1. ETHICAL NOTIONS AND SOCIAL LIFE: SOME PROBLEMS IN THE MEASUREMENT OF ATTITUDES.
- Author
-
Podgòrecki, Adam
- Subjects
ETHICS ,LIFE ,PHILOSOPHY ,POLITICAL science ,PSYCHIATRY ,CONSERVATISM ,ASSOCIATIONS, institutions, etc. - Abstract
The article presents information on ethical notions in relation to social life. Philosophy, political sciences, psychiatry, etc. use a great many theoretical notions without careful evaluation of their empirical meaning. Concepts like power, alienation, progressiveness, conservatism, tolerance, suppression, context, idealism, dominance, cruelty, opportunism, libido, submission, etc. abound in the dissertations which belong to social sciences. Vast intuitive differences connected with these terms, multiplied by vague definitions attached to them, almost always exclude the possibility of generally accepted professional understanding. Therefore, the need to propose some new concepts, capable of being operationalized in an empirical way and designed to analyze the complexity of current events, seems to be quite pressing. Traditionally people have a tendency to extend the norms of private life, and the private ethics, into the sphere of public life. But modem life shows quite shockingly that the old ethics, structured in this way, fail. Socially oriented ethics emerge as a relatively new device to cover and regulate those areas of human behavior which are primarily connected with the new, large, somewhat artificial entities in which the life of a modem citizen is submerged, institutions, organizations, agencies, factories, etc.
- Published
- 1974