Politics or Ethics - Together or Separately? Supra-Confessional Project of Global Ethics

Grzegorz Chojnacki

Abstract

The question put forward in the title of the article is to be answered positively. Ethics and politics must go hand in hand, even though the revealed nuances show that the common path is not easy. However, without ethics the politics changes into an instrument for expedience , sometimes into socio-technical regulation of their conflicts or technocratic crisis management. Without the metaphysical-anthropological foundation the politics turns into Ñthe house built upon the sandî as the construction of the house of state is not based on the clear human vision. The ethical responsibility of the human being and thus the clear concept of the lawful state and its institutions are the premises for both politicians and the state agencies to treat the common good as the supreme value. The formulated question about the relationship between ethics and politics generates the successive question about the kind of ethics. As the understanding of the moral law, whether in unity with law given by God or only purely human, depends on it. The attempts to specify the minimal global ethos (Weltethos) in a supra-confessional or interreligious dimension built on the autonomous morality (autonome Moral) create numerous objections caused by the unsatisfactory acceptance of a divine order. Nevertheless the very dialogue on constructing the world of politics based on values is indispensable especially in the era of disseminating the anti-values.