Dual-ranking act-consequentialism (DRAC) is a rather peculiar version of act-consequentialism. Unlike more traditional forms of act-consequentialism, DRAC doesn’t take the deontic status of an action to be a function of some evaluative ranking of outcomes. Rather, it takes the deontic status of an action to be a function of some non-evaluative ranking that is in turn a function of two auxiliary rankings that are evaluative. I argue that DRAC is promising in that it (...) can accommodate certain features of commonsense morality that no single-ranking version of act-consequentialism can: supererogation, agent-centered options, and the self-other asymmetry. I also defend DRAC against three objections: (1) that its dual-ranking structure is ad hoc, (2) that it denies (putatively implausibly) that it is always permissible to make self-sacrifices that don’t make things worse for others, and (3) that it violates certain axioms of expected utility theory, viz., transitivity and independence. (shrink)

This is Chapter 5 of my Commonsense Consequentialism: Wherein Morality Meets Rationality. In this chapter, I argue that those who wish to accommodate typical instances of supererogation and agent-centered options must deny that moral reasons are morally overriding and accept both that the reason that agents have to promote their own self-interest is a non-moral reason and that this reason can, and sometimes does, prevent the moral reason that they have to sacrifice their self-interest so as to do more (...) to promote the interests of others from generating a moral requirement. Furthermore, I argue that given that an act’s deontic status of both moral and non-moral reasons, the consequentialist must adopt dual-ranking act-consequentialism. I then defend dual-ranking act-consequentialism against a number of objections. (shrink)

The thought that acts of supererogation exist presents a challenge to all normative ethical theories. This chapter will provide an overview of the consequentialist responses to this challenge. I will begin by explaining the problem that supererogation presents for consequentialism. I will then explore consequentialist attempts to deny the existence of acts of supererogation. Next, I will examine a range of act consequentialist attempts to accommodate supererogation: including satisficing consequentialism, dual-ranking act consequentialism and an anti-rationalist (...) form of consequentialism. Finally, I will explore how indirect consequentialists have responded to this problem. Throughout the chapter, I will argue that in responding to the challenge of supererogation, consequentialists must choose between a more theoretically satisfying version of consequentialism and a form of consequentialism that is better able to accommodate our everyday moral intuitions and concepts. (shrink)

Morality seems to require us to attend to the good of others, but does not require that we assign any importance to our own good. Standard forms of consequentialism thus appear vulnerable to the compulsory self-benefit objection: they require agents to benefit themselves when doing so is entailed by the requirement of maximizing overall impersonal good. Attempts to address this objection by appealing to ideally motivated consequentialist agents; by rejecting maximization; by leveraging consequentialist responses to the more familiar special (...) relationships and demandingness objections; or by appealing to dual rankings of moral and all-things-considered reasons fall short of adequately answering this objection. A satisfactory response to the compulsory self-benefit objection is elusive because of consequentialism struggles to account for directed options (in this case, an option not to maximize one’s own good but not that of others) and for moral considerations that do not rest on the value of outcomes or states of affairs. (shrink)

Commonsense Consequentialism is a book about morality, rationality, and the interconnections between the two. In it, Douglas W. Portmore defends a version of consequentialism that both comports with our commonsense moral intuitions and shares with other consequentialist theories the same compelling teleological conception of practical reasons. Broadly construed, consequentialism is the view that an act's deontic status is determined by how its outcome ranks relative to those of the available alternatives on some evaluative ranking. Portmore argues (...) that outcomes should be ranked, not according to their impersonal value, but according to how much reason the relevant agent has to desire that each outcome obtains and that, when outcomes are ranked in this way, we arrive at a version of consequentialism that can better account for our commonsense moral intuitions than even many forms of deontology can. What's more, Portmore argues that we should accept this version of consequentialism, because we should accept both that an agent can be morally required to do only what she has most reason to do and that what she has most reason to do is to perform the act that would produce the outcome that she has most reason to want to obtain.Although the primary aim of the book is to defend a particular moral theory, Portmore defends this theory as part of a coherent whole concerning our commonsense views about the nature and substance of both morality and rationality. Thus, it will be of interest not only to those working on consequentialism and other areas of normative ethics, but also to those working in metaethics. Beyond offering an account of morality, Portmore offers accounts of practical reasons, practical rationality, and the objective/subjective obligation distinction. (shrink)

An organizing theme of the dissertation is the issue of how to make philosophical theories useful for scientific purposes. An argument for the contention is presented that it doesn’t suffice merely to theoretically motivate one’s theories, and make them compatible with existing data, but that philosophers having this aim should ideally contribute to identifying unique and hard to vary predictions of their theories. This methodological recommendation is applied to the ranking-theoretic approach to conditionals, which emphasizes the epistemic relevance and (...) the expression of reason relations as part of the semantics of the natural language conditional. As a first step, this approach is theoretically motivated in a comparative discussion of other alternatives in psychology of reasoning, like the suppositional theory of conditionals, and novel approaches to the problems of compositionality and accounting for the objective purport of indicative conditionals are presented. In a second step, a formal model is formulated, which allows us to derive quantitative predictions from the ranking-theoretic approach, and it is investigated which novel avenues of empirical research that this model opens up for. Finally, a treatment is given of the problem of logical omniscience as it concerns the issue of whether ranking theory (and other similar approaches) makes too idealized assumptions about rationality to allow for interesting applications in psychology of reasoning. Building on the work of Robert Brandom, a novel solution to this problem is presented, which both opens up for new perspectives in psychology of reasoning and appears to be capable of satisfying a range of constraints on bridge principles between logic and norms of reasoning, which would otherwise stand in a tension. (shrink)

I challenge the common picture of the “Standard Story” of Action as a neutral account of action within which debates in normative ethics can take place. I unpack three commitments that are implicit in the Standard Story, and demonstrate that these commitments together entail a teleological conception of reasons, upon which all reasons to act are reasons to bring about states of affairs. Such a conception of reasons, in turn, supports a consequentialist framework for the evaluation of action, upon which (...) the normative status of actions is properly determined through appeal to rankings of states of affairs as better and worse. This covert support for consequentialism from the theory of action, I argue, has had a distorting effect on debates in normative ethics. I then present challenges to each of these three commitments, a challenge to the first commitment by T.M. Scanlon, a challenge to the second by recent interpreters of Anscombe, and a new challenge to the third commitment that requires only minimal and prima facie plausible modifications to the Standard Story. The success of any one of the challenges, I demonstrate, is sufficient to block support from the theory of action for the teleological conception of reasons and the consequentialist evaluative framework. I close by demonstrating the pivotal role that such arguments grounded in the theory of action play in the current debate between evaluator-relative consequentialists and their critics. (shrink)

In traditional consequentialism the good is position-neutral. A single evaluative ranking of states of affairs is correct for everyone, everywhere regardless of their positions. Recently, position-relative forms of consequentialism have been developed. These allow for the correct rankings of states to depend on connections that hold between the state being evaluated and the position of the evaluator. For example, perhaps being an agent who acts in a certain state requires me to rank that state differently from someone (...) else who lacks this connection. In this chapter several different kinds of position-relative rankings related to agents, times, physical locations, and possible worlds are explored. Arguments for and against adopting a position-relative axiology are examined, and it is suggested that position-relative consequentialism is a promising moral theory that has been underestimated. (shrink)

Professionalism requires that physicians uphold the best interests of patients while simultaneously insuring just use of health care resources. Current articulations of these obligations like the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation's Physician Charter do not reconcile how these obligations fit together when they conflict. This is the problem of dual agency. The most common ways of dealing with dual agency: “bunkering”—physicians act as though societal cost issues are not their problem; “bailing”—physicians assume that they are merely agents (...) of society and deliver care typically based on a strongly consequentialist public health ethic; or “balancing”—a vaguely specified attempt to uphold both patient welfare and societal need for judicious resource use simultaneously—all fail. Here I propose how the problem of dual agency might begin to be addressed with rigor and consistency. Without dealing with the dual agency problem and getting more specific about how to reconcile its norms when they conflict, the expectations of professionalism risk being written off as cute, nonbinding aphorisms from the medical profession. (shrink)

Following Shelly Kagan’s useful terminology, foundational consequentialists are those who hold that the ranking of outcomes is at the foundation of all moral assessment. That is, they hold that moral assessments of right and wrong, virtuous and vicious, morally good and morally bad, etc. are all ultimately a function of how outcomes rank. But foundational consequentialists disagree on what is to be directly evaluated in terms of the ranking of outcomes, which is to say that they disagree on (...) what the primary evaluative focal point is. Act-consequentialists take acts to be the primary evaluative focal point. They evaluate acts in terms of how their outcomes rank (the higher ranked the outcome, the morally better the act), but evaluate everything else in terms of the morally best acts. Thus, the morally best rules are those that would, if internalized, most reliably lead us to perform the morally best acts. Rule-consequentialists, by contrast, take rules to be the primary evaluative focal point. They evaluate rules according to how their outcomes rank and then assess everything else in terms of the morally best rules. Thus, the morally best acts are those that conform to the morally best rules. In this paper, I argue that foundational consequentialists should not take the primary evaluative focal point (or points) to be acts, rules, virtues, or even everything. In so doing, I argue against act-consequentialism, rule-consequentialism, and global consequentialism. But my project is not entirely negative, for I argue that the primary evaluative focal point should be a complex of acts and attitudes. In the end, then, I claim that foundational consequentialists should accept a new kind of consequentialism, which I call attitude-consequentialism. (shrink)

Consequentialism is a major moral theory and a rival to such non-consequentialist theories as deontology, contractualism, and virtue ethics. It is the view that the only thing that matters morally is the consequences of an action. Thus, consequentialists hold that, to assess an act, we must first evaluate and rank the various ways things could turn out depending on whether it or some alternative act is performed. Its moral permissibility, then, depends on how its consequences compare to those of (...) its alternatives on this ranking. This Handbook contains thirty-two previously unpublished contributions by leading scholars, covering the state of the art in consequentialist theory as well as pointing to new directions for future research. (shrink)

Political scientists generally consider that the incentive for legislators to switch parties lies in their desire to be re-elected. While some scholars attribute defection to the legislators’ popularity and strong connections with their constituents which enable them to be re-elected without relying on party labels, others assert that legislators switch if they perceive that staying put might threaten their chances of re-election. In this paper, we find that the two assumptions, to some extent, contradict each other. More surprisingly, the two (...) contradictory hypotheses cohabit under the single non-transferable vote system. From an analysis of the switching in the Taiwanese Legislative Yuan, the empirical evidence shows that because of fierce intraparty competition in the multimember districts, not only barely elected but also top-ranked legislators switched party affiliation in order to avoid the loss in votes or even seats to their copartisans and to maximize their chances of re-election. (shrink)

There has been considerable discussion recently of consequentialist justifications of epistemic norms. In this paper, I shall argue that these justifications are not justifications. The consequentialist needs a value theory, a theory of the epistemic good. The standard theory treats accuracy as the fundamental epistemic good and assumes that it is a good that calls for promotion. Both claims are mistaken. The fundamental epistemic good involves accuracy, but it involves more than just that. The fundamental epistemic good is knowledge, not (...) mere true belief, because the goodness of an epistemic state is connected to that state's ability to give us reasons. If I'm right about the value theory, this has a number of significant implications for the consequentialist project. First, the good-making features that attach to valuable full beliefs are not features of partial belief. The resulting value theory does not give us the values we need to give consequentialist justifications of credal norms. Second, the relevant kind of good does not call for promotion. It is good to know, but the rational standing of a belief is not determined by the belief's location in a ranked set of options. In the paper's final section, I explain why the present view is a kind of teleological non-consequentialism. There is a kind of good that is prior to the right, but as the relevant kind of good does not call for promotion the value theory shows us what is wrong with the consequentialist project. (shrink)

While much attention has been given to the use of principles in biomedical ethics and increasing attention is given to alternative theoretical approaches, relatively little attention has been devoted to the critical task of how one resolves conflicts among competing principles. After summarizing the system of principles and some problems in conceptualizing the principles, several strategies for reconciling conflicts among principles are examined including the use of single-principle theories (pure libertarianism, pure utilitarianism, and pure Hippocratism), balancing theories, conflicting appeals theories, (...) and lexical ordering. Then a mixed strategy is proposed in which consequentialist principles are balanced between themselves as are nonconsequentialist principles, after which the result of balancing the nonconsequentialist principles is lexically ranked over the result of balancing the consequentialist ones. Finally, strategies involving specifying and rule generation are discussed concluding that most current specification and rule-generating theories must involve some degree of lexical ordering of principles. (shrink)

Luce and Narens (Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 29:1–72, 1985) showed that rank-dependent utility (RDU) is the most general interval scale utility model for binary lotteries. It can be easily established that this result cannot be generalized to lotteries with more than two outcomes. This article suggests several additional conditions to ensure RDU as the only utility model with the desired property of interval scalability in the general case. The related axiomatizations of some special cases of RDU of independent interest (the (...) quantile utility, expected utility, and Yaari’s dual expected utility) are also given. (shrink)

To consequentialise a moral theory means to account for moral phenomena usually described in nonconsequentialist terms, such as rights, duties, and virtues, in a consequentialist framework. This paper seeks to show that all moral theories can be consequentialised. The paper distinguishes between different interpretations of the consequentialiser’s thesis, and emphasises the need for a cardinal ranking of acts. The paper also offers a new answer as to why consequentialising moral theories is important: This yields crucial methodological insights about how (...) to pursue ethical inquires. (shrink)

This article conducts a decision theoretic analysis of the effect of dual candidacy on voting decisions in the Japanese variant of the mixed electoral system, where each candidate can run in both a single-member district (SMD) and a proportional representation (PR) block, and dual candidates can be ranked either individually or equally in parties' PR lists: their post-election ranking is determined by their SMD votes. The model shows that dual candidacy differentiates the mixed system from merely (...) the simultaneous use of the SMD and PR systems. That is, if an SMD candidate also runs in the PR block, it lowers voters' utility increment obtained by casting their SMD votes for him. If he is ranked equally in the PR list, however, SMD votes for him may help him win a PR seat against other equally ranked dual candidates, which enables dual candidacy accompanied by equal ranking to attract more SMD votes. (shrink)

That many values can be consequentialized – incorporated into a ranking of states of affairs – is often taken to support the view that apparent alternatives to consequentialism are in fact forms of consequentialism. Such consequentializing arguments take two very different forms. The first is concerned with the relationship between morally right action and states of affairs evaluated evaluator-neutrally, the second with the relationship between what agents ought to do and outcomes evaluated evaluator-relatively. I challenge the consequentializing (...) arguments for both forms of consequentialism. The plausibility of the evaluator-neutral consequentializing of certain values, I argue, in fact establishes the implausibility of an evaluator-neutral consequentialist account of such values. The problems that beset this evaluator-neutral consequentializing argument do not beset its evaluator-relative counterpart. But I demonstrate that evaluator-relatively consequentialized theories can also readily be ‘deontologized’, located within an alternative evaluative framework that is congenial to the articulation of nonconsequentialist moral theories. Such an alternative framework can accommodate what is compelling in consequentialists’ ‘Compelling Idea,’ and what is attractive in their Explanatory Thought. This alternative, moreover, can function as a shared evaluative framework within which the merits of consequentialist and nonconsequentialist alternatives can be considered without begging the question either way. (shrink)

In a legendary technical report, the Google founders sketched a wisdom-of-crowds justification for PageRank arguing that the algorithm, by aggregating incoming links to webpages in a sophisticated way, tracks importance on the web. On this reading of the report, webpages that have a high impact as measured by PageRank are supposed to be important webpages in a sense of importance that is not reducible to mere impact or popularity. In this paper, we look at the state of the art regarding (...) the more precise statement of the thesis that PageRank and other similar in-link-based ranking algorithms can be justified by reference to the wisdom of crowds. We argue that neither the influential preferential attachment models due to Barabási and Albert in nor the recent model introduced by Masterton et al. in allows for a satisfactory wisdom-of-crowds justification of PageRank. As a remedy, we suggest that future work should explore “dual models” of linking on the web, i.e., models that combine the two previous approaches. Dual models view links as being attracted to both popularity and importance. (shrink)

Demoralising ethical theory involves eschewing the deontic categories of moral obligation, moral permissibility, and moral impermissibility from our ethical thought. In this paper, I evaluate the case made in Alastair Norcross’s recent book, _Morality By Degrees_ (2020), for a consequentialist version of such demoralisation. Norcross defends scalar consequentialism, a radical variant of consequentialism which restricts fundamental normative verdicts to a scalar ranking of available actions, ordered according to the goodness of the consequences they produce. Following an introductory (...) Sect. 1, I assess the positive case for scalar consequentialism in Sect. 2, concluding that no strong case has been made for the view. In Sect. 3, I assess the case against the view, concluding that while scalar consequentialism may be able to avoid _the action-guidingness objection_, it falls foul of _the force objection_. In Sect. 4, I expand on this critique, showing that Norcross gives an unstable account of how to assess attitudes, such as desires, beliefs and emotions. In Sect. 5, I argue that appeal to a contextualist reductionism does little to make the scalar view appealing. (shrink)

Most scholars are fond of using the appellation "gentry scholar" as an allinclusive term for "intellectuals" in ancient China. In relation to the socially stipulated role of the "gentry-scholar" stratum there are currently many different theories worthy of consultation. The following two are fairly representative. One has its foundations in the explanation of the concept of modern Western intellectuals, which can be compared with the spiritual evolution of the "gentry-scholar" stratum, "reacting against power with the Way," stressing the transcendent side (...) of the "transmission of the Way," and basically leaving their link with the ideology of imperial power untouched upon. We have already explained this type of concept above. The second theory analyzes the functional evolution of the "gentry-scholar" stratum from the viewpoint of social differentiation. It holds that there has been a transformational process whereby the status of the "gentry scholar" has moved from that of a formal clan member or person of noble rank, to one emphasizing the art of the "Way." Following the perfection of the bureaucratic system, the "gentry scholar" emerged in the dual interactive roles of "popular officer" and "Confucian scholar" .36 This theory borrows from certain concepts in sociology that stress the functional evolutionary aspect of the intellectual and do not focus on the problem of the "gentry-scholar" stratum protecting its own "transmission of the Way" and manufacturing an ideology of imperial power. (shrink)

A common assumption in epistemology is that there is an important connection between the notions of justification and rationality. However, this connection is unclear since there is no consensus about what rationality is or what a “correct” notion of justification would be. The purpose of this paper is to explain how the dual system theory of reasoning can build a “bridge” between justification and rationality. We argue that the dual system theory of reasoning supports, to a certainextent, an (...) externalist notion of justification and a consequentialist view of rationality. (shrink)

The constraint-handling methods using multiobjective techniques in evolutionary algorithms have drawn increasing attention from researchers. This paper proposes an efficient conical area differential evolution algorithm, which employs biased decomposition and dual populations for constrained optimization by borrowing the idea of cone decomposition for multiobjective optimization. In this approach, a conical subpopulation and a feasible subpopulation are designed to search for the global feasible optimum, along the Pareto front and the feasible segment, respectively, in a cooperative way. In particular, the (...) conical subpopulation aims to efficiently construct and utilize the Pareto front through a biased cone decomposition strategy and conical area indicator. Neighbors in the conical subpopulation are fully exploited to assist each other to find the global feasible optimum. Afterwards, the feasible subpopulation is ranked and updated according to a tolerance-based rule to heighten its diversity in the early stage of evolution. Experimental results on 24 benchmark test cases reveal that CADE is capable of resolving the constrained optimization problems more efficiently as well as producing solutions that are significantly competitive with other popular approaches. (shrink)

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Explores the relationship of a person's inner world to the outer world of reality, and suggests ways to manipulate the outer world through positive externalization of the will.

For the English speaking reader of today, Ranke is surprisingly inaccessible; indeed, he has become something of a patron saint, more praised than read. Now all his major works have been translated, while almost none of his letters, notes, or essays, so important in getting an informal appraisal of his craft of history, is in English. Many of his of books, whether in German or in English, are no longer in print, and the modern reader is less likely to bear (...) up with the four or six volume works which are. Thus the purpose of this anthology is to bring attention to some of the riches which a reader might find in a more extended study of Ranke's histories. Its emphasis is on Ranke as an historian, with translations of essays and addresses which lay down his program for research, politics, and the relationship between and historian's values and his work. It also attempts to give some sense of Ranke's literary skill, by including examples of his historical portraiture from his History of the Popes, History of France, and History of the Reformation. Finally, a selection of letters and brief reflections culled from his works and notes tries to recapture the man, whose own inner development joined with the tendencies of his age to make him a world-historical figure in Ranke's own sense of the word. (shrink)

: Undoubtedly, in the formation of history, relations between religious structures and political powers, which are shaped within certain principles, have an important place. The course of these relations determines the strength and domain of both sides. This form of relationship, in some cases, evolves in favor of political power, and sometimes manifests itself as a political direction of religious interests. It is possible to see politics as a direction of religion or to use it in the direction of its (...) own interests in the politics that the Soviet Union has implemented since the Second World War. As a matter of fact, the Soviet Union, which has embraced the ideology of official atheism and struggled against religious beliefs, did not stop using religion/church for conjuration in its own interests. In this context, The Soviet leader Stalin has almost reconstructed the Russian Orthodox Church, which he had been trying to destroy since the early years of the Second World War. Even, Moscow has made serious attempts to make Patriarchate the pioneer of the Orthodox world. In this article, we aim to emphasize Stalin’s church politics and reasons. We will also stress the reasons behind the Council of the Orthodox Churches, which Stalin sought to achieve through the Moscow Patriarchate in 1947. Finally, we will touch on the policy of the Fener Greek Patriarch against these developments. Summary: Throughout history, politics of states have been under the influence of religion. Likewise, religions have directed political authority in the direction of their own interests. Sometimes a religion takes the state under its influence; sometimes under a state takes a religion under the influence and they try to use the other one in the interests of itself. Concepts that define religion-state relations have emerged under the influence of experiences experienced over time. Secularism is at the head of the concepts that determine religion-state relations today. What secularism is and how it is practiced is much debated in the scientific circles. Despite all these struggles, however, no binding definition has been reached for all political issues. Certainly, the subjective structure of states plays an important role in regulating religion-state relations. The political ideology adopted by this political structure and the world view varies. Sometimes political structures with official atheist ideology can break the principle of secularism. While these ideologies are ungodly in their nature, they benefit from political interests. As an example, it is possible to show the Soviet Union with an atheist ideology. Because the Soviet regime used religion in the direction of political interests between 1943-1948. The Russian Orthodox Church, which was very active and competent during the reign of Tsarist Russia, lost its power with the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. The Soviet regime has made the Russian Orthodox Church an illegal institution. The struggle against the church by the regime continued until the Second World War. With the Second World War, Stalin's church politics changed. There is no doubt that this political change has become more than one reason. The first is that the state has entered into a war. Stalin did not want to continue the struggle with religion while the war was going on. Another reason for pushing Stalin for a policy change towards the Church is the anti-Soviet propaganda carried out by the Germans. As a matter of fact, the Germans defined themselves as the savior of the Russian people. It was also alleged that Germany was waging a war against the Soviets in order to free Russian people from communism. Even brochures were taken from the airplanes in this frame. The Germans aimed to break the resistance of the Russian people with this method. Stalin acted to ward off this propaganda of the Germans. Stalin therefore had to keep an eye on church politics and stopped the oppression against the church. In this framework, opportunities were provided for the Russian Orthodox Church. For example, have been approved to organize rites in churches. The priests are encouraged to strengthen hand the people. Also closed churches have been reopened by Stalin. In this way the German propaganda has been wasted. The Second World War ended with the victory of the Soviet Union. Stalin, however, continued to use the church after the war was over. So why did Stalin continue to support the church as an atheist? What were the reasons for pushing Stalin into this policy? Stalin's post-war church policy has multiple causes. The most important of these is spreading the Soviet influence over the entire Balkans and Middle East geography through the Russian Orthodox Church. Undoubtedly this is related to the long-term policies of the Soviets. Because the war has changed all the balances in the world. This has given new opportunities to the Soviets. At the beginning of these, the Orthodox world comes to the Soviet influence. It seems that the steps towards this have been started to be started from 1945. In this context, the Russian Orthodox Church found important activities. For example, the Moscow Patriarch has established relations with other Orthodox Churches. Jerusalem, Athens, Cyprus, Antakya churches were visited. In the end, an attempt was made to collect the Orthodox Council. The struggle of the Western and Eastern bloc emerged after the Second World War divided the Orthodox world into two camps. In this process, the Greek, Cyprus and Jerusalem Orthodox churches under the leadership of the Fener Patriarchate were under American influence. The Serbian, Bulgarian and Antiochian Orthodox Churches under the leadership of the Moscow Patriarchate were under Soviet influence. For these reasons, the Soviet regime, which has been fighting for the Church since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, has given up its position. It is understood from this historical fact that a regime adopting irreligion as an official ideology uses religion in its own interests as needed. This indicates that secularism is relative. This study will try to show how the Soviet Union uses the Russian Orthodox Church in its own interests despite the atheism ideology. (shrink)