Harmony and Dissonance. Isaiah Berlin’s and Leszek Kołakowski’s Visions of Ethical Life

Keywords: Isaiah Berlin, Leszek Kołakowski, value pluralism, ethical monism, ethical relativism, empiricism, myth

English abstract: The aim of the article is to carry out a parallel analysis of Isaiah Berlin’s and Leszek Kołakowski’s ethical visions. Special attention is given to the ideas developed by both thinkers in their early two essays, both published in 1958, though their later works are also taken into account. Juxtaposition of several threads inherent in their essays, backed by appropriate excerpts from their work, leads to the following conclusions. Both philosophers draw stunningly similar visions of moral life. Both of them dissociate themselves from ethical monism and from ethical relativism. However, Berlin’s standpoint, named by him value pluralism, is of strictly empiricist and thus anti-metaphysical character, while Kołakowski claims that in ethics there is no escape from metaphysics.

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