O niesubstancjalności dobra

• Authors: Hartman Jan

Title variants

EN

On the non-substantiality of the good

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

This article is a critical analysis of, and a polemic against, the theses of the classic and perhaps most famous Polish treatise on ethics, namely Władysław Tatarkiewicz's work “On the Irrelativity of the Good”, published in 1919. Tatarkiewicz subjects the various relativist and subjectivist positions in ethics to a meticulous analysis, in each case proving that the variability and diversity of the relations in which we remain with the good have nothing to do with the relativity of the good as such. The good is an indefinable, primordial, and simple property of certain objects that accrues to them independently of the relations these objects enter into with persons. The author of the article notes that Tatarkiewicz maintains that the absolute character of the good is given directly in intuition, which is firstly untrue and secondly excludes any discussion. Moreover, the ontology on which Tatarkiewicz bases his analysis is unclear. It is not even clear whether the good is supposed to be a property of things, a property of property, or one or the other in different cases. Moreover, while speaking of the simplicity of the good, Tatarkiewicz simultaneously highlights the ambiguity of the term 'good' itself. The clarity and completeness of Tatarkiewicz's treatise is only a pretence, hiding many ambiguities. The author of the article claims that the idea behind Władysław Tatarkiewicz's work was to find a formula for moderate conservatism, one which opposes all relativism and subjectivism, and at the same time rejects all rigid and dogmatic codes of moral rules of conduct.

Keywords

EN

goodness; relativism; subjectivism; objectivism

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Umiejętności / Uniwersytet Jagielloński
• Journal: Kwartalnik Filozoficzny
• Year: 2023
• Volume: 51
• Issue: 1-4
• Pages: 131-147

Contributors

author

Hartman Jan

• Uniwersytet Jagielloński, Zakład Filozofii i Bioetyki Collegium Medicum, ul. Michałowskiego 12, 31-126 Kraków, Poland