology of morality to its primary criticism was due not just to the progress of ethics, but at the same time it was associated with a change in the place and role of morality in society, during which its ambiguity was revealed. We are talking about a fundamental historical shift that led to what can be called the new European civilization with its unprecedented scientific, technological, industrial and economic progress. This shift, which radically changed the entire picture of historical life, not only marked a new place for morality in society, but was itself largely the result of moral changes.

Morality has traditionally acted and been understood as a set of virtues that are summarized in the image of a perfect person, or as a set of norms of behavior that define the perfect organization of social life. These were two interconnected aspects of morality, transforming into each other - subjective, personal and objectified, objectively developed. It was believed that the good for an individual and the good for the state (society) are one and the same. In both cases, morality was understood as the specificity of individually responsible behavior, the path to happiness. This, in fact, constitutes the specific subject matter of European ethics. If we can single out the main theoretical question, which at the same time constituted the main pathos of ethics, then it is as follows: what is the free, individually responsible activity of a person, which he can give a completely virtuous form, direct to achieve his own good, what are its boundaries and content. It was precisely this kind of activity in which a person, remaining a sovereign master, combined perfection with happiness, and was called morality. She was considered the most worthy, considered as the focus of all other human efforts. This is true to such an extent that philosophers from the very beginning, long before Moore methodically developed this question, already, at least since Aristotle, came to the idea that goodness cannot be defined except through identity with oneself. The arena of morality (and this is essential!) was considered to be society and social (cultural) life in all the richness of its manifestations; it was assumed that, in contrast to nature and in contrast to it, the entire area of ​​joint life mediated by consciousness (knowledge, reason), including politics and economics, decisively depends on the decision, choice of people, the measure of their virtue. Therefore, it is not surprising that ethics was understood broadly and included everything that related to the second nature, self-created by man, and social philosophy was called moral philosophy; according to tradition, it sometimes still retains this name to this day. The sophists' distinction between nature and culture was fundamental to the formation and development of ethics. Culture was distinguished according to the ethical (moral) criterion (culture, according to the sophists, is the sphere of the arbitrary, it includes those laws and customs that people at their own discretion guide in their relationships, and what they do with things for their own benefit, but does not follow from the physical nature of these things). In this sense, culture was initially, by definition, included in the subject of ethics (it was precisely this understanding of ethics that was embodied in the well-known tripartite division of philosophy, formed in Plato’s Academy, into logic, physics and ethics, according to which everything that was not related to nature was included in ethics) .

Such a broad understanding of the subject of ethics was a fairly adequate understanding of the historical experience of the era when social relations took the form of personal connections and dependencies, when, therefore, the personal qualities of individuals, the measure of their morality and virtue were the main supporting structure that supported the entire edifice of civilization. In this regard, we can point to two well-known and documented points: a) outstanding events, the state of affairs basically had a pronounced personal character (for example, the fate of the war depended decisively on the courage of soldiers and commanders, a comfortable peaceful life in the state - on the good ruler, etc.); b) people’s behavior (including in the business sphere) was entangled in morally sanctioned norms and conventions (typical examples of this kind are medieval guilds or codes of knightly combats). Marx has a wonderful saying that a windmill produces a society led by an overlord, and a steam mill produces a society led by an industrial capitalist. By using this image to indicate the uniqueness of the historical era that interests us, I do not simply want to say that a miller at a windmill is a completely different human type than a miller at a steam mill. This is quite obvious and trivial. My idea is different - the work of the miller specifically as a miller at a windmill depended much more on the moral qualities of the miller’s personality than the work of the miller as a miller at a steam mill. In the first case, the moral qualities of the miller (well, for example, such a fact as whether he was a good Christian) were no less important than his professional skills, while in the second case they are of secondary importance or may not be taken into account at all.

The situation changed radically when the development of society took on the character of a natural-historical process and the sciences of society began to acquire the status of private (non-philosophical) sciences, in which the axiological component is insignificant and even in this insignificance turns out to be undesirable, when it turned out that the life of society is regulated by laws so as necessary and inevitable as the course of natural processes. Just as physics, chemistry, biology and other natural sciences were gradually isolated from the bosom of natural philosophy, so jurisprudence, political economy, social psychology and other social sciences began to be isolated from the bosom of moral philosophy. Behind this was the transition of society from local, traditionally organized forms of life to large and complex systems (in industry - from a workshop organization to factory production, in politics - from feudal principalities to national states, in economics - from subsistence farming to market relations, in transport – from draft power to mechanical means of transportation, in public communication – from salon conversations to the media, etc.).

The fundamental change was as follows. Various spheres of society began to be structured according to the laws of effective functioning, in accordance with their objective parameters, taking into account large masses of people, but (precisely because these are large masses) regardless of their will. Social relations inevitably began to acquire a material character - regulated not according to the logic of personal relationships and traditions, but according to the logic of the subject environment, the effective functioning of the corresponding area of ​​​​joint activity. The behavior of people as workers was no longer set taking into account the totality of mental qualities and through a complex network of morally sanctioned norms, but was dictated by functional expediency, and it turned out to be the more effective the closer it came to automated, emancipated from individual motives, the accompanying psychological layers, the more more people became workers. Moreover, human activity as a subjective element of a social system (worker, functionary, activist) not only bracketed moral differences in the traditional sense, but often required the ability to act immorally. Machiavelli was the first to explore and theoretically sanction this shocking aspect in relation to state activities, showing that one cannot be a good ruler without at the same time being a moral criminal. A. Smith made a similar discovery in economics. He established that the market leads to the wealth of nations, but not through the altruism of the subjects economic activity, but, on the contrary, through their selfish desire for their own benefit (the same thought, expressed in the form of a communist verdict, is contained in the famous words of K. Marx and F. Engels that the bourgeoisie in the icy water of selfish calculation drowned the sacred thrill of religious ecstasy, knightly enthusiasm, bourgeois sentimentality). And finally, sociology, which has proven that free, morally motivated actions of individuals (suicide, theft, etc.), considered according to the laws of large numbers as moments of society as a whole, are lined up in regular series, which turn out to be more strict and stable than, for example, seasonal climate change (how can one not recall Spinoza, who said that if a stone thrown by us had consciousness, it would think that it was flying freely).

In a word, modern complexly organized, depersonalized society is characterized by the fact that the totality of professional and business qualities of individuals that determine their behavior as social units depends little on their personal moral virtues. In his social behavior, a person acts as a bearer of functions and roles that are assigned to him from the outside, by the very logic of the systems in which he is included. Zones of personal presence, where what can be called moral education and determination are decisive, become less and less important. Social mores depend not so much on the ethos of individuals, but on the systemic (scientific, rationally ordered) organization of society in certain aspects of its functioning. The social price of a person is determined not only and not so much by his personal moral qualities, but by the moral significance of the overall great business in which he participates. Morality becomes predominantly institutional and is transformed into applied spheres, where ethical competence, if we can talk about ethics here at all, is determined to a decisive extent by professional competence in special fields of activity (business, medicine, etc.). The ethical philosopher in the classical sense becomes redundant.

Has ethics lost its subject?

Ethics, as a traditionally established area of ​​philosophical knowledge, continues to exist in the usual theoretical space, concluded between two opposite poles - absolutism and anti-normativism. Ethical absolutism comes from the idea of ​​morality as an absolute and in its absoluteness incomprehensible precondition of the space of rational life; one of its typical extreme cases is moral religion (L.N. Tolstoy, A. Schweitzer). Ethical anti-normativism sees in morality the expression (as a rule, transformed) of certain interests and relativizes it; its ultimate expression can be considered philosophical and intellectual experiences, called postmodernist. These extremes, like any extremes in general, feed each other, converge with each other: if morality is absolute, then it inevitably follows that any moral statement, since it has human origin, is filled with specific, definite and limited content in its certainty, will be relative , situational and in this sense false; if, on the other hand, there are no absolute (unconditionally binding and generally valid) definitions of morality, then any moral decision will have an absolute meaning for the one who makes it. Within this framework are modern ethical ideas both in Russia (an alternative to religious-philosophical and socio-historical understandings of morality) and in the West (an alternative to Kantianism and utilitarianism).

Absolutism and anti-normativism in their modern versions, of course, differ from their classical counterparts - primarily in their excessiveness and exaggeration. Modern absolutism (unlike even Stoic or Kantian) has lost touch with social mores and recognizes nothing more than the selfless determination of the moral person. Only the absoluteness of moral choice, and no legality! It is significant in this regard that L.N. Tolstoy and A. Schweitzer contrast morality with civilization and generally deny moral sanction to civilization. Supporters of anti-normativism, genetically related and essentially continuing the eudaimonistic-utilitarian tradition in ethics, were strongly influenced by the great immoralists of the 19th century, but, unlike the latter, who denied morality in the context of a supra-moral perspective, they do not set the task of overcoming morality, they simply reject it . They do not have their own “free individuality”, like K. Marx, or a superman, like Nietzsche. Not only do they not have their own super-morality, they don’t even have a post-morality. In fact, such philosophical and ethical super-dissidence turns into a complete intellectual capitulation to circumstances, as happened, for example, with R. Rorty, who justified NATO aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999 by citing the fact that there were “good guys” fighting “bad guys.” Despite all the features of absolutism and anti-normativism in modern ethics, we are nevertheless talking about traditional thought patterns. They represent a reflection on a certain type of social relations, which is characterized by internal inconsistency (alienation) between the private and the general, the individual and the race, the individual and society.

Whether this contradiction remains fundamental today is a question that we must answer when reflecting on what is happening with ethics and morality in the modern world. Is the social (human) reality preserved today, the understanding of which was the classical image of morality, or, to put it differently, is not the classical ethics presented in our works, textbooks, the ethics of yesterday? Where in modern society, which in its direct cultural design has become mass, and in its driving forces is institutionalized and deeply organized, where in this ordered sociological cosmos are niches of individual freedom, zones of morally responsible behavior located? To be more specific and professionally accurate, the question can be reformulated as follows: isn’t it time to take a more critical look at the legacy of critical philosophy and question the definition of morality as selflessness, unconditional obligation, universally valid requirements, etc.? And is it possible to do this in such a way as not to abandon the idea of ​​morality and not replace the game of life with its beaded imitation?

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Paganism in the modern world Many people believe that paganism is the worship of statues and totem animals and are sure that pagans have not existed for a long time. From the point of view of Judaism, a pagan is anyone who values ​​something higher than God and morality. Man speaking

From the book Comparative Theology. Book 4 author Team of authors

From the author's book

The role of Freemasons in the modern world and the crisis of the biblical concept As we have already mentioned, capitalist “freedoms” in the development of controlled states do not suit the “world behind the scenes”. The collapse of the USSR - in all its subjective and objective reasons - stimulated