The Problem of Moral Progress and Stoic Cosmopolitanism

The article is devoted to showing the connection between the moral progress and the cos­mopolitanism of the Stoic. Since the early Stoics considered the right reason (ὀρθὸς λόγος) as one of the basic conditions for the unification of gods and humankind into a single com­munity (κοσμόπολις), anyone who intends to join to this community must develop his or her reason to the highest level. It means that the cosmopolitan must be morally perfect, which implies that he or she has successfully completed the process of moral progress. However, the concept of moral progress in Stoicism (especially in the early one) is prob­lematic because the Stoics denied a qualitative difference between vicious people and be­lieved that all bad deeds are equal. The author of the article tries to remove this contradic­tion by introducing a two-level structure of moral progress, in which the gradation of moral development and qualitative changes in the moral character of the subject are spaced. The cosmopolitanism of the Stoics and their ideas about moral progress are united not only by the concept of «right reason», but also by their doctrine of «oikeiôsis», which implies the development of natural inclinations to the highest principles of morality. Finally, the inter­dependence of moral progress and the cosmopolitanism is demonstrated by their evolution with the development of the Stoic school. This evolution is expressed in the fact that, on the one hand, the Stoics perfected the tools for moral development, which paved a clearer path to the cosmopolis, and on the other hand, they reduced the requirements for the citi­zens of the cosmopolis, which also led to the growth of the community of gods and people.

Externalism about Moral Responsibility: Modification of A. Mele’s Thought Experiment

The author modifies A. Mele’s thought experiment for externalism about moral res­ponsibility, which suggests that the agent’s history partially determines whether the agent is morally responsible for particular actions, or the consequences of actions. The original thought experiment constructs a situation in which the individual is not morally responsible for the killing because of manipulation, that is, for a reason external to the agent. A. Mele’s theory was criticized by A.V. Mertsalov, D.B. Volkov, and V.V. Vasiliev at the seminar orga­nized by the Moscow Center for Consciousness. The arguments against A. Mele's theory had the following structure: A.A. Mele does not show that the historical explanation is the best explanation, because there are competing explanations, no less convincing, which are in­compatible with A. Mele’s externalism. The author explicates and analyzes the expla­nations offered by philosophers from the Moscow Center for Consciousness: the explanation from identity, the explanation from self-identification, the explanation from the condition of knowledge, the explanation from future states. Although these explanations apply to Mele’s original thought experiment, they cannot explain the absence of moral responsibility in the modified thought experiment proposed by the author: the explanations from identity and self-identification are excluded by the gradual change in the agent structure of personality; the explanation of knowledge conditions is refuted by including knowledge of manipulation in the conditions of the thought experiment; the explanation of future states is excluded by removing relevant future states from the thought experiment.

Educational Literature in Russia of the 17th–18th Centuries as a Source for the History of Moral Concepts

The article analyses moral concepts in the educational literature and didactic manuals, which were popular in Russia in the seventeenth – eighteenth centuries. The main sources for the research are the following texts: ‘The Citizenship of Children’s Habits’ (translation of ‘De civilitate morum puerilium’ by Erasmus of Rotterdam), ‘The Honest Mirror of Youth’, ‘Iphika and Hieropolitic’, ‘Arithmetic’ by Leontiy Magnitsky, a translation of ‘Orbis sensu­alium pictus’ by John Amos Comenius, and ‘Didactic Philosophy’ by F.X. Baumeister. The chronological frames of the research are defined as a period of and active ‘appropria­tion’ of moral codes of the European good manners, and the shaping of the ethical language allowing to build both the outer forms of the moral life of the society, and its ethical reflec­tion. Taking into account the educational literature of that period, we may not only reveal its moral concepts, but also outline the general volume of new terms and their definitions. Moral concepts captured the rules of behaviour, moral characteristics of persons, the ethical significance of their labour, education, and upbringing. Studying the educational literature allows us to understand the role of the introduction of basic grammar, arithmetic, and other disciplines in the shaping of the new moral world in its integrity and diversity, to trace the history of formation of moral terms and concepts from didactic ethical compositions to the first manuals of the late eighteenth century, where ethic was presented as a specific field of philosophy. Thus, studying such various sources in the context of the ethic analyzes allows us to do a complex research of the basics of theoretical philosophical ethic in Russia, as well as the commonplace moral language of the Russian society of the epoch of Enlightenment. Largely thanks to these manuals, the categorical and conceptual language of morality was formed in Russian culture.

Moral Assessment of War in Russian Marxist Thought in the 1910–1930s

This article precedes a large-scale study of the ethics of war in the USSR. The text deals with the problem of finding moral argumentation in the Russian Marxist tradition of under­standing of war in 1910–1930s. Lenin, developing the ideas of Marx and Clausewitz, formu­lated that war is continuation of politics, which in turn is an expression of the class struggle. This thesis was sometimes taken as evidence of a rejection of the ethical consideration of war. However, a closer study of the literature and comparative research of the Bolsheviks theorists’ attitudes to militarism and pacifism, can lead to the conclusion that the ethical view on war was not completely alien to the Soviet authors. The typology of war, peculiar to the Russian Marxism of the specified period, is given, and the main strategies of moral legit­imization of war are also designated. At the end of the article, the question of the complexity of studying the soviet ethics of war in the context of the homogenization of philosophical and military discourses in the USSR is considered. However, it is concluded that this institu­tional feature of Soviet science and philosophy manifested itself over time, that the reduc­tion in the possibility of free thought and discussion gradually increased. Accordingly, in the writings of the 1920s and 1930s, we can try to discover the original Soviet ethics of war and fix various points of view and positions on the issues of the moral limitation of war. The ar­ticle ends with the definition of the directions of further develop­ment of the subject. These tasks are: differentiation of the generalized views on the moral dimension of war presented in this article, clarification the dynamics and forms of the Soviet moral theory of war canon, and identification the differences between Lenin’s and Stalin’s approaches to understanding the war.

About Two Existential and Moral Trends in Philosophy of 20th Century

The article is devoted to two important existential and moral trends ‘Freudian’ and ‘Sartrian’ that, having emerged in the twentieth century, exist today. The authors distinguish the exis­tential and the moral: if the moral is a system of internal and external commands and prohi­bitions, the existential is an individual “life of the soul”, a set of experiences, moods and passions. The existential and moral coincide only partially, and there is a certain separation of the vital-existential from morality in the 20th century: the desire to break out from any given behavioral framework. This was facilitated by secularization, which overthrew the transcendent, which to a large extent served as the foundation of morality. The opposition of the vital-existential principle to traditionally understood morality was expressed, in particu­lar, in the line of praising personal freedom (J.-P. Sartre) and in the desire to liberate per­son’s instinctive and emotionally passionate aspirations from moral pressure (S. Freud). Cer­tainly, Freud and Sartre express an objective cultural transition from tradition to innovation, from the sacred to the profane, from “rigorous morality” to free expression of the will, but at the same time they were intellectuals who, with their formulations and manifests facilitate “struggle against morality” and legitimize it, as a result the new moral concepts based on the idea of “overcoming any boundaries” become common. The existential-vital impulse crowds out the moral prohibitive-imperative system of regulation. The ideas of Freud and Sartre were initially understood by the cultural community as humanistic, but in low culture they were transformed into a protest against any moral and rational restrictions, and rela­tivized moral ideas.

On Divergence of “Morality” and “Ethics”

The divergence of Russian concepts “moral'” and “nravstvennost'” (in German “Sittlichkeit”, in English “ethics”/“ethical life”, in French “éthique”) in various versions is quite common in literature and can be taken as a doubtless discursive fact. Usually such divergence is a re­sult of substantialization of some functional and normative features of morality/ethics distin­guished by philosophy. Internal heterogeneity is inherent in morality/ethics both at functional and normative levels. A special analysis of various attempts to discriminate “morality” and “ethics” is needed to clarify the theoretical and methodological prerequisites of such diver­gence, its principal expediency, probable rationale and possible ‘gaps’. For authors outside of philosophy, especially moral philosophy, the separation of “morality” and “ethics” often turns out to be the last stage in their contemplation of morality-ethics with an evident disregard of conceptual apparatus developed in moral philosophy to conceptualize the phenomenon of morality/ethics in its internal heterogeneity and polyvalence. It would be an oversimplifica­tion to think that attempts to diverge morality and ethics have been always a result of theoret­ical misunderstandings. On the contrary, the divergence may be motivated by convincing the­oretical reasons and authors who apply such approach commonly consider it as a fruitful way to enhance our understanding of normative culture and normative experience. The article attempts to analyze in the first approximation some projects in divergence of morality and ethics. The author of the article does not believe that the distinction of morality and ethics is truly sufficient, but does not exclude that such attempts being consistently implemented could have some positive theoretical effects, and should be evaluated in each individual case.

The Hypothesis of a Genuine Moral Dilemma and the Method of Thought Experiment in Ethics

The article provides a critical overview of the hypothesis of a genuine moral dilemma and the method of thought experiment in ethics. The relevance of the research topic is due to a) the mess in academic publications on ethics created by the application of the expres­sions “moral dilemma” and “thought experiment” to the same imaginary situation without clarifying their meaning and relationship, and also b) the increase of justified doubts con­cerning the concepts which are hidden behind these expressions. Between the examples of moral dilemmas and thoughts experiments is close connection because all the examples that the advocates of the possibility of genuine moral dilemmas put forward are thought experiments, but not all thought experiments, even if we allow the possibility of genuine moral dilemmas, are such examples. Moreover, thought experiments are used both in at­tempts to prove the possibility of genuine moral dilemmas and to negate this possibility. To consider at the theoretical level issues related to the possibility of genuine moral dilemmas, the place of thought experiments in ethics and the connection between them, I think it necessary to investigate the hypothesis of a genuine moral dilemma, that is, a conceptually formulated assumption about the possibility of unsolvable conflicts be­tween moral obligations in life, and the method of thought experiment, that is, a set of cri­teria and rules for creating imaginary cases. The hypothesis of a genuine moral dilemmas is, in reality, an assumption about the manifestation of morality in life, and the active ap­plication of thought experiments to the field of ethics is a fact, any reflection on which raises the question of the possibility and validity of using the method of thought experi­ment regarding moral matters.

Mercy and/oder Justice: Almsgiving in the Catholic Thought, the 16th–17th Centuries

Approaches to almsgiving in the Catholic tradition of the Early Modern Times largely fol­lowed the ideas, developed in the previous period: surplus and need are taking into account, and only a certain correlation of them turns alms from pious counsel to an obli­gation, gives the poor certain rights as well; important is a distinction between different categories of needy recipients (by criterion of moral dignity, place in the hierarchy of the so-called “or­dered love”, etc.). At the same time, approaches to almsgiving slightly vary in the “high” theology and in writings addressed to the laity. In the first case, there is a noticeable depar­ture from the medieval understanding of alms as mainly spiritual practice, or an act of char­ity directed at the benefactor himself; the understanding of alms as a form of redistribution of goods, or an act of justice directed at another comes to the fore. This is also reflected in the development of practical criteria for distribution of alms: to whom, on what grounds, how much is due. These trends are less pronounced in the “popular” theology: as before, the reasoning on almsgiving in the 16th and 17th centuries focuses on the person of a benefactor and his merits – lifetime and posthumous. In this context, almsgiving acts primarily as an act of charity. At the same time, the focus in the “high” and “popular” theo­logy is not so much on the problem of poverty as a social phenomenon and of opportunities to eradicate it, as the question of opposing its specific manifestations.

Francis Hutcheson on Shame

The paper analyzes the conception of shame of the British sentimentalist Francis Hutcheson. It rests on the understanding of moral virtue as a representation of benevolence and the iden­tification of shame with the misery from the unfavorable opinions of others. For Hutcheson, shame complements honour as a second part of the particular human capacity that linked to the moral sense. In ‘An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue’, Hutch­eson is arguing with Bernard Mandeville about the role of shame and honour in the genesis of morality. He tries to show that the general approval of benevolence and the love of public good cannot be born out of self-love and a sensitivity to public opinion. He uses three argu­ments: a) shame is an immediate evil, b) shame is inseparable from the moral sense, b) their link is independent from public opinion. In addition, Hutcheson demonstrates that the sense of honour and shame can deviate from the moral sense in par­ticular instances via some asso­ciations. Hutcheson’ attitude to these deviations is uncertain and ambivalent. In ‘A System of Moral Philosophy’, honour and shame accompany not only the moral sense but also the sense of decency and dignity. This treatise also contains a brief polemics with Aristotle on the role of emotions generated by opinions of others in the pro­cess of moral self-improve­ment. Hutcheson’s conception of shame is a step in the develop­ment of socialized interpreta­tion of this emotion. Theoretically, it is interesting as an attempt to analyze origins of the particular lists of subjects of shame.

Virtue and Duty in Thomas Reid’s Moral Philosophy

Based on the material of T. Reid’s ethical conception, it is shown that in the moral-philo­sophical teaching, built around the concepts of duty, obligation, the concept of virtue also re­tains its significance. Although Reid consciously conceptualizes morality through norms and duties, the concept of virtue plays an important role in his teaching. Without virtue, it is im­possible to achieve two ends specific to human nature – the individual’s own good on the whole and what appears to be our duty. Reid shows that the person’s virtue coincides with her good on the whole, or happiness. This goal, however, can only be achieved when a hu­man being combines it with the fulfillment of duty for duty’s sake rather than for self-inter­est. In connection with the principle of respect for duty, Reid sees the role of virtue in that it is a necessary condition for the fulfillment of duty and of moral obligation. It is virtue as a quality of the moral agent, manifested in his power to distinguish between good and evil, to make judgments concerning one’s own duty and to act according to one’s understanding-conviction, that makes the act performed virtuous and proper through the motive. Through the concept of virtue Reed grasps the idea, important to Early Modern ethics, that every duty is internally binding through a moral motive.