Kowalik: Why do Aristotle, Kant, and Putin value good?

The election discussions of the right-wing over the "minor evil" and the post-election "moral hangover" of progressive-left environments show that the divorce of morality with politics is inactive unrealistic.

People spontaneously pass distant from what is, what should be, ignoring announcements of empirism and idealism about the impracticability of specified a step. Empiric morality is sentimental. It leads to feelings, specified as tribal emotions that bind individual electorates. For example, the thought of liberal democracy superior to another political systems is the morality of idealists. It is besides possible to synthesize sentimental ethos with the idea: hatred of people who think differently. Either way, man must find what he should do, or what is good, for from the command, "Do good and avoid evil," there is no dispensation. Analysis of leading representatives of political realism confirms that global policy is no exception either.

American Politologist John Mearsheimer claims that Russia, in recognizing Ukraine's association with NATO as its existential threat, considers the 2022 aggression as a essential remedy. The nonsubjective of the collective West is to establish liberal democracy in Ukraine. If the expansion of liberal influence in Ukraine is good, the anti-Russian aggression must be regarded as bad. Contrary to appearances, there is no contradiction. The policy includes a network of relationships that can be opposed. The right hand is other to the left, which does not mean that both hands are "opposite." Contrary to Hegl and his students, contradiction is excluded from existence, residing only in human heads. The political sides of conflicts are different and have different properties. They may neglect to postulate targets and optimise resources. Neither liberal democracy nor Russian mir have a licence for universality. However, the many moral systems do not prove that there is no good, but only human deficiencies in his discernment. The liberal rule that people disagree on the question of good life does not find what good is. Liberal Dreams and global Reality, in peculiar the chapter Human Nature and Politics.

Relativism in the field of relationships is completely legitimate until these relationships are understood as self-serving, that is, as Catholic theology understands the Holy Trinity. Sadly, this is how the philosophers of Descartes reason. "I say St. Thomas would be amazed at how many contemporary philosophers are abstract realists of universal issues. Akwinata felt that the only accident of the actual numerical identity of certain natures was the Holy Trinity. That's what her mystery was expected to be. Today’s philosophers, on the another hand, see the same mysterious relation between the shared qualities. Moreover, the position of abstract realism can be compared to the view that St. Thomas has branded, according to which in the act of cognition all the known object must be in the knowledgeable head (ST I, 85,2). Just as in the head there is only an indefinite form of stone, so in things there are only unspecified forms. Human cognition is aspectual, as is the formal compatibility of created things. It is only in God that God knows specifically and can be numerically 1 in 3 persons. ” — P. Rojek, “Trops and Universality. Ontological Studies’, 2019, p. 211.

The political equivalent of the philosophical enquiry cited Paweł Rojek We'll find it at Roman Dmowski. "The real policy does not mostly recognise bad or good, inappropriate or appropriate measures of action. all measure, all tactic, is good if it is appropriate in the given circumstances of place and time, in a given arrangement of global and interstate relations" ("Doctrine and Realism in Politics", Review of All Poland, 1904, No. 8). Nestor of the national movement, like Akwinata, notes that general beings are never dealt with. Political welfare, like any being, is always specific. There is no “good at all” in politics or outside politics. However, it is hard to even say the means, nevertheless bad or good. In any case, morality involves the intent of human action, expressed in the celebrated question Nicholas Czernyszewski (1828-1889) taken by Lenin: The 4 Diamonds’? (what to do). The differences only boil down to the way answers are given. And it is not possible for individual to prosecute a goal, recognized as evil. "Good is what everything desires." A supporter of abortion does not request it due to the fact that it is evil, but sees in it the good (life, health, well-being) of a female or an overpopulated Earth. He besides sees the future suicide ending of his own life as good, freeing him from unnecessary suffering. It is vital that we discern ourselves in a complex reality, which Aristotle says usually takes the average man 40-50 years to live.

"Aristoteles has made a trichotomical division of sciences: theoretical—the intent of which is to formulate cognition for itself (metaphysics, physics and mathematics); practical—the intent of which is to formulate cognition for the attainment of moral excellence (ethics, politics); poietical (manufacturing, from gr. poiesis)—the intent of which is to formulate cognition by which circumstantial objects can be produced. In Aristotle's opinion, theoretical sciences are the most valuable and so the highest placed in the hierarchy, due to the fact that they describe cognition for the cognition itself. Among the theoretical teachings, the top value represents metaphysics, which strives to satisfy only the human request of pure knowledge" (Wikipedia). According to the Stagirite of the 3 teething areas of human activity, or contemplation, morality and production, the easiest to learn is the latter. By imitating others, you can adopt the principles of boating, agriculture, or rhetoric. At the level of art, man's control is indirect, as it is due to his performance and not to the stimuli itself, as in animals. Morality is more hard to master due to the fact that it involves knowing fitness. The most hard is to contemplate the causes, explaining how reality constitutions the goals that we can achieve.

Vladimir Kowalik

Theoretical cognition gives autonomy, expressed by the strategy (ethos) of life, political strategy, state sense, or national interest. Only actions at this level are autonomous (free) due to the fact that only they are "taken by themselves and not by something else" – Aristotle writes. The mastery of morality is inactive utilitarian. However, gaining any kind of production art is mainly marked by tactics. Below the level of manufacturing arts we are already dealing with direct control in the way Russian physiologist Ivan Pawlov (1849-1936) trained dogs, examining their conditional reflexes. Conditions are shared between man and another animals, and hence they are not specifically human. However, in a period of civilizational decline, this is the main, consciously implemented method of social control (see Paolo Lionni, "Liska School and systematic demolition of education", 2020). For example, the conditioning of the masses with ideological justifications in the interests of these or another groups ("green order", "great reset", etc.). This does not mean that morality does not include politics or economics, but only that the stated objectives are not necessarily made available to the masses.

The intellectual currents that form modern morality are of a character which Catholic theology reserves for the Holy Trinity: they presume that the act of cognition exhausts the full known object. due to the fact that man has sensual and intellectual knowledge, this means 1 of 2 possibilities of being like God: nominalism or Platonicism. In reality, senses and minds form 1 knowledge, drawing from objects outside of man. reflection is only an addition to the average human cognition of the world. If we agree with the nominalists that sensual impressions exhaust the scope of our knowledge, the same concepts become a field for the detached "self-thinking thought" (Aristoteles defined God just as Self-thinking Thought). For if in an empirical (or mental) act of cognition the full known object is exhausted, then apart from empirical (or mental) cognition there is nothing left.

Empirism is to deny existence beyond sensual data. An empirist cannot admit anything but sensual perception. To realize the consequences, you just gotta realize what water is. The 3 atoms in the water molecule (H2O) stay to each another in relation to which they have no another atoms in the Universe. The water molecule is something another than the sum of 2 hydrogen atoms and 1 oxygen atom. It besides has rather different properties than its components separately. In turn all water molecules are to each another in relationships that do not gotta another molecules, e.g. gas molecules, or solid particles. This kind of mention Aristotle called the substance (Gr. ousia, hypostasis). It is common in the dynamic planet of concretes around us and it is thanks to it that there is intent (see E. Feser: “Aristoteles’ rematch. Metaphysical Basics of Physics and Biology”, 2024). A peculiar case of intent is the intention of the mind. The consequence of the “direction” of the intellect on things is that 1 cannot think about “nothing”.

Physics, like any science, contains embarrassing empirical general sentences. In the physical implication: p?q (if p to q), the predecessor “p” is always general, while the successor “q” is yet always empirical, i.e. comparable to the data, mainly measurements. But how do we get an abstract general if the planet is purely empirical? The last effort to save “the mortal belief in the mechanical and deterministic structure of the world, which he declared the 19th century, based on Newton's gospel” (Stanisław Piasecki: “Newton’s Funeral”, [in:] “Simple from the bridge. The choice of writings”, Kraków, p. 89) was undertaken by neo-positives in the 20th century. They tried to insert empirical tasks on both sides of the implication, wanting to bring technological reasoning into purely grammatical rules.

Science would become a cataloguing experience and placing them in the dictionary of acceptable expressions. The phrase ‘water is simply a substance’ (instead of water may be any concept) means that the word ‘water’ is simply a noun. In this view, sense remains to search in knowing where it must reside independently of experience. Here comes the roots of the celebrated chapter of existence and duty, announced by David Hume. Immanuel Kant Waken by Hume from his “dogmatic nap” he believed that the sense manifests itself in the essential “Newton’s gospel” for our reason. After Einstein, however, there is no longer any basis for specified faith. "A fundamental revision subordinate (essential for the thought of 3 centuries) to the Newtonian notions of absolute time and absolute space which Kant considered a prioritized, independent of all experience of the form of our mind" (S. Piasecki: ibid., p. 83). Kant's thought is purely voluntaristic and not far from “doing what he wants” George Owsiak.

The princess thinker asked “how is mathematical nature possible” that the extraction of the way Newton built classical mechanics will uncover the pattern of essential conduct in each field. Trying to decree what physics is based on, it brought ethics to actual destruction. The command to follow a regulation that can be postulated as a universal law leads Kant to the rule that man must act in specified a way as to usage his own humanity and others always as a goal, and never as a means (see the justification for the metaphysics of morality). It shows that humans cannot be subject to any purpose, which entails the thought of self-determination, self-determination, and so on. We owe the concept of "human rights", including the "rights of LGBTQ people", to the universal right to self-determination. Without the Cantov rule, spiritual freedom declared by the Second Vatican Council would not be possible and global law would not know the prohibition of war. Eventually, the ethical performance (curts) requiring Aristotle to practice well 40 or 50 years of practice are “guaranteed” to everyone regardless of his age and moral condition, even on individuals operating at the level of the conditional reflexes themselves. This is an overwhelming accomplishment of an ethics independent of experience.

Kant himself was convinced that Aristotle had the last conviction in logic. Meanwhile, the logic of the sentences that Stagirites do not have at all was invented by the Stoics. possibly Kanta's logic culture does not let him to transform normative sentences into descriptive sentences. Logic, however, is not a major problem. For example, the norm “don’t cut the throat of a sleeping mother” means the same thing as the inscription “cut the throat of a sleeping parent is wicked.” Strictly speaking, the opinions of empirical facts are not based on the opinion of norms. The consequence is simply a logical operation and can only be conducted on sentences but not on facts. Facts may exist, happen, pass away, but cannot consequence from them. The facts are linked by reason, objectively and logically (only in thought). Hume, however, has decreed that there are no causes and Kant, that the origin is human reasoning itself (whatever that means). In both cases, the intellect cannot bring anything from the facts.

Recognising both the merits of Kant and the Second Vatican Council Nikolaus Lobkovich He consciously notes his impression, as if philosophers in prison of their own consciousness were dreaming dreams to supply them with certainty and fresh creativity of thinking. reasoning that peculiarly conscientiously following the content of the observations, or following the model of axiomatic mathematics, “we can get closer not to being, but only to our awareness of being; at the same time increasingly isolated [...] from the cognition we owe to everyday experience” (“From substance to reflection”, [in] “Time of crisis, time of breakthrough”, Kraków 1996, p. 126). The divided that Lobkowicz writes about is well seen in Cantowska anthropology. Although man as a physical being is subject to mechanical necessity, as a human being he is completely free. As a consequence of isolation from everyday experiences, empiristic and idealistic doctrines lie on other sides of the mutually dug gap between facts and duty. Empirism stands by facts and idealism by duty.

But discipline itself includes both facts and obligations. Scientists working on investigation alternatively than morality, apply a moral norm, enabling them to gain theoretical cognition ("theory" means from Greek viewing, contemplation). It is besides apparent that both ethical competence and skill (arts) are needed to build theories. We observe the hierarchy of causes in all disciplines. Math is standard for physics. The laws of physics are normative for chemistry, as are the laws of chemistry are normative for biology. Chemistry for biology, just like physics for chemistry are higher-level sciences. Game explanation discipline will be a higher order discipline for evolution theory, logic is simply a higher order discipline (formal) of all sciences and so on. Without the hierarchy of reasons, affirmative discipline would be in the incorrect ellipse of its own data (on the discrimination between linear and hierarchical causality see E. Feser "Five Evidence for the Existence of God", 2022).

It should be amazing that reality makes it possible to practice discipline by being drawn closer to it with simpler structures than itself. In mathematics, it is called “algorithmic trait” and in philosophy, it is called “ananalogy of existence”. Otherwise, human knowledge, which is always aspectual, would be helpless to the world, or as it is in the thought of Hume or Kant. erstwhile the perceived aspect of reality is generalized and treated as a whole, i.e. with negation of omitted aspects, absurd appears – a sign of staying in the exclusive company of your own thoughts. “The full is true” as Hegel muddyly bloomed. Trueness, however, is simply a feature of any sentences alternatively than a mythical whole. To deny this, we submit to Hegle, the logically forbidden temptation to make statements about everything. We fall into gibberish saying that the full reality consists of empirical data or thought. We consider the conduct not within our moral concepts to be beyond morality.

An Empiric who considers only observations will consider them as a confirmation that from what is, it does not result, what can – and even more so – what should be. However, this is by virtue of his own decision. Similarly, the idealist proclaiming moral imperatives in isolation from the empirical world. Here too, the reason is the decision not to consider the empire. It just shows how crucial the efficiency of choice is, which is morality. Human behaviour from marketing conditionality to critically cultivated discipline puts the dominant contemporary empirism and idealism on the charge of deficiency of realism.

Vladimir Kowalik

Think Poland, No. 27-28 (6-13.07.2025)