The article is an attempt to present the difficulties encountered by people who want to apply rationality in science at any price. The text discusses an approach which competes with rationality and suggests the participation of an element belonging to the mythical - metaphysical order in forming scientific theories. The authoress wonders where the boundary between the true and false world (as understood by Nietzsche) runs. She tries to answer the question - is metaphysics actually ballast which makes the development of science impossible?
Henryk Elzenberg, an influential Polish philosopher active at the Vilnius University before WW II and at the Torun University after the war, believed that values can neither be emotionally adopted, socially negotiated, established by a religious or philosophical theory nor rationally defended. They can only be discovered through moral or axiological intuition. Moral intuition reveals the true nature of value and its pronouncements can withstand all attacks from epistemological scepticism. Some people lack intuitions about value and will be lost without guidance from those who have them. But even the staunch epistemological sceptics sometimes make sound moral discoveries, are ready to act on them and find them reliable despite their disparaging philosophical opinions. It is interesting that starting from these opinions Elzenbereg not only rejected prudential and utilitarian ethics but also found ethics of virtue dry, dull and strained. He put his trust in poets and artists as he thought that their recognition of values was most credible. It is remarkable that he was the mentor of the distinguished poet, Zbigniew Herbert.
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