What is ethics? Ethics rules. The concept of ethics and types of professional ethics

Each type of human activity (scientific, pedagogical, artistic, etc.) corresponds to certain types of professional ethics.

Professional types of ethics- these are those specific features of professional activity that are aimed directly at a person in certain conditions of his life and activity in society. The study of the types of professional ethics shows the diversity, versatility of moral relations. For each profession, certain professional moral norms acquire some special significance. Professional moral norms are rules, samples, the order of internal self-regulation of a person based on ethical ideals.

The main types of professional ethics are: medical ethics, pedagogical ethics, ethics of a scientist, actor, artist, entrepreneur, engineer, etc.. Each type of professional ethics is determined by the uniqueness of professional activity, has its own specific requirements in the field of morality. For example, scientist ethics presupposes, first of all, such moral qualities as scientific conscientiousness, personal honesty, and, of course, patriotism. Judicial ethics demands honesty, fairness, frankness, humanism (even towards the defendant when he is guilty), fidelity to the law. Professional ethics in conditions of military service requires a clear performance of duty, courage, discipline, devotion to the motherland.

Necessary professional and human qualities.

Compliance with the rules of etiquette - good manners should be the norm of behavior both in society and in the performance of one's professional duties. Compliance with these unspoken rules gives each person the key to success at work, understanding in society and simply human peace, success and happiness in life. One of the basic principles of modern life is the maintenance of normal relations between people and the desire to avoid conflicts. In turn, respect and attention can be earned only if courtesy and restraint. Therefore, nothing is valued by the people around us as dearly as politeness and delicacy.

Society considers good manners modesty and restraint person, the ability to control their actions, carefully and tactfully communicate with other people. bad manners it is customary to consider the habits of speaking loudly, not embarrassed in expressions, swagger in gestures and behavior, slovenliness in clothes, rudeness, manifested in frank hostility to others, in disregard for other people's interests and requests, in shamelessly imposing one's will and desires on other people, in the inability to to restrain his irritation, in a deliberate insult to the dignity of those around him, in tactlessness, foul language, the use of humiliating nicknames. Such behavior is unacceptable for a cultured and educated person both in society and at work.

Communication is essential delicacy. Delicacy should not be excessive, turn into flattery, lead to unjustified praise of what is seen or heard.

One of the main elements courtesy consider the ability to remember names. F. Roosevelt knew that one of the simplest, most intelligible and most effective ways to win the favor of others is to remember their names and inspire them with a sense of their own significance.

Tact, sensitivity- this is also a sense of proportion that should be observed in conversation, in personal and official relationships, the ability to feel the boundary beyond which, as a result of our words and actions, a person experiences undeserved resentment, grief, and sometimes pain. A tactful person always takes into account specific circumstances: the difference in age, gender, social status, the place of conversation, the presence or absence of strangers.

Tact, sensitivity also imply the ability to quickly and accurately determine the reaction of the interlocutors to our statement, actions, and, in necessary cases, self-critically, without a sense of false shame, apologize for the mistake made. This will not only not lower your dignity, but, on the contrary, will strengthen it in the opinion of thinking people, showing them your extremely valuable human trait - modesty.

Respect for others- a prerequisite for tact, even between good comrades. A culture of behavior is equally required and from the side of the lower in relation to the higher. It is expressed primarily in an honest attitude to one's duties, in strict discipline, as well as in respect, courtesy, tact in relation to the leader. The same is true for colleagues. Demanding a respectful attitude towards yourself, ask yourself more often the question: do you answer them the same.

Humble person never strives to show himself better, more capable, smarter than others, does not emphasize his superiority, his qualities, does not require any privileges, special amenities, services. However, modesty should not be associated with either timidity or shyness. These are completely different categories. Very often, modest people are much firmer and more active in critical circumstances, but at the same time, it is known that it is impossible to convince them that they are right by arguing.

D. Carnegie considers the following as one of the golden rules: "People must be taught as if you had not taught them. And unfamiliar things should be presented as forgotten." Calmness, diplomacy, a deep understanding of the interlocutor's argumentation, well-thought-out counter-argumentation based on accurate facts - this is the solution to this contradiction between the requirements of "good manners" in discussions and firmness in defending one's opinion.

In our time, almost everywhere there is a desire to simplify many of the conventions prescribed by general civil etiquette. This is one of the signs of the times: the pace of life, which has changed and continues to change rapidly in social conditions, has a strong influence on etiquette. Therefore, a lot of what was accepted at the beginning or middle of our century may now seem absurd. Nevertheless, the main, best traditions of general civil etiquette, even having changed in form, remain to live in their spirit. Ease, naturalness, a sense of proportion, politeness, tact, and most importantly benevolence towards people - these are the qualities that will help you in any life situation, even when you are not familiar with any minor rules of civil etiquette that exist on The earth is in abundance.

One of the main characteristics that distinguishes philosophy from other disciplines of organized knowledge is usually, and quite rightly, that it always, by its very nature, finds difficulties with "scientific progress" and invariably returns to those problems and dilemmas. , which were set and, it would seem, already resolved at the dawn of its history. Modern physicists and mathematicians no longer have the slightest need to turn to the problems that once faced Archimedes or Euclid, while today's Oxford ethics and their overseas colleagues continue, albeit in the most new terminological guise, to solve problems posed by senior sophists and students of Socrates. Therefore, the phenomenon of ethical naturalism, to which historians of ethics have repeatedly turned and which was once again very clearly outlined by Piama Pavlovna, provokes new, perhaps already redundant, but, as it was found out, inevitable clarifications and detailing for philosophical consciousness of what is like would already be quite clear. Another reason for the appearance of these comments is that the ethical naturalism of the 19th century, about which Piama Pavlovna mainly writes, is reproduced and gives new “morphoses” to the present day, defining both the mindset of several eras of new positivism, and the mentality that is now usually called postmodern, and we would call poststructuralist mythology. Therefore, the forthcoming comments will concern all three theoretically possible aspects of the consideration of “ethical naturalism” - both conceptual, and historical, and evaluative, - they will concern precisely, because a more thorough entry into this topic, inexhaustible in terms of material, will, of course, destroy all the genre boundaries of the dialogue.

1. The designation of a certain number of philosophers as "naturalists", which gives the impression of being quite ancient, was introduced relatively late - in the 16th-17th centuries, when the Christian apologists F. de Marne, R. Carpenter and G. Voetius began to call those who who attributed everything that happens in the world to nature, denying the supernatural, or, in other words, atheists. But the phrase ethical naturalism, which became generally accepted among ethics, was legalized much later - after a treatise by the outstanding English philosopher J. Moore Principia Ethica(1903), from which a new stage in the history of ethics begins - metaethics. The essence of the new approach was that if ethics before Moore had been arguing for more than two millennia about what is good and evil in human behavior and what are the means of realizing the first and avoiding the second, offering a variety of solutions to these issues, then Moore turned to clarifying what are these questions from the logical-semantic point of view, what is the nature of ethical judgments in which terms are involved good, evil and behavior, and finally, what is the degree of definability of these initial terms . The study of the degree of definition of the concept good and led him to formulate the famous principle naturalistic error(the naturalistic fallacy), which consists in the fact that good, which, as an absolutely “simple” concept, turns out to be fundamentally indefinable (the task of the definition as such is, first of all, to decompose the concept being defined into “indivisible” parts), they try to define it through some other concepts, making the mistake that from a completely correct judgment of the type pleasure is good or sanity is good, the already logically illegal step of inversion of the type Good is pleasure or Good is sanity, because here it is not taken into account that if everything good has at the same time some other properties, then it does not yet follow from this that the establishment of the latter is thereby already a definition of good. As his predecessor, Moore names the great English ethicist of the last century G. Sidgwick, who similarly criticized the definition of good by the founder of utilitarianism I. Bentham, and I would consider Plato as such, who clearly showed (although not yet proved) the indefinability of good in his “ being” and its definability only through its separate “energies”. Considering good, therefore, as an “atomic” concept, which it makes no sense to define through those closest to it, because they contain it in themselves, Moore was absolutely right. Moreover, what is true about agatology (as we prefer to call the study of the good-ўgaqТn, which, in our opinion, is a separate area of philosophical research from ethics, which, however, serves as the basis for the latter), is also applicable to axiology, since all known to us, the definitions of “value” are also the essence of defining it through that in which it is already presupposed.

Let us return, however, to naturalistic error. According to Moore, its essence is that goodness is reduced to some other thing, and ethical theories based on this error are divided into those that connect this “other thing” with some “natural” object such as pleasure (about which we know from direct experience) or with an object that exists in some supersensible world (which we can only judge indirectly). Theories of the first type he calls naturalistic, the second - metaphysical. It follows from this that Moore's "ethical naturalism" has two dimensions: in a general sense - as any heteronomous interpretation of the good (regardless of the nature of heteronomy itself), in a special sense - as an interpretation of the good within the framework of "natural things".

After Moore, metaethics (a term made popular in the 1930s by Moore's followers, many of whom later diverged from him) goes through at least four stages (the last one at the present time), determined by which interpretations of ethical judgments turn out to be predominant. Until the 1930s, currents prevailed intuitionism- Going back to Moore himself, the understanding of these judgments as based on an intuitive comprehension of good (because of its essential indeterminacy); in the 1930s–1950s - emotivism, at first radical in B. Russell and A. Ayer, who saw in them only an expression of emotions, devoid of both informativeness and meaning, then moderate in C. Stevenson, who tried to soften this interpretation; in the 1950s–1960s - linguistic analysis the language of morality in R. Heer; from the 1970s–1980s - direction prescriptivism, according to which ethical judgments have only an imperative (prescriptive), and not a descriptive (descriptive) character, developed by the same Heer, but also by W. Frankena and partly by Oxford ethics D. Warnock and F. Foote. In addition to the analysis of ethical judgments, the subject of metaethics is (as the second subject tier of this philosophical discipline) the analysis of the language of the ethics themselves and their concepts.

Leaving aside the disputes of various areas of metaethics on all other issues, we note three approaches to the definition of the concept of “ethical naturalism” that have developed to date. The first does not distinguish between the above two levels of this concept by Moore - “ethical naturalism” as a way of constructing definitions of the good (regardless of whether they agree here with the very interpretation of Moore’s “naturalistic error” or reject it) and the worldview within which heteronomous understanding of the good. The second approach reduces the desired concept only to a way of constructing a definition of good, correlating “ethical naturalism” with any approaches to the interpretation of ethical judgments as descriptive. The third takes into account the two dimensions of "ethical naturalism" in the form:

1) attempts to include ethics in a series of ordinary scientific knowledge, in which the predicates of ethical judgments are interpreted as “natural” or objectively verifiable;
2) a worldview that is based on “metaphysical naturalism” and reduces moral life to “natural”, resisting any attempts to understand it on the basis of anthropology, which allows the interpretation of man as a spiritual or rationally free being.

Thus, modern philosophical (more precisely, metaphilosophical) language allows us to consider that the term "ethical naturalism" can be interpreted in three senses.

First, as the position of those metaethicists who interpret any ethical judgment, for example, Treating Our Neighbor Well Is Our Responsibility, as not only imperative, but also factual. Although such an interpretation of such a judgment seems doubtful, it is, however, only with great difficulty associated with what “naturalism” usually corresponds to in our minds.

Secondly, as the position of those philosophers who derive the phenomenon of good from some other, “objective” factors, in relation to which it is secondary. From the point of view of common sense, this position is also not directly associated with “naturalism”, because it is shared by both Marxists, for whom morality is a product (albeit relatively independent) of socio-economic relations, and Thomists, for whom it is the “natural” self-expression of nature. man as a created bodily-spiritual being. But here the important point is that both of these approaches (along with very many others), for all their radical mutual exclusivity, must be attributed to the theories of heteronomous ethics, which is opposed by an exceptionally rare class of philosophers - in the person of Kant, Moore (although the second of them did not recognize the closeness of his “kinship” with the first) and their “orthodox” followers, who denied this heteronomy. We will deal specifically with this circumstance later.

Thirdly, as the position of those thinkers who base their ethical constructions on naturalistic anthropology, deduced, in turn, from naturalistic cosmology. In this sense, the term "ethical naturalism" acquires its distinctive, special meaning. In this most legitimate sense, it is also used by Piama Pavlovna, whose definition of the relevant ethical theories needs only one clarification: that they look for the prerequisites of ethical principles not just in “nature” (which is a voluminous concept), but in that human nature, in which they recognize only two components - bodily and mental - and from which the third one is excluded - its spiritual and substantial core.

2. The classification of trends in ethical naturalism of the 19th century proposed by Piama Pavlovna is convincing and does not need special comments, since the division into utilitarians, evolutionists, sociocentrists and “vitalists” is quite exhaustive (if we do not include various “intermediate” figures who tried to combine, to one degree or another, all four basic principles, which in general was not difficult). It is only necessary to expand the panorama of the “philosophy of life” as a direction of naturalistic ethics, which in a certain sense turned out to be a priority in the 20th century. Here we can first of all note two relief figures in their mutual dissimilarity.

F. Paulsen (1846–1908), whose famous book Fundamentals of Ethics (1889) went through 12 editions, belonged to the group of “scientists” that prevailed in the last century and believed in the omnipotence of science. The classical eclecticist, who experienced at different stages of his worldview evolutions all possible influences from Kant to Spinoza and declared the recognition of the spiritual essence of the universe and man, he nevertheless saw the closest analogue of ethical science in medical science and, verbally recognizing the completely indisputable remarks that sounded already in his time because ethics teaches that should be and not about what there is, nevertheless insisted on the relationship of the "ethical method" with the method of empirical sciences. The truths of moral laws are experimentally verifiable. From the transcendent source of life, as well as from the “inner voice” (that is, conscience), moral laws do not follow, being “an expression of the internal laws of human life.” Where the requirements of life are observed, the moral law has the force of a biological law. The highest good, therefore, is a perfect human life in which the individual attains the full development and manifestation of all his powers. But life is diverse, and this is its perfection. Since the morality of the individual is rooted in the peculiarities of his life manifestation, we cannot avoid the conclusion that the morality of the Englishman is different from the morality of the Negro, and even that it should legitimately differ between a man and a woman, a merchant and a professor, etc. (and also, they added we, the killer and the one who saves his victims). It is impossible, however, not to recognize general moral norms, “but only in a limited form,” since the main features of the organization and living conditions are the same for all people ... .

J. M. Guyot (1854-1888), the "French Nietzsche", also took the oath on the "book of science", but his vitalism was much less philistine and showed signs of enthusiastic romanticism. Guyot sharply criticized both the selfish and altruistic hedonism of the English utilitarians: pleasure is not the goal of our vitality, but only its manifestation, as well as suffering, the avoidance of which is like being afraid to breathe deeply, and Spencer's evolutionism: all the demands of my subconscious accumulated instincts can collapse in an instant before the decisiveness of my free will. The main principle of morality is the principle of “expansion and fruitfulness of life”, in which both egoism and altruism merge, and duty (which, like Paulsen, also has no sanction from either God or conscience) must be replaced by the consciousness of “inner power” . Guyot proposes a radical rethinking of the basic ethical imperative: from i can because i have to should be abandoned in favor of I can therefore I must. The concept of duty is replaced by other principles of ethics: the ability to act as such, the idea of higher activity, the "social character of sublime pleasures" and, finally, the desire for physical and moral risk. Man has nothing to hope for in this world besides himself, but is there any truth in the myth of Hercules, who helped his mother nature to free herself from the deformities generated by her and erected a sparkling firmament above the earth? And can't we, free beings (for whom the place of prayer is replaced by creative labor), wandering in the ocean of this world, like on a ship without a rudder, make this rudder ourselves?!

The long list of editions of the naturalistic ethics of the twentieth century, which Piama Pavlovna cited, needs only one significant addition - the worldview of post-structuralist myth-making, which could rather be defined even not so much as a worldview (if the worldview, of course, does not include the “removal” of any worldview ), much like Zeitgeist - "zeitgeist". The ethical attitudes of the consciousness of post-structuralists, the main component of which is neo-Freudianism (their closest connection with the head of the Parisian Freudians, J. Lacan, turned out to be decisive for the whole trend in a certain sense), are clearly demonstrated in the unfinished monumental “History of Sexuality” by M. Foucault (1976–1984), who found opportunities to introduce Nietzscheism into it (which, in general, was not very difficult to do).

Foucault, as follows from the prolegomena that appeared in the introduction to the second volume of his anthropological epic, claimed to authorize two major discoveries in the field of ethics. The first was that previous histories of morality were written as histories of moral systems based on prohibitions, while he opened up the possibility of writing a history of ethical problematizations based on technology itself(techniques de soi); we are talking about the historical formation of such a self-conscious behavior of the individual, which allows him to become a conscious ethical subject, overcoming the given and socially sanctioned codes of behavior. Another presumption of Foucault was the discovery of the fact that Freud did not discover the world of the unconscious as such, but only its “logic” (note the absurdity of the phrase “logic of the unconscious”), and psychoanalysis itself is on a par with the “practices” of confession and repentance , as well as those “developed forms of recognition” that have developed within the framework of judicial, psychiatric, medical, pedagogical and other practices. The subject of history that Foucault worked on is a person who wants(l'homme dнsirant), and the new anthropology is genealogy of a person who wishes- nearly genealogy of morality Nietzsche. This genealogy reveals the fact that technology itself turned out to be underestimated in history and needs to be rehabilitated. The reason for this is the dual role of Christianity in human history (and this, let's not forget, is the history of the art of existence as life techniques). On the one hand, Christian spiritual practice is the direct heir to Greco-Roman self-care, ethical work(Foucault writes, in particular, about the “practice of marital fidelity” as one of the ethical exercises), on the other hand, Christianity turns out to be a clear step back in comparison with antiquity: the Christian “practitioner” focuses more on compliance with a certain code of conduct (associated with the “Departure pastoral power”), Hellenic - to “forms of subjectivation”. The starting point for an adequate categorization of morality is the Greek “use of pleasures”, which correspond, on completely equal grounds, to the four “major axes of experience”: the attitude of a mature husband to the body, to his wife, to boys, and, finally, to truth. Each of these four attachment-practices was for a harmonious Greek a mode of genuine “art of existence”, and the rigorism that Christianity insisted on was only one of the types technology itself, in Foucault's language - "ethical concern regarding sexual behavior" .

3. The conclusion of Piama Pavlovna that the representatives of naturalistic ethics cannot justify the objectivity of moral norms and resolve the question of what is the essence of morality, seems completely indisputable because in their justification of morality the logically most authoritative principle of sufficient reason is violated. The reason for this is the very naturalistic heteronomy in the understanding of morality, in which it is deduced from non-moral (moreover, not super-moral, but lower-moral) grounds.

The principles of pleasure and utility cannot be such grounds because they are morally completely neutral in themselves and can be moral only when the motives of the acting subject are moral; when these motives are immoral, then they are also immoral, but in any case the moral content of the act is not determined by them, but, on the contrary, is introduced into them by moral attitudes independent of them. The principle of evolution cannot be the basis of morality, because the latter is only a sphere of the human world, but not in any way the subhuman, in which not moral motives operate, but only instincts, even a high degree of complexity and development of which (in the case of individual species) cannot fill the global abyss that separates them from free moral choice, and there can be no “links” between one and the other. The sociological principle cannot be such a basis, because its explanatory power is significantly reduced by the presence of a logical circle: the morality of an individual is deduced from socio-economic relations, which, in turn, are inexplicable without taking into account the moral (respectively, immoral) attitudes involved in them and creating their individuals; Another defect of this principle is that in its practical implementation it is based on a direct denial of what follows from the second formulation of Kant's categorical imperative: the individual here is always only a means for the interests of "large numbers", but never an end-in-itself. . Finally, the principle of the fullness of vitality can be neither an explanation nor a criterion of morality, because vitality as such can manifest itself from a moral point of view in the widest range of possibilities (from the direction of the vital force in Mother Teresa to its direction in the Marquis de Sade). Therefore, it is exceptionally characteristic that even the “vitalist” Professor Paulsen, most loyal to morality (who did not openly proclaim either the ideal “beyond good and evil”, like Nietzsche, or, like Guyot, “morality without obligations and sanctions”) comes to a moral relativism, believing quite consistently that there can be as many moralities as there are nationalities and professions, safely returning at the very end of the century of self-satisfied scientific progressism to the “philosophy of life” of Protagoras, as well as Callicles and Trasimachus, whom Plato’s Socrates tried to dissuade from such views.

I will leave it to the reader to evaluate the possibility of substantiating morality on the basis of various versions of Freudianism. About the version presented technology itself Foucault, we can say that from a spiritual point of view it is of particular interest because, according to the words of St. Gregory Palamas, “the mind that has departed from God becomes either bestial or demonic,” and the human ideal defended here clearly opens up some third state , which does not reach the demonic due to the absence, despite attempts to imitate Nietzscheanism, real “will to power” and differs from the animal due to the inferiority of its biologism. This inferiority is seen in the fact that the very desire of Foucault's "willing man" is ultimately directed not at any other being in this world, but at himself. The fact that the recognized leader of postmodernism did not see anything more in Christian spiritual practice technology itself, is quite natural, because it would be more than strange to expect from him, in the words of Piama Pavlovna, “a breakthrough to the transcendent”. It is unfair that Foucault ascribes his worldview to boundless egocentrism (and not heroic, as it was, for example, with M. Stirner, the author of the famous “The Only and Its Property”, and not even sodomic, but, referring to other biblical realities, rather onanistic connotation) to the always socially minded Hellenes. In any case, it is obvious that here is the culmination of ethical naturalism, since the “technology of the self” is openly oriented towards that anthropology, according to which a person is only a body and a “lustful part” of the soul. In this, Foucault decisively departs from Plato, who is sympathetic to him in other respects, for the latter, even before Christianity, distinguished a third part in the composition of human nature - the area of \u200b\u200bthe rational, goal-setting, self-setting and controlling two other parts of the spirit, which in this earthly world continues to remain a citizen of the transcendent world. And this distancing is quite understandable, because with the recognition of this one “dual citizenship” of the subject of moral consciousness and action, which was subsequently deeply comprehended by Kant, all the dilapidated buildings of naturalistic anthropology and, accordingly, ethics are destroyed like a house of cards.

The ending. For the beginning, see No. 4(22) for 1999.

Anticipating my new scholia to the text of Piama Pavlovna, I consider it necessary to note from the very beginning that now our tasks with her are much more complicated in comparison with the previous dialogue. Indeed, to draw a conclusion about the inconsistency of naturalistic justifications of morality based on a naturalistic interpretation of a person as a generic or individual psychosomatic organization (as most of the characters in our previous conversation saw him - starting with Spencer and ending with Foucault) or as a “social form of the movement of matter” (as in one of our leading specialists in the history of history identified a person in his time) is relatively simple. To do this, it is quite enough to pay attention to the one-dimensionality of the corresponding anthropology and to the fact that the moral cannot be derived from the pre-moral in any way (because in this case the venerable principle of sufficient reason is violated). An entirely different matter is anti-naturalistic conceptions of morality, which presuppose, firstly, an anthropology that is fundamentally non-one-dimensional and, secondly, that is unthinkable even for the highest and most respectable “naturalism” (which includes in “natural” not only the biological and social instincts of a person, but also all “souls are beautiful impulses”) an approach to the moral, in which it is not reducible to any “naturalness”. Like any multidimensional phenomena, these concepts are both complex and distinct from each other; they constitute, in essence, distinct “ethical worlds,” united only by Wittgensteinian “family resemblances,” and not by those closest ties of complementarity that bind, for example, Marxism and Freudianism in French postmodern naturalism.

The complexity of the subject, more precisely, based on what has just been said, the subjects of discussion predetermines not only our inevitable aberrations, but also “discrepancies”, which are also determined by our personal interest in the topic. The naturalistic concepts of ethics aroused in us, in addition to the realization of their logical inconsistency, also a solidary feeling of hostility, while their antipodes, on the contrary, a feeling of undisguised sympathy; but, as a rule, they do not sympathize with everything equally, and therefore the situation here is similar to the one when, as Aristotle noted in connection with Love and Enmity in Empedocles, the second rather unites, and the first separates.

I conclude this preamble with my readiness to follow the dialogue plan proposed by Piama Pavlovna, starting with her general classification of anti-naturalistic conceptions of ethics, continuing with considerations in connection with each of the conceptual blocks she outlined, and ending with an attempt, in her words, “to show what the strength and weakness are each of them."

1. The tripartite classification of the anti-naturalistic concepts of ethics that Piama Pavlovna proposes seems to me quite justified and quite exhaustive. It includes, firstly, Kant (and rightly so, because although chronologically he still only precedes the period we are considering, but, as she quite rightly notes, his influence on this entire period “is difficult to overestimate”), secondly, the axiological continental and partly analytic British ethical tradition of the 19th-20th centuries. and third, theistic ethics. Of course, the second block needs a little more unification, which includes a lot, but, as we will see below, it really contains something more than a mechanical unification of the main European anti-naturalistic concepts of a certain period.

In that they anti-naturalistic in the literal sense, there is no doubt either - all of them, starting with Kant's, are built through direct opposition to naturalistic concepts of various content.

But here is a positive generic characteristic of the representatives of all these movements as striving to create absolute ethics needs, in my opinion, more clarifications than those that have been proposed. The named ethics, according to the definition of Piama Pavlovna, implies:

(1) considering the moral principle as “valuable in itself, as an end in itself”;
(2) the consideration of man as a "moral being by nature."

Both of these signs of "ethical absolutism" are not entirely normative. Paragraph (2) needs, in addition to this, an additional clause, namely, that a person in anti-naturalistic conceptions is a being having opportunity to be moral, because if it were considered moral in nature, then these concepts would be just naturalistic, albeit in such an exalted sense as Stoic, Rousseauist or Humean, but then it would be immediately necessary to exclude Kant’s ethics from here, the “Copernican revolution” of which consisted in the fact that, according to this ethics , the value world, in which the moral is the highest value, is created by the acting subject as something that is fundamentally new in comparison with its “nature” and cannot be reduced to it in any way (which is the difference from any forms of ethical sentimentalism). As regards point (1), it corresponds in the strict sense only to Kantian ethics, and then only in one of its, albeit the most important, but still not the only dimension. In connection with phenomenology, more serious differentiations are already required. In N. Hartmann, the moral indeed, in a certain sense, completes the range of values. But in M. Scheler it belongs to the third level of “value modalities” (opposition fair/unfair) along with aesthetic and epistemological values (which philosophy seeks to realize) and cultural values. The highest value modality, the fourth in “rank” and clearly separated from the one that includes the moral, is the modality of the sacred (opposition saint/unholy), which manifests itself only in those objects that are given in the intention as absolute, and all other values, including moral ones, are its symbols. Moreover, Scheler, about whom Piama Pavlovna deservedly speaks a lot, builds her intuitive axiology on comprehending the “rank” of a particular value, which is carried out in a special act of their cognition - internal “certification in preference” of higher ranks to lower ones, including sacred morality. . As for theistic concepts, they - and this is their real divergence from Kant's - consider morality only a means, although certainly necessary, but not yet sufficient for the realization of the highest goal of human existence, and in no way the goal, about which it was said that eye has not seen, ear has not heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love Him.(1 Corinthians 2:9), while the moral ear has repeatedly heard and it also came to the heart of a person.

2. Turning to individual anti-naturalistic "blocks" in ethics, I will begin in the suggested order with Kant's.

2.1. An exposition of the principles of Kantian ethical perfectionism Piama Pavlovna is truly “perfect”; what has been said also applies to the disclosure of Kant's justification of moral action through only the autonomy of good will with the exclusion of any natural inclinations from the realm of morality, as well as to the identification of the most important content of his concept of “dual ontological citizenship” of man as a citizen of the kingdoms of nature and freedom (I note at the same time that Kant does not build ethics on the basis of ontology, but vice versa - the “jewel” of practical reason requires the assumption of the “casket” necessary for its storage). Only two points need clarification.

First. The opinion that “Kant sought to preserve the main content of Christian ethics, but at the same time free himself from its religious premises - from the doctrine of God and the immortality of the soul. True, Kant did not succeed in completely freeing himself from these presuppositions…” is one of the accepted ones, but by no means indisputable. From the end of the XVIII to the end of the XX centuries. the number of works in different languages (including Russian), specifically or contextually touching on the most complex topic “Kant and Religion”, could make up a good library, and it is completely unrealistic to try to deal with it again seriously within the framework of our dialogue. But I still think that it is not entirely correct to state the failure of Kant’s attempts to “free himself” from the religious premises of Christian ethics, if he wants to preserve its “matter”, due to the absence of the very desire for this “liberation”. To assert the opposite, one must consider either Kant's hypocrisy, admitted for purely opportunistic reasons, or a reflection of his own lack of understanding of his entire system, his famous revelation about the opposite “liberation” in the famous preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (1787): “Therefore I had to eliminate knowledge in order to make room for faith” (Ich musste also das Wissen aufheben, um zum Glauben Platz zu bekommen). But it seems that hardly anyone who imagines the personality of Kant would venture to such a conclusion. Does not contradict the quoted "memorandum" of Kant and even his most "seditious" from the point of view of his theistic critics treatise "Religion within the limits of reason alone" (1793). In the preface to the second edition, which appeared a year later, he very carefully specifies that "religion within the limits of reason alone" means the limitation "by the limits" not so much of religion as of reason, since "revelation" and "pure religion of reason" are related there as two concentric circle, of which the first contains the second. True, according to the preface to the first edition, these circles could be imagined rather as adjacent, but by no means in the sense that the first circle is completely denied or even included in the second.

What is true is true: Kant changed his positions both in connection with the “institution” of theology and in connection with its very subject, and was truly obsessed with the idea of building a self-sufficient moral ideal that could justify the imperative of a completely “disinterested practical reason”, motivation who would be one without a conditional sense of duty without any other "compensation", even such as eternal bliss. From the standpoint of consistent and confessional theism, this is, of course, an obvious aberration, for only an Uncreated Being can claim to be unselfish in the absolute sense, but not created in any way, in the “essence” of which, in the language of medieval scholastics, the need for its “existence” is not laid down. But, firstly, Kant also realized here the theological super-tasks proper, first of all, the justification of the existence of God through the goal-setting of practical reason (which he distinguished from what can be conditionally called the motive of this reason), designed to replace pseudo-proofs from metaphysics (reducing, in parameters his system, Divine being to the level of “appearance”). Secondly, Kant's insistence on the self-sufficiency of the sense of obligation fit quite organically into the completely Christian debates of modern times, for example, in that famous controversy that at the end of the 17th century. led by two of the most prominent French theologians, J. Bossuet and Fénelon (F. de Salignac de la Mothe), of whom the second also defended the possibility and even the necessity of serving God without the prospect of eternal bliss. Therefore, while recognizing the complete non-church, partial non-confessionalism and insufficient consistency of Kant's theism, we would still not dare to talk about his desire to free ethics from "Christian premises", especially when you consider that one of the most important such premises is awareness of the limited possibilities of the human mind. and the need for him to have a “sense of distance” in relation to the Transcendent - was present in him to a much greater extent than in those philosophers who, in ethics, as well as in metaphysics, proceeded from the presumption that any being, including the Divine, is divided on human concepts without a trace, but for some reason they were considered and are considered very even Christian (this thoughtlessness is connected, for example, with the fact that in our country Hegel, already from the first half of the 19th century, was often considered almost a revivalist of Christianity, “which suffered after the destructive work of Kantian philosophy).

Second. Surprisingly, Kant's ethical absolutism was less absolute than it usually seems, for it extended ... only to the "absolute", and not to the "relative". Namely, the imperative of unconditional duty proved to be in its rights in connection with a person as a citizen of the intelligible world (noumenal subject), but not the earthly one (empirical subject). This conclusion follows from a comparison of the "Critique of Practical Reason" (1788) with the lectures "Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View" (last lifetime publications - 1798 and 1800), which, as a rule, are rarely referred to by both admirers and critics of the philosopher. Leaving a pure obligation for the first subject, Kant provides the second with practical advice that is as far removed from the requirements of perfectionism as the earth is from heaven: young people are recommended a temperate lifestyle only because intemperance will deplete their ability to receive the necessary pleasures in the future, married women - not to reject their “ seekers”, because they can all be useful, and for both - advice in the spirit of prudent epicureanism. Such a recurrence of eudemonism “from the back door” can hardly be explained by the fact that Kant, in his old age, “relaxed” in all respects and decided to abandon his high moral teaching. Rather, as an “experimenter”, he demonstrated the inversion of his method: in the “Critique of Practical Reason” and in “Religion within the Limits of Only Reason”, he in a certain sense deduced ontology from practical reason, and here - morality from the ontology of the individual, from that same “dual citizenship ”, giving all due to the “empirical individual”. When the romantics, whose libertine ethic seems to be only a “dialectical negation” of Kantian perfectionism, will develop the idea of multiple hypostases of the same individual (each of which is completely autonomous), this will be the development of a marginal, but quite real perspective, embedded in the multidimensional world of Kantian philosophy.

2.2. Continental axiologists and “island” ethicists are brought together not only by certain explicit recognitions of internal kinship, such as that expressed by J. Moore, recognizing in 1903 that of all philosophers F. Brentano is closest to him. Their deep closeness is seen in the fact that their research was a new and very fruitful attempt to revive Platonism after the reception of Kantian criticism. It could not be otherwise, because it is Platonism that is the basic alternative to any naturalistic constructions. In both cases, an eidetic interpretation of the primary ethical categories and realities is adopted: among the followers of Brentano - in the form of a hierarchy of goods that form the organism of an intelligible cosmos and determine the nature of their material carriers, but are not determined by the latter, among Moore and those who followed him - in the form of recognition “atomicity” - indivisibility and indefinability - concepts good and the impossibility of reducing it to any "clarifying" concepts such as utility, since the latter are determined by it and therefore cannot add to our knowledge of itself. The first of these models goes back to the Philebus hierarchy of goods (66a-c), the second - to the justification of the indefinability, apophatic nature of the good in the "State" (505b-506b). Another similarity, also noted by Piama Pavlovna, is in the intuitionistic understanding of eidetic values and, accordingly, the good, as well as other ethical categories, and it follows from the first: what cannot be logically deduced from anything can only be comprehended by means of special "speculation". The third similarity is the problem of “criteriology”, or the search for those carriers of this “speculation”, on which one could be guided while living in the empirical world: the function of philosophers, to whom Plato entrusted the administration of the state, is performed by Brentano and the followers of Moore with a special, “eidetic” in a way experienced people, authentic bearers of wisdom and cultural values, whose judgments on the "application of intuitions" can be considered as a model for others.

Finally, they are brought closer to Plato by the Aristotelian components in the argument of their critics: the main complaint in both cases was that the proposed eidetic realities are too far from practical life, do not offer testable criteria and do not provide reliable methods for solving specific behavioral problems (in the case of with British analysts, there were also “Aristotelian” claims in connection with the abuse of mathematical analogies in the analysis of ethical categories). That Moore and his followers were bombarded with arguments of this kind is not surprising: this is the birthplace of utilitarianism. Interestingly, similar claims in Germany were put forward by such philosophers far from utilitarianism as the existentialists O. Bolno (1903–1990) and M. Heidegger. The second, also in the Aristotelian spirit, criticized the basic axiological concepts: the good is determined through value, which, in turn, is determined through the good; such is the relationship of value with the concepts of significance, purpose, and foundation; in other words, axiology introduces us into logical circles. Being, therefore, pseudo-concepts, values are responsible for the pseudo-existence of the individual (let's not forget about the very significant Nietzsche component in Heidegger's existentialism): humanity naively believes that any attempt on them threatens to destroy its existence. The difference between Heidegger and Aristotle, however, was that the second, disavowing Platonic idealism, tried to replace it with scientific realism, and not with the movement “from logos to myth”, did not claim the role of a priest-hierophant of being and did not pass off his own games with language as the language of being itself. However, the pathos of the existentialists is understandable: the philosophy of values had (with a certain perspective, namely, when referring to the “logic of the heart”, which Pascal Scheler sought after), significant opportunities for substantiating a new existential philosophy, and its rivals did everything possible to neutralize".

What Piama Pavlovna said about continental axiologists needs, in my opinion, only one clarification and two small additions. G. Lotze did not “introduce” the category of values into philosophy - in ancient philosophy, this was done by the author of the pseudo-Platonic “Hipparchus” and the Stoics, and in the new philosophy, to the greatest extent, the same Kant, on whom Lotze also relied, is really remarkable and now almost forgotten already philosopher, although he argued with the formalistic principle of his ethics (by the way, long before Scheler, who was less original here than is commonly believed). Rather, Lotze’s merit was that after his publications (and also after Nietzsche’s “revaluation of all values”) that “axiological boom” began in the philosophy of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which I already wrote about on the pages of this publication. The additions may be related to the fact that among the axiologists-anti-naturalists it would be appropriate to name another outstanding student of Brentano - A. von Meinong. Already in the book “Psychological and Ethical Researches on the Theory of Values” (1897), he subjected to witty criticism many of the foundations of axiological subjectivism, considering it untenable to derive the value of an object from its desirability or ability to satisfy our needs, since the relations here are rather opposite: it is desirable for us and satisfies our needs. needs what we already consider valuable to us. Meinong, however, believed that the subjectivity of value experiences is proved by the fact that the same object evokes different value feelings in different individuals, and sometimes in the same one, but even at the same time he saw in the feeling of value only a symptom of value, the only phenomenally accessible to us in it, and therefore leaving room for the noumenal value, which is not limited to the boundaries of the subject. Later, in his Foundation for the General Theory of Values (1923), he defines “personal value” as the suitability of an object to serve as an object of value experiences due to its property, while value as such - as the meaning of the object’s existence for the subject, and along with personal values states the presence and transpersonal, "should be values for every subject" - truth, goodness and beauty. Two other prominent representatives of phenomenology are G. Reiner, who in his book “The Principle of Good and Evil” (1949) tried to repel Heidegger’s blows to axiology and defended primarily moral values (based on anthropological data), as well as R. Ingarden, who developed axiological the ideas of Husserl and Scheler and distinguished between the carriers of ethical and aesthetic values: the first are personalities, the second are works of art.

From the English-speaking anti-naturalistic ethics, I would like to pay a little more attention to the direction that begins with the mentioned Piama Pavlovna G. Prichard (undeservedly forgotten now even in English-language literature) and received the designation deontology- creative synthesis of the main installations of Kant and Moore]. The main emphasis of deontologists is the consideration of “right” (right) as a categorization of such
same "atomic" and indivisible sui generis, as well as "good" (good). Believing that only the second is such, Moore, according to deontologists, himself makes a concession to utilitarianism (in English terminology consequentialism- see note. 2 on p. 230), reducing what is right to "producing the greatest good." In his famous essay “Is Moral Philosophy Based on Error?” (1912) Pritchard, who was also influenced by J. K. Wilson, argued that one of the fundamental errors of ethics was to try to justify our duties rationally. A moral obligation cannot be interpreted as an action that must be performed because the consequence of this will be a greater good than when performing an alternative action. Calculations of consequences do not work here: we can either have a direct vision of duty or not, and the main task of ethics is to bring to the consciousness of the individual the indispensability of this “direct vision” of duty.

The problem of judgment analysis This action is correct C. Broad, one of the elders of metaethics, also studied in his famous book Five Types of Ethical Theory (1920). W. Ross, the pioneering researcher of Plato and Aristotle, in his classic treatise Right and Good (1930), as well as in The Foundations of Ethics (1939), adopts Pritchard's deontological intuitionism, developing it in the identification of judgments This action is correct.= This action is due be perfect, but also introduces the concept of a presumption of debt, partly of legal origin ( prima facie duty). The latter concept, in turn, is identified with the concept of duty, which is relevant in all cases, except for those in which more significant moral motives outweigh. For example, the duty to fulfill one's promises is relevant completely regardless of the consequences, but in a given situation it can be “neutralized” by a more significant duty - not to commit a crime or prevent it from being committed. Accordingly, we have no general rules, apart from the same specific “discretion”, which of the primary duties to give preference in case of their “conflicts”, but Ross sees the criterion of moral truth in the judgments of “better people”, which are no less reliable than evidence sense organs for natural scientists. The difference between this position and Kant’s is that it is still not absolutist (see note 2 on p. 230), because according to Kant’s logic, we must fulfill our promises even if this maxim comes into conflict with the maxim “Do not commit atrocities” (but in this case, of course, we can no longer consider the second maxim unconditional). Among modern philosophers, who are sometimes referred to as deontologists, one can note the American J. Rawls, whose books The Theory of Justice (1971) and Political Liberalism (1993) became philosophical bestsellers. Rawls is a consistent opponent of utilitarianism in social philosophy and considers “correct” not only not reducible to “good”, but even a priority in comparison with it. In accordance with his interpretation of deontology, he insists that human rights are not a “conventional institution”, but are unconditional, and tries to build a social philosophy on the imperative of honesty.

2.3. Theistic ethics is represented by neo-Thomists, representatives of Protestant theology and Russian religious and philosophical thought, among whom Piama Pavlovna specifically singles out N. O. Lossky, probably because his “moral philosophy<…>feeds not only on the Orthodox tradition, but also on Russian literature of the 19th century, especially the work of F. M. Dostoevsky. From the assessment of the main ethical work of this thinker, our most decisive “disagreements” with it are outlined. They are probably connected, first of all, with the fact that for me, in the initial assessment of any work, the question of its genre identity is of decisive importance. From this point of view, “The Conditions of Absolute Good” (1944) is in no way typologically comparable with the results of the above-considered works of axiologists and analysts, because in those cases we were dealing with philosophical studies proper, and in this case with semi-conceptual-semi-expressive philosophizing, theologizing and moralizing , which is often considered the specificity of “Russian philosophy”, since it is denied that it should relate to philosophy as such, as a species to a genus. The above also applies to “sophiology”, “Russian cosmism”, “transformed eros”, the enthusiasm for which still seriously interferes with the study of a relatively modest in scope, but real professional (university-academic) philosophy in Russia.

“Conditions of absolute good” is one of the steps taken by Nikolai Onufrievich to build his “complete philosophical system”, the foundation of which he considered his concept intuitionism(in no case be confused with the axiological and ethical intuitionism!) and the doctrine of “substantial agents” tailored to the standards of Leibniz's monads, but adding nothing essentially new to the scope of the latter concept. In his work on axiology, he partly reproduces the Austro-German theories of value and partly criticizes them, drawing on the sayings of the Fathers of the Church and Orthodox ascetics, and after this ethical work, a work on aesthetics appears. “Conditions of absolute goodness” is somewhat reminiscent of the hundreds of amateur lectures on philosophy that are now coming out in our country (on grants), which is amazing, since Lossky once had the merit of the best translation of the “Critique of Pure Reason” into Russian. They are addressed to an unphilosophically trained audience. One of the significant similarities with this kind of literature is citations from typologically incomparable literary monuments, which reflect a misunderstanding of the differences between meters and kilograms and give the unprepared reader the impression that philosophy is a matter accessible to everyone. Lossky’s “theological chapters” give an idea of the nature of the synthesis in which he tried to help clarify the Trinitarian dogma with the resources of his doctrine of “substantial figures” (which, it turns out, admits the “Orthodox” doctrine of reincarnations), elucidation of the nature of good through a mixture of Scheler’s “ ranks of values” with God’s (in the author’s interpretation) commandments, as well as “on the nature of Satan” (naively researched by Nikolai Onufrievich based on the materials of “The Village of Stepanchikov”, “The Idiot”, and most of all, of course, “The Brothers Karamazov”), but demonology is followed by ... the theory of the spirit of Scheler and L. Klages (which is preceded by the “absolute moral responsibility” based on the material of the same Scheler, “Les Misérables” by V. Hugo, “Anna Karenina” and stories about the life of the Russian artist A. A. Ivanov).

The application for the creation of a new type of ethics, which Piama Pavlovna quotes quite sympathetically, also causes problems. The point is that Nikolai Onufrievich decided to overcome, by definition, the insurmountable mutual opposition of the ethics of autonomous and heteronomous ethics in the form of a new “synthesis”, which he proposes in his ethics. This ethic, for example, love your neighbor as yourself not heteronomous, because they are obligatory, not because there is an order for that, even a higher one, that “God commanded so”, but because they are organic for the consciousness of every person, even an atheist, and are not autonomous, and therefore are not marked “ the temptation of pride” of Kant’s moral philosophy, because they do not have “self-legislation”, and they “are not created by my will, but contain in themselves the perception of the objective value of what is due”. There are too many logical inconsistencies in this new ethic to be ignored:

1) differences between ethical auto nomination and hetero nomia are not at all in the obligatory or voluntary nature of the corresponding moral imperatives (they are equally voluntary and obligatory in both cases), but in what is understood by source of moral consciousness: human practical reason (as in Kant) or Revelation (as in confessional systems);
2) the commandments cited, for example, about loving one’s neighbor, do not exist in a person by themselves, but have a biblical origin, and the fact that we are used to them (but by no means internalized, not own them, as Nikolai Onufrievich believed) means their “naturalness” no more than our habit of using the telephone - that humanity has always had it;
3) the difference between “theonomous ethics” and autonomous ethics on the grounds that moral norms are not created by my will, but contain the perception of the objective value of what is due, firstly, logically, and secondly, in fact, erroneously: on the one hand, Kant never insisted on the fact that autonomous practical reason is not based on the objective value of the proper (cf. the second formulation of the categorical imperative, according to which any person should be treated only as an end, and not as a means, because his personality has an enduring value), on the other hand - if moral norms are “not created by the will”, then the ethics invented by Lossky has nothing to do with human activity, and therefore does not correspond to the definition of ethics.

3. The opportunity mentioned by Piama Pavlova to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of each of the three large “blocks” of anti-naturalistic concepts of ethics is too important a task to tackle it comprehensively, especially within the framework of a journal dialogue. I therefore allow myself to confine myself to a few theses.

The Kantian ethical system continues to be, to date, the most perfect of those that were created “within the limits of reason alone” due to the perfection of both its fundamental principle of unconditional and purified from all impurities “naturalness” and “consequentialism” of free good will, and of all architectonics. a priori legislation of practical reason erected over it with a clearly defined hierarchy of motives, imperatives and maxims that determine the existence of the entire personalistic “realm of goals”. However, “reason alone”, as Kant showed best of all, is inevitably limited. In the Kantian system, this is expressed in the paradox of moral absolutism, which, at least at two points, transforms into relativism. On the one hand, “absolute adherence” to one a priori necessary maxim contradicts, as has already been shown, the realization of others, no less a priori necessary, and leads to their relativization; on the other hand, the requirements of moral legislation apply only to the individual as a citizen of the intelligible world, while he, as a citizen of the empirical world, is recommended to act in accordance with “natural skill”, and no real significance is attached to moral goals and means. If Kant had “issued” another categorical imperative: “Always act as your nature requires as a noumenal subject and never as a phenomenal one,” this “gap” would be filled, but he did not, and, moreover, as it was already assumed, quite deliberately.

The main achievements of phenomenologists and analysts of the XIX-XX centuries. - after the temptation of Kantian philosophy - were associated, as already noted, with the introduction into ethics of the main philosophical guarantor of non-naturalism - Platonism. It was the revival of Platonism that allowed phenomenologists to create an alternative to Kant’s “formalism in ethics” and find a place for it in the world of “material” eidos, establishing instead of the “realm of goals” a “realm of values”, which is outside the empirical world, but called upon to “direct” the latter. The citizen of this country is no longer bifurcated, like a Kantian individual, who is allowed to live simultaneously according to mutually negating laws, and is an unconditional recipient and creator of moral values. Moore's merits in the rediscovery and indivisibility and "atomicity", apophatic irreducibility to anything else good, as well as in its intuitionistic reading and providing this concept with the means of linguo-philosophical analysis, are quite obvious, as well as the merits of deontologists who substantiated the similar indivisibility and intuitiveness of the sense of duty and the impossibility of reducing it to utilitarian calculations. The most vulnerable spot of phenomenologists is in the insufficient elaboration of their own initial categorical apparatus, in the absence of differentiation of the supercategories of “value” and “good”, “goal” and “interest”, which their unfriendly opponents drew attention to. The problems of Moore and deontologists are in an overly broad interpretation of “naturalism”, which prevented the former from distinguishing between the good in genere and its contextual applications, without which ethics cannot work, and allowed the latter to actually insist on duty at the expense of responsibility (relegating the latter to the office of utilitarianism), resulting in such a paradoxical result as an irresponsible sense of duty or duty-based egocentrism. On the other hand, consistent ethical intuitionism is difficult to combine with the criterion of truth in the form of “judgment of the best”, because as many personalities as there should be deontological intuitions.

Finally, Christian ethics (of course in its real implementations) offers the most reliable ontological substantiation of morality and infinite moral perfection - on the "sufficient basis" of the dogma about the creation of mankind in the image and likeness of the infinite personal God, who gave the commandment of all commandments - Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect(Matthew 5:48). However, in connection with the possibility of building a Christian ethical system one cannot but take into account the cardinal dilemma that was accentuated in the polemic of the outstanding medieval philosopher John Duns Scotus (1265/6–1308) with the followers of Thomas Aquinas on the question of the good: is God good because he always wishes good, or vice versa , that is, the good that God desires? If the followers of Thomas Aquinas were right, whose reasoning made it possible to prefer the first way of resolving the issue, then we retain the “Christian ethics”, but in it we are deprived of the Christian God, Who, therefore, must be measured by the standards of the created and limited mind. If, however, Duns Scotus was right, who preferred the second solution (and there can be no doubt that he was closer to the truth from a Christian point of view), then we are not deprived of the Christian God as the Creator of the one who can think about the good itself, but we are deprived of “Christian ethics”, which should have the generic features of ethics as a philosophical discipline and work by means of rational deduction in the area least corresponding to this - in the area of Revelation. Since it was still beyond the power of even the strongest minds to adequately “synthesize” the mutually incommensurable, which created a hybrid of the “Evangelical Ethics” at first with the Aristotelian “Nicomachean Ethics”, and later with the ethics of Kant, phenomenological, etc., there is reason to assume that and further syntheses of this kind will not be successful.

The realm of ethics proper is also rather limited in that area of theology known as moral theology. In its least adequate, but most popular application, it was only an outwardly theological camouflage (in the form of theologia moralis courses taught in the Jesuit, Lutheran or, after them, in Orthodox academies, starting with the Kiev-Mohyla) all the same attempts to build deductive systems of "Christian ethics" from "natural reason". In its more authentic execution, this discipline of theological knowledge contained “ethics proper” only in its apologetic part - in the form of criticism of non-Christian (primarily naturalistic) concepts of the origin and essence of morality, while its main, positive part corresponded to the thematization of the heritage of the Church Fathers associated not with ethics as such, but with soteriology and asceticism (the subject of which, however, includes the moral, but mainly in a more general and at the same time special context of the synergy of Divine grace and human achievement).

From what has been said, it follows that for a Christian philosopher, a relatively modest field of activity remains in the field of ethics in the form of criticism (primarily the research, and not the evaluative content of this term, is meant) of ethical and meta-ethical judgments and the analysis of the concepts corresponding to them. However, this field looks modest precisely “comparatively”, since philosophy in the strict sense, as a special professional activity, is mainly engaged in criticism of judgments and analytics of concepts of a certain meaningful volume. The only condition that can be imposed on the activity of a Christian philosopher is that he must limit his subject to the products of the human mind, without extending it to the One Who Himself created this mind, and also refrain from studying the mechanism of the action of His uncreated energies on created minds and hearts. But this condition is in fact only a natural self-limitation, because the philosopher for whom these limitations are not significant can hardly be considered a Christian. I think that what has been said to varying degrees is also applicable in connection with other philosophical disciplines, but their consideration is entirely beyond the subject scope of this dialogue.

Moore writes about his new approach to ethical problems themselves - on the basis of a "criticism" of ethical judgments and a definition of ethical concepts - already in the first lines of the preface to his main work and in the first two paragraphs of his first chapter. See Moore J. Principles of ethics / Per. from English. Konovalova L. V. M., 1984. - S. 37, 57–58.
Moore compares attempts to define goodness with the possibility of defining such a simple concept as “yellow”, which could only be defined through certain light waves that affect us in such a way that ... cause the sensation of yellow. - Right there. - S. 66–67.
Namely, Sidgwick in The Method of Ethics (1874) found a logical circle in Bentham's definitions, when in one passage of his work "the right and worthy goal of human actions" is defined as "the greatest happiness of all people", and in another it turns out that "the right and worthy” is already “leading to the greatest happiness of all people”, as a result of which “the greatest happiness of all people is the goal of human actions leading to the greatest happiness of all people”. - Right there. - S. 75–76.
See: State 505b–506b, 507b–509b. Anticipating Moore, Plato shows that the good cannot be determined not only through pleasure and understanding, but even through truth, just as the Sun - the source of light - cannot be adequately comprehended through the "solar-like" things themselves - sight and everything visually comprehended.
Such, for example, are the definitions in many philosophical lexicons of the valuable as that which corresponds to what is desired or supposed to be good, while the desirable or good is defined in the same place through the valuable.
Moore J. Principles of Ethics. - S. 101–102.
An example is the authoritative discussion of the problem by one of Moore's critics - J. Harrison: Harrison J. Ethical Naturalism //
Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Vol. 3/Ed. in chief P. Edwards. NY-L., 1967. - R. 69-71.
Example: Wimmer R. Naturalismus (ethish) //
Enzyklopaedie Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie. bd. 2 / Herausg. von J. Mittelstrasse. Mannheim etc., 1984. - S. 965.
Example: Gawlick G. Naturalismus // Historisches Woerterbuch der Philosophie / Herausg. von † J. Ritter and K. Gruender. bd. 6. Basel-Stuttgart, 1984. - S. 518-519.
“Lies tend to cause distrust, distrust tends to destroy human society. This is a generalization of the same kind as that alcohol has a tendency to debilitate the nervous system.” - Paulsen F. Fundamentals of ethics / Per. L. A. Gurlady-Vasilyeva and N. S. Vasilyeva. M., 1906. - S. 14.
There. - S. 4, 16–18, 20–21.
Guyot M. History and criticism of modern English teachings about morality / Per. N. Yuzhina. SPb., 1898. - S. 454–456 and others.
Guyot J. M. Morality without obligation and without sanction / Per. from French N. A. Kritskoy. M., 1923. - S. 140.
Guyot M. History and criticism ... - S. 457; Guyot J. M. Morality without obligation ... - S. 143–144.
See Foucault M. Histoire de la sexualité. I. La volonte de savoir. II. L'usage desplaisirs. III. Le souci de soi. P., 1976–1984.
Foucault M. Will to Truth. Beyond knowledge, power and sexuality. M., 1996. - S. 298–299.
There. - S. 306.
There. - S. 280.
The idea of Paulsen and other "vitalists" regarding the possibility of complete, comprehensive and harmonious perfection in the development of all vital forces and manifestations of the individual is convincingly corrected on the basis of the same "empiricism", in particular, the personal spiritual experience of the Apostle Paul, which led the Apostle to the knowledge that “If our outer man smolders, then the inner one is renewed from day to day. For our short-term light suffering produces eternal glory in immeasurable abundance” (2 Corinthians 4:16-17).
A devastating but fair characterization of the Freudian picture of the world in the minds of post-structuralists is presented in the article: Davydov Yu. Modernity under the sign “post” // Continent. 1996. No. 89 (3). - S. 301–316.
See the famous allegorical image of the chariot: Phaedo 246a-e, 253d; Timaeus 69c-d.
Metaphysics 985a 20–25. See Aristotle. Works in four volumes. T. I. M., 1975. S. 74.
In modern philosophy, ethical absolutism is understood as "the view that there are actions that are always wrong or, on the contrary, always obligatory, no matter what consequences they cause." The opposite of absolutism is consequentialism (from the English consequence ‘(by) consequence’), in which actions are evaluated based on the balance of good and evil that is the result of their commission or, conversely, non-commission. See: The Oxford Companion to Philosophy
/Ed. by T. Honderich. Oxf., N.Y., 1995. R. 2. A classic example of ethical absolutism in this sense is Kant’s “maximalism”, who insisted that, for example, no good considerations can relieve the obligation to follow the maxim (rule, norm) not to lie, for otherwise there will be excuses for violating any moral maxims.
See in this regard, in particular, our article: Shokhin V. Classical philosophy of values: background, problems, results // Alpha and Omega. 1998. No. 3(17). P. 314, and also: Dobrokhotov A. Questions and answers about the axiology of V. K. Shokhin
// There. S. 321.
For Scheler's hierarchy of value modalities, see
Scheler M. Selected Works. M., 1994. S. 323–328.
Immanuel Kants Werke in acht Buchern. Ausgewahlt und mit Einleitung versehen von Dr. H. Renner. bd. I. B., b. S. 14. Variations of translations of this provision (as well as other “key propositions” of Kant’s main work) are collected in the publication: Kant I. Critique of Pure Reason / Per. N. O. Lossky with translations into Russian and European languages. Rep. ed., comp. and the author will enter. articles by V. A. Zhuchkov. M., 1998. S. 43.
Of course, Piama Pavlovna herself will not do this either, whose analysis of Kant's philosophy belongs to the best pages of her latest monograph: P. P. Gaidenko, A Breakthrough to the Transcendent. New ontology of the XX century. M., 1997. S. 79–93 and others.
Kant I. Treatises. M., 1996. S. 268.
There. S. 266.
There. pp. 261–262.
We can speak about the partial non-confessional nature of Kant's theology within the framework of evangelism because this confession, which rejects Tradition in its ecclesiological completeness, assumes that each believer is in principle an “autonomous” subject of theological creativity, not “fettered” by church catholicity, which, however, is in no way does not deny the presence of Lutheran orthodoxy, which considered itself competent to judge the correctness of faith as a matter not only of a private, but even of a state one (it was from these positions that Kant's criticism was directed, prompting Friedrich Wilhelm II to send him the famous letter dated October 12, 1794, in which he called the philosopher to order after the second publication of "Religion within the limits of reason alone").
See Kant I. Selected in three volumes. T. III. Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view. Kaliningrad, 1998, pp. 122–123, 187–191.
"Anthropology" summarized the relevant lectures delivered from the winter term of 1772/73 to the winter term of 1795/1796 academic year. It is significant that Kant, who was not particularly willing to publish his lecture courses, considered it important to publish this particular one.
For more details on the concept of the indefinability of the good by J. Moore, see the previous article within the framework of this dialogue: Shokhin V. Two types of ethical concepts // Alpha and Omega. 1999. No. 4(22). pp. 236–237.
According to the Nicomachean Ethics, the eidos of the good cannot generalize
its private varieties; one cannot acquire a Platonic good, nor realize it in an act, while only what is acquired and realized is of interest. There is no expression of goals in this good, the supreme of which should be recognized as happiness as something perfect and self-sufficient (1096b5–1097b5). See Aristotle. Works in four volumes. T. IV. C. 60-63.
In connection with the generalized positions of criticism of the English analysts of this direction, see Abelson R., Nielsen K. History of Ethics
// The Encyclopedia of Philosophy / P. Edwards, editor in chief. Vol. III. N.Y., L., 1967, pp. 101–102.
See Heidegger M. Time and being: articles and speeches. M., 1993.
pp. 71–72, 56, 210, 361.
Wed one of the numerous “hymns” to Heidegger’s being: “... being is simultaneously the emptiest and richest, at the same time the most universal and the most unique, at the same time the most understandable and resisting any concept, at the same time the most obliterated from application and still only advancing for the first time, at the same time the most reliable and bottomless, at the same time the most forgotten and the most memorable, together the most expressed and the most silent.
- Right there. P. 174. The quoted lines find fairly accurate parallels in the Tao Te Ching, the mystical poetry of the Buddhist Mahayana or Middle Eastern Gnosticism.
For the history of “values” as a philosophical concept, see Shokhin V. Classical Philosophy of Values… P. 297–313.
Meinong A. Zur Grundlegung der allgemeinen Werttheorie. Graz, 1923. S. 167.
The term deontology (from the Greek δέον, genus case δέοντος ‘necessary’, ‘due’ + λόγος ‘teaching’), by the irony of history, was introduced into circulation by the founder of that very utilitarianism, to which deontologists declared irreconcilable war - I. Bentham in 1834.
See Prichard H. A. Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?
// Mind. 1912. Vol. 21. R. 21–152.
Thus, Ross denounces both moral subjectivism and ideal utilitarianism, which "ignores the highly personal character of duty, or at least does not do justice to it." - Ross W. D. The Right and the Good. Oxf., 1930. R. 22.
There. R. 41.
See Lossky N. O. Value and being. God and the Kingdom of God as the basis of values. Paris, 1931.
See Lossky N. O. The World as the Realization of Beauty: Fundamentals of Aesthetics. M., 1998.
So, only in one of the chapters devoted to the manifestations of goodness in the organic world, are V. Soloviev, the materialist naturalist E. Haeckel, Aristotle, G. Spencer, then domestic authors P. A. Kropotkin, naturalist N. A. Severtsev, biologist S. Metalnikov, Turgenev (the story “Ghosts”), then the famous mystic John Bonaventure, Francis of Assisi, and then Lermontov (“Three palm trees”), the naturalist philosopher E. Becher and E. N. Trubetskoy, who had previously been preceded by Pushkin and Scheler with W. James. See ibid. pp. 74–84.
There. pp. 55–56, 65. Lossky's teaching on reincarnations (reworking of Leibniz's metamorphosis) is described in more detail in Lossky NO History of Russian Philosophy. M., 1991. S. 304–306.
Having become acquainted with the author of world evil through The Brothers Karamazov, Nikolai Onufrievich draws the following psychological portrait of him: “...Satan's life is full of disappointments, failures and ever-increasing dissatisfaction with life. Thus, we have sufficient reason to assert that even Satan will sooner or later overcome his pride and embark on the path of good”, referring at the same time to the “considerations of St. Gregory of Nyssa” (with the same directness as he refers in other cases to N. Hartman or Lermontov), who, however, with all his theologians, was by no means such a subtle “portrait psychologist”. See ibid. S. 125.
There. pp. 68–69.
Lectures on the "Sentences" of Peter Lombard (Opus Oxoniense III.19; cf. Reportata Parisiensia I.48). One of the best expositions of the ethical views of Duns Scotus as a whole is contained in the monograph: Gilson É. Jean Duns Scot. Introduction ses positions fondamentales. P., 1952, pp. 603–624. The dilemma itself, however, goes back to the “Euthyphron” from the corpus of early Platonic dialogues, where a similar problem is examined and two ways of solving it are proposed: 1) piety is pleasing to the gods because it is a kind of justice (as the Platonic Socrates believes) and 2) pious is what pleases the gods (as his interlocutor, the Athenian soothsayer Euthyphro, believes). See Plato. Dialogues. M., 1986. S. 250–268.
One of the normative texts of this kind can be considered, for example: Popov IV Natural moral law (Psychological foundations of morality). Sergiev Posad, 1897.
For metaethics and the scope of its objectivity, see our first article in the framework of the current dialogue: Shokhin VK Two types of ethical concepts. pp. 237–238.

1. Basic concepts of ethics

concept "ethics" comes from ancient Greek ethos (it with). At first, ethos was understood as a place of joint residence, a house, a dwelling, an animal lair, a bird's nest. Then they began to mainly designate the stable nature of some phenomenon, temper, custom, character.

Understanding the word "ethos" as the character of a person, Aristotle introduced the adjective "ethical" in order to designate a special class of human qualities, which he called ethical virtues. Ethical virtues, therefore, are the properties of the human character, his temperament, spiritual qualities.

At the same time, the properties of character can be considered: moderation, courage, generosity. To designate the system of ethical virtues as a special area of knowledge and to highlight this knowledge as an independent science, Aristotle introduced the term "ethics".

For a more accurate translation of the Aristotelian term "ethical" from Greek into Latin Cicero coined the term "moralis" (moral). He formed it from the word "mos" (mores - plural), which was used to denote character, temperament, fashion, cut of clothes, custom.

Words that mean the same thing as the terms "ethics" and "morality". In Russian, such a word has become, in particular, “morality”, in German - Sittlichkeit . These terms repeat the history of the emergence of the concepts of "ethics" and "morality" from the word "morality".

Thus, in their original meaning, "ethics", "morality", "morality" are three different words, although they were one term.

Over time, the situation has changed. In the process of development of philosophy, as the identity of ethics as a field of knowledge is revealed, these words begin to be assigned different meanings.

Yes, under ethics first of all, it means the corresponding field of knowledge, science, and morality (or morality) is the subject studied by it. Although the researchers had various attempts to breed the terms "morality" and "morality". For example, Hegel under morality understood the subjective aspect of actions, and under morality - the actions themselves, their objective essence.

Thus, he called morality what a person sees actions in his subjective assessments, feelings of guilt, intentions, and morality - what the actions of an individual in the life of a family, state, people actually are. In accordance with the cultural and linguistic tradition, morality is often understood as high fundamental positions, and morality, on the contrary, is mundane, historically very changeable norms of behavior. In particular, the commandments of God can be called moral, but the rules of a school teacher are moral.

In general, in the general cultural vocabulary, all three words are still used interchangeably. For example, in colloquial Russian, what is called ethical norms can just as well be called moral or ethical norms.

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From the book History of Culture author Dorokhova M A

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From the book Ethics author Zubanova Svetlana Gennadievna

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1.1. Basic concepts First of all, let's define the semantic component of the concepts "sex" (sex) and "gender" (gender) and the terms directly related to them. In English literature, the concepts of "sex" and "sex" are defined by one word "sex". In Russian, the word "sex" means

The following types of ethics are distinguished: professional, corporate and applied. Let's consider each type in more detail:

1. In professional ethics, we are talking about practices designed to solve the moral problems that arise in a particular profession. This type of ethics deals with the following problems:
- the first is connected with the need to specify universal moral norms in relation to the conditions of professional activity;
- it considers the requirements that exist within the profession and bind their carriers with special, business relations;
- she talks about the correspondence between the values of the profession and the interests of society itself, and from this perspective she comes to the problem of the relationship between social responsibility and professional duty.
- Professional ethics is characterized by the following characteristics:
- it is expressed in the form of requirements addressed to representatives of this profession. From this follows its normative image, enshrined in the form of beautifully formulated codes-declarations. As a rule, they are small documents containing a call to conform to the high vocation of the profession;
- documents on professional ethics are filled with the conviction that the values professed by it are completely obvious and follow from a simple analysis of the activities of the most prominent representatives of this kind of activity;
- The professional community itself is considered the authority of ethics, and the most respected representatives, who will be given such high confidence, can speak on its behalf. From this context, it becomes obvious that both the investigation and sanctions are also the business of the community itself. His trial and verdict is the decision of a panel of professionals in relation to those who misunderstood their high destiny, used their status to the detriment of the community and thus deleted themselves from it.

Professional ethics seeks to solve the following tasks: not to lose the status of the profession, to prove social significance, to respond to the challenges of rapidly changing conditions, to strengthen one's own cohesion, to develop common standards for joint activities and to protect oneself from the claims of other areas of professional competence.

This type of ethical theory and practice has some drawbacks. At first glance, one can note its closed, narrow nature, relying only on one's own authority in the implementation of a moral assessment, which turns into unreasonable ambitions in resolving acute conflict situations. The professional environment is a fundamentally conservative element; traditions and foundations play a huge role in it. In addition, moral consciousness cannot agree that professionalism is considered the main value of any social practice. If there is a need to discuss the moral problems that have arisen in the field of a particular activity, this means that the usual ideas about professional duty are not enough for its normal functioning.

2. Corporate ethics are enshrined in special codes. Professional ethical codes are aimed at regulating relations among employees. Such codes regulate the behavior of an employee, raise the status of employees in society, and form a trusting attitude towards them among clients. In a sense, the adoption of such a code is an imitation of the rite of passage of an individual into a profession.

Codes of ethics guide employees on how to conduct themselves in an ethical manner and help to apply moral principles in the workplace. Corporate codes are not codes in the usual sense, for the reason that you cannot force ethical or unethical behavior through orders. Each code must be evaluated from a moral point of view.

Corporate codes differ in their form. Some codes are intended to inform service workers of legal requirements that they were previously unfamiliar with but should be aware of. Others set out specific requirements that prohibit abuses such as bribery and illegal contributions. Some organizations develop such corporate codes, which describe the rules of conduct in this organization. For example, one company considers it unacceptable to accept gifts from customers, while others allow accepting gifts in the form of a small amount of money.

Some organizations may prohibit giving gifts to customers. Limit the amount of contributions made to the funds of political parties, the acquisition of shares in the company with which they cooperate, as this may cause a conflict of interest.

Corporate codes perform a number of important functions and help to solve specific problems specific to a certain profession and which employees may face. When a company has established exactly what is permissible for an employee to do or not, then he knows exactly what actions are unacceptable in this company. When the most significant ethical dilemmas are set by the organization, the activities of employees are regulated by the corporate code.

One of the most important tasks of the corporate code is to set priorities for target groups and ways to harmonize their interests.

There are three other important functions of the corporate code:

1) reputation;
2) managerial;
3) development of corporate culture.

The essence of the reputational function is to form a trusting attitude towards the company on the part of customers, suppliers, etc. In this case, the Corporate Code plays the role of PR, that is, it increases the attractiveness of the company. The presence of a company code of corporate ethics is becoming a global standard for doing business in the service sector.

The essence of the managerial function is to regulate the behavior of employees in conflict situations, when it is difficult to make the right decision in accordance with ethical standards. There are several ways in which employee performance can be improved:

1) regulation of priorities in cooperation with significant external groups;
2) determining the procedure for making decisions in conflict situations, when they comply with ethical standards;
3) indications of incorrect behavior from an ethical point of view.

Corporate ethics is an important foundation of corporate

culture, the code of corporate ethics is the guarantor of the development of corporate culture. The Code orients all employees of the company to ethical values, as well as orient employees towards common corporate goals and thereby increase corporate cohesion.

The key system tools in the field of human factor management are: corporate culture and ethical code of the organization.

3. Applied ethics is the most popular type of modern moral theory. Moreover, it can be argued that ethics itself as a philosophy of morality mainly exists in this form. Applied ethics is usually understood as intellectual practices revolving around the discussion of the most controversial, often dramatic dilemmas of the surrounding reality, insoluble from the point of view of ordinary pragmatic calculation. Two of these dilemmas we dealt with in the previous narrative are lies and violence. It turned out that from the point of view of the possibility of a moral substantiation of these phenomena, both opposite points of view can be quite reliably argued, and the dispute on this topic can last forever. However, both considered situations concern mainly the personal choice of a person. What if a professional point of view or the interest of a corporation intervened? For example, consider the argument about lies. Many people involved in information flows would argue that deception is very often justified. A representative of a business corporation would also defend his right to distort information in order to obtain benefits. But in any dispute there is another side - humanity itself, which does not want to be a consumer of lies.

Applied ethics arose precisely as a free discussion in which all sides, including morality itself, can speak. But most importantly, this dispute is being conducted in such a way that the authority of any of the parties does not dominate over a possible solution to the conflict situation. So, in this situation, the point of view of a professional is no more valuable than an ordinary person, because the broadest consequences of the proposed solutions can be seen not by a narrowly professional view, but by the consolidated opinion of all interested participants. By and large, inviting to a dialogue, applied ethics takes the point of view of morality itself, that is, it seeks to protect the centuries-old ideas of people about ideal, truly human relationships. Therefore, unlike professional and corporate samples, it is not built in the form of codes and declarations. Applied ethics is, in principle, non-normative, since the situations it discusses cannot be solved by following one, even a very good, requirement. Another thing is that a specific rule may be born as a result of the discussion, but its consolidation (legislative and corporate) is a matter of other practices. This type of ethical reasoning proceeds precisely from ideas about absolute moral values, and from these positions she argues, wishing to limit the one-dimensional pragmatic view of the order of things.

The methodology of applied ethics is quite simple. It is important for her to understand the positions of all parties, to listen to their arguments, to understand the causes of the conflict, but the main thing is to establish a dialogue between the conflicting parties, as well as those who wish to assist in resolving it. Unlike the two styles of ethics discussed above, it does not seek to regulate anything at all. Her job is to find the most acceptable solution at the moment. Moreover, unlike corporate regulation, it does not need to apply and justify sanctions.

What is a reception

A reception is a meeting of those invited to a person, or a form of organizing working meetings that allows you to discuss in a relaxed atmosphere topics that, for a number of reasons, it is undesirable to touch on at the official level.

Receptions are also often called official meetings in honor of a person or event. The purpose of the reception is to establish contacts between business partners, officials and foreign colleagues, representatives of various companies and concerns, scientific and technical circles, artists and culture. Thus, such a reception is called official, to which those present are invited solely by virtue of their social position.

Snacks and tastings of drinks play an important role during receptions, and information is obtained in an informal and relaxed manner. Thanks to the mutual exchange of views, the interlocutors during the meal can achieve success in signing the previously discussed documents, organizing additional meetings, visits, etc.

Official receptions are arranged for completely different reasons: the inauguration of a new leader, a presentation, the completion of a project, the successful completion of business negotiations, the retirement of a former leader, etc.

Invitations are sent out at least 10 days before the official reception. Unless otherwise specified in the invitation, men will wear a dark suit or at least a dark jacket to an afternoon reception; women - an evening dress or suit appropriate to the situation. At the evening reception, men are in a tuxedo or tailcoat, women - in evening dress.

At official receptions, invited persons are strictly on time and thus do not delay the host, who should also pay attention to other guests.

At official receptions, a full-service banquet or a buffet banquet is usually arranged.

Receptions are social and business.

Social receptions are arranged on a variety of occasions: birthdays, weddings, christenings, Christmas, national holidays, theater premieres, etc.

Business receptions are organized on the occasion of national holidays, anniversaries of some significant event, in honor of a foreign delegation staying in the country, at the opening of a representative office of a company, on the occasion of the presentation of goods, as well as in the order of daily work.

In addition, the reception can be diplomatic, providing for the observance of many rules of etiquette related to this sphere of human activity.

Diplomatic receptions

Diplomatic etiquette was formed over many centuries, strictly regulated forms of official contacts between representatives of different states were created gradually. At the Congress of Vienna, after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, a diplomatic protocol was officially approved, which helped to prevent disputes between representatives of different states.

A diplomatic protocol is a set of rules that prescribe the procedure for performing various diplomatic acts (international meetings and conferences, negotiations, visits, diplomatic receptions, receptions and seeing off official delegations, signing international agreements, treaties). In accordance with these rules, diplomats use their own terms and concepts, special gestures of courtesy and compliments. Compliance with the principle of seniority in diplomatic practice means not only the country that the diplomat represents, but above all the rank to which he is elevated (accredited). Seniority is determined by the class of diplomatic and consular representatives, as well as by the position itself - in accordance with accepted diplomatic norms. Personal diplomatic or service ranks and titles are not taken into account. The rule of precedence is observed when seating members of the diplomatic and consular corps during receptions or when they participate in official events. This excludes any subjectivity and thus the possibility of inflicting, voluntarily or involuntarily, offense on an official representative of another state.

Diplomatic receptions are arranged to commemorate an event, in order to show honor and hospitality to an individual or delegation, and also as an ordinary diplomatic event not associated with a specific event or person. Diplomatic receptions are not only representative, they also serve as the most important means of establishing, maintaining and developing contacts between official authorities and the diplomatic corps and journalists, contacts of a diplomatic mission or individual diplomatic workers with official authorities, public, business, cultural and other circles of the host country.

Diplomatic meetings are held by representatives of official authorities, public, scientific, technical and business circles of the country. The reason for them may be the signing of international treaties and agreements, national holidays, anniversaries, events in public life. In the practice of diplomatic missions, the most common methods are to honor the heads and members of the government, scientists, artists, and culture, as well as everyday meetings of diplomats to expand ties between countries.

Any diplomatic reception, regardless of its purpose, type and invited persons, is political in nature, since it is a meeting of representatives of foreign states. They are also held to commemorate any events: national holidays of the state, important anniversaries, events celebrated by the whole country, anniversaries of the signing of international treaties, agreements, etc.

Often, receptions are appointed in order to honor or show hospitality to individuals - the head or members of the government, diplomatic representatives, scientists, cultural figures, artists, etc. or a foreign delegation arriving in the country. They are also appropriate in the order of daily diplomatic work. By the way, in the practice of diplomatic missions, such methods are most common. Not numerous in terms of the number of invited persons, they provide an opportunity to strengthen and expand ties, obtain the necessary information, explain the foreign policy of their country, influence local circles in the right direction, etc.

Organization of business receptions

In the international practice of business communication, there are different types of techniques:

Breakfast (Lunch);

Tea or coffee table;

Cocktail and its varieties: a) coupe de champagne (“a glass of champagne”); b) vin d¢honneur ("a glass of wine");

Lunch (Dinner);

Lunch buffet, i.e. buffet (Butter Dinner);

Dinner (Supper);

Zhurfix;

Barbecue, etc.

Receptions are divided into daytime and evening receptions, as well as receptions with seating at the table and without it.

Daily meals include: "a glass of wine", "a glass of champagne" and "breakfast". All other receptions are considered evening.

In accordance with international practice, breakfast and lunch are considered the most honorable types of receptions. Other receptions, such as brunch (late breakfast turning into lunch), dinner after the theater, picnic, fondue, barbecue, beer table, etc., according to the methods of their organization, are a combination of the main types of receptions.

Choose one or another type of reception, depending on the significance of the event. If we are talking about the head or prime minister of a foreign state visiting the country, or about a foreign government delegation at a high level, it is advisable to provide for them a dinner or an evening reception, or both at the same time. If a reception is planned on behalf of a diplomatic representative in honor of the prime minister, minister of foreign affairs, or another member of the government of the host country, then it is also more expedient to choose lunch. In less important cases, you should use other of the above types of techniques. In this case, it is always necessary to take into account the protocol traditions and customs established in a given country. These traditions will help in choosing the type of reception.

The organization of any reception includes two elements:

The official part, drawn up by the protocol;

The informal part of the reception, which includes lunch, dinner and other events.

When organizing a reception, it is necessary to determine in advance the date and time of this event, the range of dishes and drinks, the procedure for serving guests.

The preparation of the reception includes the following activities:

Choosing the type of reception and the date of its holding;

Drawing up a list of invited persons;

Drawing up a seating plan at the table (at breakfast, lunch, dinner);

Menu preparation;

Table setting and guest service organization;

Preparation of toasts and speeches;

Drawing up a general scheme (order of conduct) of the reception.

When compiling a list of invited guests, the following rule is followed: they must have common interests. For official receptions, written invitations are used in the form of purchased invitation cards, made in cream tones or neutral white with gold, silver and various vignettes. As a rule, the text of the invitation is already printed on such postcards, a space is left for the guest's name. This name can be written by hand in calligraphic handwriting or printed on a computer. As a rule, the invitation is addressed by name and patronymic or just by name. For spouses, one invitation is sent, in which you can contact both or each separately. In this case, the first name of the woman is indicated.

The invitations also indicate the exact address of the premises where the reception will take place, date and time. Sometimes the form of clothing is also determined. If the future guest lives outside the city, they put in an envelope a city plan or a detailed description of the travel route, indicating the transport scheme. Send out invitations 3-4 weeks before the scheduled event.