1 8 S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 5 - 2 Fa l l 2 0 1 9 ter directed by him that “his whole life was lived in accordance with Kant’s moral precepts and particularly in accordance with Kant’s understanding of the concept of duty” (Arendt 2016, 185). He read Kant’s The Critique of Practical Reason, he followed it and even though Kant did not directly identify moral principle of will with the principle of state lawgiver, “common people and households” interpreted deontological ethics in this manner. “Whatever was Kant’s role in formation of mentality of a ‘common man’ in Germany, there is no doubt that in one sense Eichmann really acted in the spirit of Kant’s principles: A law is a law, there can be no exceptions” (Arendt 2016, 186). Eichmann is a symbol of blind obedience and consistent discipline of all who govern their actions in their everyday life following the norms of superior organization, or a state. David Rybák points out that in Eichmann’s case it is not a fatal fail of an individual, but an expression of “being inbuilt in a machinery in which it is much easier to go with the process than to oppose it” (Rybák 2019, 169), which is a typical example of a contemporary technocratic man. The abstract deontological ethics in transformed in common practice to a simple ethics of obedience to rules that were posed by a “third person”. Thus, the ethics of social contract and state-guaranteed social justice (equality) belong to the category of the “third person”. Paul Ricoeur criticizes the ethics of obedience for absolutization of normativeness, that is, conditioning an action by the means of accordance with the norm regardless of possible good that could or could not have been reached by the action. Ricoeur asserts that teleological ethics, ethics aimed at “good life” should have primacy, while morality of rules is its mediating part. He expresses his integral theory of morality in a well-known thesis, “focus on ‘good life’ with the others and for the others in just institutions” (Ricoeur 2016, 190). I will return to this thesis of Ricoeur in the following subchapter. At this place, I would like to note his brilliant critical observation of Kant’s deontology, which contests its own coherence in the second formulation of the moral law. Kant’s reference to “final purpose”, or “self-purpose” of the second person [2] poses the theme of difference, discontinuity, plurality and singularity (otherness of the other), in contrast to own conception of moral autonomy and universality of rules (Ricoeur 2016, 246). Cognitivist psychologists such as Lawrence Kohlberg, James Rest or Theodor Lind, following Kant’s deontology, consider universalistic, duty morality relevant. Justification of our deeds within conventionally accepted morality is referred to the authority of the external rule. Identification of morality with an unconditioned action according to the general categorical imperative, however, hits often everyday experience, which is not “black and white” and includes variety of aspects, perspectives and accents that influence the decision-making process. They cannot be rejected with simple reasoning that they are ungeneralizable and often do not fall within the category of rational justifications. The philosopher John Rawls, who follows Kant’s morality, points out that some dilemmas are unsolvable through the duty ethics, or on the contrary, they may have several acceptable solutions (Rawls in Krámský 2015, 104). The same objection may be made against psychological research tools that evaluate maturity of moral development of respondents based on their responses to given moral dilemmas. Monologicality of deontological ethics is particularly problematic – to respond to ethical dilemmas, an isolated conscience of an individual without communication with the others is sufficient in order to make the “right” decision. This approach may be critically denoted as “transcendental solipsism” (Krámský 2015, 106, 110), which ends in the loss of interpersonal trust and possible ideologization of morality, moreover, it may even lead to dehumanized ethics (Krámský 2015, 134–142). The absence of “the other” in the horizon of clarification of ethical criteria closes the cogitative reason to immanentism of uncommunicating monads. In spite of the fact that Kant wanted to save the relationship of man to the noumenal through “practical reason”, he deprived it of the most natural source of transcendence –“the other opposite me”. In contemporary scientific discourse on moral education, a cognitivist paradigm according to which the focus should be particularly on ethical education, development of cogitative and reasoning competences, however, at the expense of integral guidance of students to good, prevails. Education to keeping rules and to cultivation of moral-cognitive abilities is at risk of stopping at the level of verbalism, perhaps with a developed ability to denote moral phenomena and reason appropriate solutions, but without the ability to interiorize one’s own theses and integrate one’s own belief to moral action. The risk of incongruent moral education was noted, for example, by Martin Buber, when he criticized Kerschensteiner’s thesis on character education according to deontological ethics: “This understanding of character as an organization of self-control by means of accumulation of maxims… enables understanding powerlessness of modern education in regard to sickness of man…This understanding cannot provide a sufficient base for building of true character education” (Buber 2016, 78).
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