ASSA - M

Momov, Vassil. Ethical studies. The Morality over the Provocations of the Social Dynamics.

ETHIC ESSAYS
Morality before the Challenges
of Social Dynamics

SUMMARY

p. 365-368

     Research workers, students, teachers, journalists and other intellectual workers are offered some of my publications (1969-1988) and three essays dealing with moral aspects and issues of the Big Change which set in after 1989. The works have been sizeably abridged and edited. Their selection was made entirely on a theoretical and methodological characteristic, including the problems of applied ethic cognition. Not being directly linked to the current politics, they were written from the positions of the then prevailing Marxist-Leninist methodology, in a society which had its specific needs, mechanisms and regularities of functioning and development. The logic of the substantiated and defended scientific ideas, conceptions and positions cannot be understood and justified outside and irrespective of the epistemological and ontological context. Moreover, as the analysis of contemporary social practices has shown, the leading ideas and methodological problems are essentially constant, and thus have preserved their theoretical and applied significance till the present day. Understandably, the narrative confirms that they have evolved and been enriched by new components, thus posing essentially new challenges to ethics.

     In the last part, devoted to moral regulation and moral stand in the conditions of a radical change, I have attempted to provide a somewhat fragmented hypothetical answer to some tendencies and "birth-pains" in the real morality during the transition towards a new type of social system. And, despite my initial concept and endeavour to retain the theoretical and methodological style of research, it was impossible to avoid the situational analysis of complex and unique (unprecedented in history) processes and phenomena underway. This has motivated me to refer to more prestigious authors and intellectuals, concrete facts and conclusions of sociological surveys, so as to attain relatively truer and more convincing interpretations, scientific assessments and generalizations.

     The essays included here have been chosen, shaped and structured by subject in such a way so that the systematic narration seems more like a monograph rather than a simple collection. The logical link and the unity of subject content is maintained by two dominant subject lines which, on the one hand, organize the studied material around leading ideas of the ethic knowledge, while on the other enable the reader to trace out the epistemological dynamics in accordance with social and moral realities. That is why these leading issues had to be considered not in separate, but in a series of essays.

     The first subject circle covers methodological aspects and issues of ethic knowledge. The dynamic processes of the system-comprehensive studies of man and the tendency towards a synthetic cognition of the personality (perceived as "personalistics"), help the elaboration of a more adequate approach to the analysis of differentiation and integration of the ethics' system. The author upholds the disputed thesis of the subject separation of ethics into a particular scientific, non-philosophical theory with its own concept apparatus and methods of research. This is a new scientific status of ethics that would stimulate the development of its range of philosophical problems, as well as the specialized theoretical and applied knowledge implying systematic empirical surveys of the existing morality. The need of such approach is also confirmed by today's social reality which provides a convincing proof that a solution to pragmatic issues that ignores positive moral values leads to lasting malformities in social thinking and acting. The moral criteria and problems of democratic government, in the establishing market economy, in our joining the progressive civilization, in the broad practice of the socialization and education of the personality cannot be successfully studied and solved by general philosophical postulates, formal-logical schemes and fruitless abstractions.

     The second, quite wide subject circle covers methodological aspects and problems of the moral norm as a structure-determining component of the moral system-ethics' subject proper. It determines the measure of moral evaluation and behaviour models, as well as of the organized pedagogic and socially controlled impact. An attempt is made at defining the salient feature of the moral norm and of deontological situation in which it is objectivized in reality. The structure and functions of the normative (prescription) information-a particular type of sociological and preemptive reflection-are revealed.

     Of major interest is the dynamics of functioning of the moral norm as an integral regulating and formative, i.e. socializing, factor. The social and personifying mechanisms and the statistical-probability nature of the process of its behaviour realization are studied in detail. If inherently adopted and perceived by the personality, the norm may turn into a due attitude as a model of behaviour. The heuristic possibilities of an aggregate of approaches-sociological, psychological, pedagogic, structure-functional, information, mathematics-statistical and the like-are substantiated and applied on the basis of philosophical methodology, for studying its versatile and contradictory social and personality existence.

     By advancing the thesis of the determining importance of normative forms in moral regulation, special attention is paid to the modal and stimulating function of the moral norm and the defense and compensating mechanisms related to its implementation. From the viewpoint of optimization of moral regulation and self-regulation in today's reality of anomie and social pathology, I dwell on the specific nature and admissible limits of moral pressure in defense of the good against the aggression of the evil. Also revealed is the place of the moral stand of the public opinion and personality as a synthesis of evaluation, due and responsible attitude in these processes, emphasizing its constructive and stabilizing direction. The moral stand is increasingly relevant given today's non-standard situations of risky choice in political and economic life, for the solution of pragmatic and value issues provoked by radical reforms and global problems in the world and in the Balkans. It expands its all-human and all-national content without losing its class components, particularly in the instrumental use of moral norms and values.

     A separate part deals with both the broader social parameters of pedagogical ethics (as a general theory of moral education) and its professional aspects, related to the ethical problems of pedagogical work and teachers' morality. In this highly humane work moral position is an immanent need of creativity; pedagogical requirements and control actions have the function to encourage and protect the moral person.

     My impulse to publish again some works of mine and express my scientific position as regards moral problems is not an expression of typically scientist's self-confidence of "reminding of oneself". I do not totally preclude such considerations, of course. My key stimulus, however, was provided by today's worrisome ethical reality, by the value and moral "vacuum", by the persistent indifference to good and evil in their various modifications and behaviour personifications. At the same time (no matter how paradoxical it might seem), the objective need of taking our society out of the state of anomie and entropy, of strengthening its disturbed integrity, cannot be met without the active involvement of moral values. Given this situation, the science of ethics and its agents (ethics scientists) should overcome the comfortable "ostrich posture". Historical progress in Bulgaria depends to a large degree on stimulating both the moral autonomy of the personality, its free civic position, and the sovereign nature of social morality itself, its key, consolidating and stimulating role.

     This has underlain my motivation to look back and rely on continuity in the development of ethic cognition. To some degree the published essays provide a systematized idea of the Marxist thought in the second half of the 20th century through the issues they treat. The defended ideas and my conceptions unquestionably bear the imprint of the ethical theory and methodology which dominated this long period, including the border areas of scientific cognition. They also bear the imprint of the ideological monopoly with its inherent class biases and dogmatic stereotypes, typical of the then social system. Though against the backdrop of these restrictive value, epistemological and ontological paradigms of ethical cognition (which also experienced a long period of nihilistic attitude and standstill), I have sought the heuristic approach mainly in my reliance on prestigious scientists, anti-dogmatic scientific trends and schools. I have sought the most adequate possible position as regards the provocations of the social dynamics. This has undoubtedly influenced also the evolution of my basic scientific ideas and theoretical conceptions. In this sense, the essays also present my original ideas when drafting the outlined theoretical and methodological cores of ethic cognition. To the strict reader I leave the assessment of their productivity.

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