The article analyzes the concept of universality in Oleg Drobnitskii’s ethics. As opposed to most Soviet ethicists of the 1960s and early 1970s, Drobnitskii viewed this concept along the lines of the principle of universality presented in the moral theories of Immanuel Kant and Richard Hare. However, while they considered universality to be a feature of individual moral thinking in the forms of maxims, principles, and evaluations, Drobnitskii understood universality as the main feature of moral requirements and essentially external to (...) the moral agent, representing to her social relations and the ‘general laws of history.’ It was conceptually significant in Drobnitskii’s approach to universality that he analyzed it within the context of a more general concept of morality—as a mode of normative regulation of behavior. In this capacity, universality was presented as a characteristic of general appeal, or the general way in which a moral requirement is binding. The principle of equality is a normative correlate of universality understood in this way. Universality also characterizes judgments, whose moral adequacy is verified through the procedure of universalization. Regarding universality, Drobnitskii discussed important questions of the individualization of the universal moral requirement in the form of the moral agent’s personal task and the universality of class moral views. He tried to explain these differing, and not always interconnected, aspects of universality by appealing to certain ‘general laws of history,’ and thus offered a historicist basis of morality. This article shows that, despite this unprecedented analysis of the issue of universality, Drobnitskii did not achieve a systematic conclusion in his conceptualization of universality. Nevertheless, he was able to offer a number of significant insights, with the potential to aid our further comprehension of the phenomenon of universality and how it ought to be understood. (shrink)

Ethics in the USSR revived in the middle of the twentieth century after more than twenty years of silence. The impetus for the development of research and teaching in this area was given by the supreme power, which considered ethics as one of the more effective tools of state propaganda, corresponding to the new social realities. But pretty soon, the very logic of research immersion in the subject required ethicists to deepen the philosophical and normative analysis of morality. This ultimately (...) led to the revision of the postulates of orthodox Soviet social science and to the formation of a strict moral theory within its framework. The latter, by the very fact of its appearance, called into question the agenda of moralizing ideologization. The renewal of Soviet ethics proceeded in several directions, but in theoretical perspective, the key one was the turn from understanding morality as a form of ideological superstructure (which was dogmatically asserted in historical materialism), to understanding it as a way of regulating human behavior with specific functional characteristics. Today one can trace that transition by a number of intermediate steps in the interpretation of morality, the reconstruction of which, based on the texts of the 1950s to early 1970s, is of interest not only in the context of the history of ideas, but also in terms of the development of the methodology of ethical research and understanding of how a rigorous moral theory can be formed. Some episodes of the history of Soviet ethics are relevant today as examples of emancipated thought and intellectual opposition to the domination of state ideology. (shrink)

Moral Constraints on War offers a principle-by-principle presentation of the transcultural roots of the ethics of war in an age defined by the increasingly international nature of military intervention.

As a moral principle toleration is universal, but only in the sense that potentially it is addressed to every rational and moral agent. The question is whether this principle is appropriate in all situations and what are those moral agents who recognize its practical actuality for them? Toleration is not an absolute ethical principle, but one among others in the context of a particular moral system. It should be given a proper place in the hierarchy of principles. Understanding toleration as (...) the absolute or even overriding principle may lead in the face of obvious and directly threatening wrong to its use as an umbrella for adoptive or escapist behavior. The limits to toleration are given by basic and minimal ethical task to resist evil. The principle of active opposition to evil by all possible means is prior to the principle of toleration. (shrink)

In the context of his advanced theory of ethics Aristotle like later Kant seems considering the Golden Rule as trivial and not bound to be articulated. It is possible that Aristotle did not feel necessity to mention the Golden Rule, because the very Golden Rule was spread out in his ethics. Though he did not use the formula ofthe Golden Rule in his texts, he often expressed his understanding of virtuous character and virtuous relations using intellective constructions evidently relevant to (...) the Golden Rule. The analysis of Aristotle’s reasoning on shame, social intercourse and, mainly, friendship shows that his ethics is saturated with the content andspirit of the Golden Rule, including such features agent’s initiative, activity, commitment and thus her/his responsibility for establishing relations, their potential reversibility, mutuality, and universalizability. (shrink)