Celem niniejszego artykułu jest przybliżenie tajemniczej i kontrowersyjnej cnoty megalopsychii, którą Arystoteles opisuje w czwartej księdze Etyki nikomachejskiej. Badając jej rodowód oraz etyczny kontekst, w jakim może ona mieć doniosłość, staram się wykazać, iż dostarcza ona alternatywnego ujęcia cnoty w porównaniu z jej rozumieniem „klasycznym”. A ponieważ to ostatnie opiera się na metafizycznych założeniach, które w dzisiejszych czasach utraciły wiarygodność, właśnie cnota „wielkoduszności” — odwołująca się do znacznie nam bliższych poglądów na naturę rzeczywistości i naturę ludzką — może okazać się (...) pomocna przy rozważaniu możliwości przywrócenia pojęciu cnoty jej etycznego znaczenia. (shrink)

In the later phase of his work, Foucault was particularly interested in exploring the possibilities of creating our own subjectivity and presenting its ethical dimension. The notion of pastoral power as well as the distinction between morality focused on ethics and morality focused on a normative code played a significant role in this undertaking. The former turned out to be particularly important in the context of Foucault’s earlier findings, according to which, a subject is a social construct, a product of (...) regimes of power/knowledge. This was because pastoral power, although like any other kind of power it forms us from outside, strongly implies an active participation of the subject in the creation of himself. This kind of activity dominated also in morality focused on ethics which, according to Foucault, was practised by the Greco-Roman elites. In my text, I analyse the above themes in an attempt to show that in Foucault’s works they constitute the emancipation project of “new” morality. (shrink)

MORALITY AS A SOURCE OF (BANAL) EVIL. HANNAH ARENDT READS KANT The experience of totalitarianism made Arendt notice how problematic the common understanding of morality is. If we identify it with the obedience to the rules governing human relationships it can happen that when those rules become questionable we are no longer able to distinguish right from wrong. But totalitarian leaders not only rejected the existing rules; they replaced them with the ones that prescribed evil things. Arendt thinks that the (...) real moral problem is with those "ordinary" people who adapted to the new situation. Both the ease of their conversion and the example of those who were able to resist it, led her to conclude that “morality of rules” might be detrimental to the activities that can make us refrain from doing evil. Analyzing these activities, which are thinking and judging, Arendt often refers to Kant’s philosophy. I want to demonstrate the fruitfulness of this interpretation, and its importance to moral and political thought of Arendt herself. The presentation of these topics is supposed to deepen the reflection on the problem of "banal" evil. (shrink)