Abstract

The article presents ethical views of Julian Ochorowicz, the leading representative of philosophical and social positivism in Poland. Ochorowicz was the author of an unconventional system of scientific ethics. The system consisted of three parts: descriptive ethics and normative ethics, which taken together constitute ethology, and ethnoplastics or the technique of carrying out the injunctions of ethology. Ochorowicz clearly outlined the scope of problems that should be studied by the three parts of the scientific ethics. It had various important theoretical and practical tasks to accomplish. He expected it to make account of moral phenomena, formulate norms of behaviour, and show the ways of practising them. The normative constructions were therefore to be supported by matter-of-fact, comprehensive scientific studies of social morality. But the utmost aims were of practical nature. Ochorowicz hoped to create a system of ethics which could effectively determine behaviour, and revive moral feelings in society in accordance with precepts of ethological foundations. His favourite motto was „Ethics must be realistic”.