Open AccessEthics and politics: Significance and renewal of "the philosophy of human affairs"
Author(s) -
Vojislav Stanovčić
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
zbornik matice srpske za društvene nauke/zbornik matice srpske za društvene nauke
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2406-0836
pISSN - 0352-5732
DOI - 10.2298/zmsdn0417007s
Subject(s) - politics , relation (database) , economic justice , sociology , epistemology , punishment (psychology) , feeling , contradiction , political ethics , coercion (linguistics) , law , political philosophy , law and economics , psychology , social psychology , political science , philosophy , computer science , linguistics , database
The author discusses the opposing opinions and different behaviour related to two significant problems. The first one deals with the relation between ethics and politics, both in the practical political activities and in the theoretical approaches (apologies or criticisms, that is analyses) to "the political". Dealing with the relation between "the rule of law" on the one hand and the political will or willfulness on the other, the author concludes that the rule of law implies the rule of the relatively sensible regulations and that their matalegal, metatheoretical basis includes moral assumptions and moral and religious norms, principles and categories, for example the notions of justice, reward, punishment, freedom, human rights, but also a series of other orders, instructions, prohibitions, taboos, some of which also have the instrumental nature and are used to achieve certain humanistic goals. The second problem deals with the relation between regulations and instructions in logic and ethics. These two problems are closely related because man’s every conscious activity observes or disregards some "logic" and/or "ethics". Simplified and politically expressed, the first problem appears as a question whether "the state cause" could justify political amoralism – whether pure force, i.e. coercion creates law. The problem of the relation between logic and ethics appears as a contradiction, as a discrepancy, the conflict between logic and ethics used to realize or do things, and an insight about an activity which instructs the thinker or doer towards conlusions or activities of one kind, while his moral consciousness ethics or religious feeling instruct him to act in a completely different way, that is to act in the other direction. This is the conflict between the logic in the insights related to moral consciousness (conscience) or to the religious feelings of the subject who acquires knowledge and who should draw conclusions about certain practical activities