Jagiellonian University in Kraków

English abstract: Prima facie duties central to W.D. Ross’s concept of ethical conflict and principles of law, which are, in turn, central to R. Dworkin’s individualistic conception of law as interpretation, show similarities in the process of their application. A comparative analysis of prima facie duties and principles of law leads to the conclusion that there is a shared essence underlying the notion of normative conflict (collision of prima facie duties or legal principles in so-called “hard cases”). This essence consists in the assumed importance of the factual situation as a factor determining an ethical and legal choice from among conflicting duties or principles, and the importance of the decision-making subject in resolving the conflict. Factuality and the unique subject (whether the “plain man” or “Judge Hercules”) are the factors that condition the possibility of identifying the proper duty and nonabstract right. Simultaneously, these are the factors that establish normative conflicts as disputes not determinable by an abstractly assumed moral principle; they open normativity to new narratives, to development, and to evolution. They individualize the conflict through the individualized nature of facts and the decision-making subject. Thus, a comparative analysis may lead to the conclusion that the assumption of openness to collisions of principles and duties is an expression of liberal thought, as it is not a narrative that imposes or excludes. Any abstract approach to conflict resolution is inherently oppressive, as it disregards the importance of the decision-making subject and the complexity of factual situations. Individualism opens up the conflict rather than closing it. This is the nature of declarations of individual rights and freedoms – when conceptualized as legal principles, they inevitably expose rights and freedoms to conflict.

Keywords: Joseph Raz, perfectionist liberalism, personal autonomy, group rights as a category, political conception of human rights, Ronald Dworkin, ethical monism

Language: Polish

Published: Number 2(43)/2025, pp. 42-57.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2025.2.42

Download: Download

Number of downloads: 133

This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Jagiellonian University in Kraków

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.

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

Language: Polish

Published: Number 3(28)/2021, pp. 95-106

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2021.3.95

Download: Download
Number of downloads: 511

This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial – No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.