Lectures delivered in the Dept. of Philosophy of the University of Pennsylvania during the spring semester of 1967. Includes bibliographical references.

In order to characterize the conception of dignity, the author quotes some examples of its derogation. The most drastic is the example of its derogation by the staff of concentration camps. Analysis of such examples leads to a formulation that dignity is manifested by those who know to defend certain values, recognized by themselves, when with the defence of these values the sense of their own value is connected. This is a pure formal characteristic. Its content can vary together with (...) variations of values which are defended. Generally, the observation of Hobbes seems to be justified which permits to associate dignity with the feeling of power and to consider self-degradation as a symptom of weakness. The use of the conception of dignity introduces a new scale of values into morality: it divides behaviour into honourable and degrading, while honour and degradation are not measured by the social effect of a deed. Among the known principles securing the dignity of a man two deserve to be mentioned: the principle of Kant which does not allow to consider a man exclusively as a mean leading to an end and the principle of Marx according to which man should be considered as the highest being. (shrink)

The common opinion is that moral principles act in social life like a lubricant which removes, or at least reduces, frictions occurring among men. The author analyses this opinion. For this purpose she takes into consideration successively: the conception of conflict, its kinds, and its function in the social life, as well as cases in which a moral norm can actually mitigate a conflict or even make it impossible. The author agrees with those views which emphasize the positive function of (...) certain conflicts and which demand that it is by moral norms that we should determine which conflicts ought to be removed and which maintained. Another question is whether all ethical rules perform the pacifying function which is generally attributed to them. To this question the author is inclined to give a negative answer. In the first place, there exist two groups of rules which do not act as a lubricant, that is, rules granting to man some rights which are maintained with full determination, even if they lead to collisions, and other rules putting certain demands on people in relation to a personal pattern, rules which are not abandoned, even if they do engender conflicts. (shrink)

The author tries to show that the old distinction between bodily and mental pains and pleasures, still maintained by many ethical writers, deserves to be forgotten. An analysis of the possible interpretations of this distinction leads to the opinion that people call mental those pleasures which they have in high esteem and that they treat as bodily pleasures the ones less approved. Thus the distinction which was expected to contribute to an elaboration of a hierarchy of values already implies one, (...) and the statement that mental pleasures belong to a higher order is a mere tautology. (shrink)

Maria Ossowska, leading philosopher of the Warsaw school, here sets out to show that moral ideas can be examined with scientific rigor. She proposes a sociology of morals that can be verified by observation and is philosophically based on the development of descriptive ethics.