Ethos. Kwartalnik Instytutu Jana Pawła II KUL https://czasopisma.kul.pl/index.php/ethos <p><em>Ethos.</em> <em>Kwartalnik Instytutu Jana Pawła II KUL</em> is a scholarly journal dealing with philosophical problems that emerge in contemporary culture, which are discussed in monographic issues of the quarterly. Our authors take various approaches to address such problems: the humanities and social studies, especially philosophy and, more specifically, philosophical anthropology and ethics. The Journal was launched in 1988 on the initiative of Professor Tadeusz Styczeń SDS, (1931–2010), who became its long-time editor-in-chief. <em>Ethos</em> accepts works in Polish and English. The quarterly <em>Ethos</em>. <em>Kwartalnik Instytutu Jana Pawła II KUL</em> is published by the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, while the John Paul II Institute, affiliated with the KUL Faculty of Philosophy, is in charge of its conceptual and editorial profile.</p> Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II pl-PL Ethos. Kwartalnik Instytutu Jana Pawła II KUL 0860-8024 Latent Depths: Meanings and Values in the Etude in F minor from Fryderyk Chopin’s Trois Nouvelles Études https://czasopisma.kul.pl/index.php/ethos/article/view/18442 <p>Although often relegated to the periphery of Chopin’s legacy, the Etude in F minor—the first of the <em>Trois Nouvelles Études</em> written for the didactic collection <em>Méthode des Méthodes pour le piano</em> by François Joseph Fétis and Ignacy Moscheles—stands out for its emotionally charged, continuous and restless, meticulously structured narrative. The analysis of this work—spanning its didactic intent, its structural and expressive interdependencies within the linear, polyrhythmic texture, essential performance considerations, and its reception and interpretation in the context of Chopin’s poetics—reveals a clear instance of expressive values taking precedence over its didactic function. The Etude in F minor emerges as one of the most original and intimate expressions in Chopin’s compositional output. It offers a poignant, existential portrait of the composer, providing an invaluable insight into his aesthetic identity and prompting reflection on the metaphysical dimensions of music.</p> <p>The study draws from a range of sources, including the correspondence, recently published in the Polish translation, of Chopin’s student, Friederike Müller, documents on the reception of Chopin’s works, scholarly literature on Chopin’s creative poetics, aesthetic, and philosophical reflection on the ontology of musical work.</p> Silvia BRUNI Copyright (c) 2025 Ethos. Kwartalnik Instytutu Jana Pawła II KUL http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2025-03-29 2025-03-29 38 1(149) 10.12887/38-2025-1-149-16 This Is Not the Time for Humanists https://czasopisma.kul.pl/index.php/ethos/article/view/18444 <p>Scientists are expected to produce measurable research results today, preferably focused on technological implementation and bringing concrete profits. This puts humanists in a difficult position, since their work does not bring material profits. Their work is also not made easier by the point-based system of evaluating publications, which does not necessarily favor the quality of published texts. Contemporary culture and the pace of life do not seem to favor in-depth reflection, and without it, the work of a humanities scholar will not be creative.</p> Barbara CHYROWICZ Copyright (c) 2025 Ethos. Kwartalnik Instytutu Jana Pawła II KUL http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2025-03-29 2025-03-29 38 1(149) 10.12887/38-2025-1-149-21 In the Service of Human Dignity https://czasopisma.kul.pl/index.php/ethos/article/view/18446 <p>A bibliography of the addresses of popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis on the fundamental dilemmas of contemporary culture. The list comprises addresses delivered from 1978 to 2024.</p> Maria FILIPIAK Copyright (c) 2025 Ethos. Kwartalnik Instytutu Jana Pawła II KUL http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2025-03-29 2025-03-29 38 1(149) 10.12887/38-2025-1-149-22 “Break through, search, don’t yield”: An Inner Journey towards Fulfillment, as Seen in the Literary Oeuvre of Karol Wojtyła—John Paul II https://czasopisma.kul.pl/index.php/ethos/article/view/18455 <p>The article addresses the topoi of the road and the journey present in Karol Wojtyła’s literary work, discussing their ontological, anthropological, epistemological, soteriological, and ethical aspects. In addition to the motif of the road conceived of as a symbolic figure of human fate, the reflection focuses on the interpretation of the term “source,” considered one of the words constitutive for this poetry; one of the keywords around which the deep meanings of his texts are created.</p> Zofia ZARĘBIANKA Copyright (c) 2025 Ethos. Kwartalnik Instytutu Jana Pawła II KUL http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2025-03-29 2025-03-29 38 1(149) 10.12887/38-2025-1-149-15 From the Editors https://czasopisma.kul.pl/index.php/ethos/article/view/18456 Redakcja Copyright (c) 2025 Ethos. Kwartalnik Instytutu Jana Pawła II KUL http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2025-03-29 2025-03-29 38 1(149) A Different Modernity? https://czasopisma.kul.pl/index.php/ethos/article/view/18443 <p>The mainstream of modernity has been unilaterally determined by an idea of reason that makes rationality coincide with the method of modern science, particularly that of modern physics. Modern science investigates the universe composed of pure objects and determines the relations among pure objects with a rigor that has enormously increased our control over the material world. The world, however, does not consist only of pure objects. It is made of both objects and subjects. Subjects cannot be understood with the method that is successfully applied to describing objects. If we ignore the subjective dimension of reality, we reduce other human beings to pure objects that can be freely exploited and do not possess inner dignity. we are also led to consider ourselves as pure objects and thus enter the world of total alienation described by Martin Heidegger in his discussion of technology. There is, however, another idea modernity, conceived of by Pascal and leading to the teaching of St. John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis. Understood in such a way, modernity fully accepts the method of natural sciences but develops also a method for the understanding of the world of subjects and of the human world. Reason has two wings, and is unable to rise, using only one of them.</p> Rocco BUTTIGLIONE Copyright (c) 2025 Ethos. Kwartalnik Instytutu Jana Pawła II KUL http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2025-03-29 2025-03-29 38 1(149) 10.12887/38-2025-1-149-05 Moral Good and Evil as a Test for Human Souls: Elements of the Ethics of Conscience https://czasopisma.kul.pl/index.php/ethos/article/view/18449 <p>The first part of the article is devoted to various understandings of ethics as a philosophical discipline. The second part considers the nature of conscience as the basis of knowledge about moral good and evil and distinguishes three layers of human conscience. The third part of the article concerns the concept of moral test, with the thesis being that God, the Creator, subjects all persons to a moral test of choosing between good and evil. In order for this type of moral test to take place, an “innate” ability to distinguish good from evil is necessary, which is conscience.</p> Stanisław JUDYCKI Copyright (c) 2025 Ethos. Kwartalnik Instytutu Jana Pawła II KUL http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2025-03-29 2025-03-29 38 1(149) 10.12887/38-2025-1-149-06 Towards a Recapitulation of Thinking about the Human Person: With Karol Wojtyła towards the Future https://czasopisma.kul.pl/index.php/ethos/article/view/18448 <p>This article is a reflection on the recapitulation of thinking about the human person, which was Karol Wojtyła’s intention in the context of the intensifying dispute about man. It shows methodological strategies that Wojtyła used and about which he hoped for a new research approach to the person. Thus, such pairs of concepts as phenomenology—metaphysics, nature —person, rationality—consciousness, person—community are indicated. By skillfully combining them and complementing their function, Wojtyła not only obtained a new type of insight into the person but also developed new arguments to explain this multifaceted reality. The article follows his ideas and hints at how useful they can be today, in the context of contemporary disputes about the human person. A skillful and creative use of Wojtyła’s methodological strategies can be helpful both in further discovery of the person and in finding explanations for what appears to us. The human person remains insufficiently known, while the changed conditions in which he lives provide opportunities to discover and rethink new aspects of his existence.</p> Grzegorz HOŁUB Copyright (c) 2025 Ethos. Kwartalnik Instytutu Jana Pawła II KUL http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2025-03-29 2025-03-29 38 1(149) 10.12887/38-2025-1-149-07 Wonder, Intuition, Romanticism: Wojtyła, Scheler, Wordsworth https://czasopisma.kul.pl/index.php/ethos/article/view/18451 <p>This essay addresses an antinomy of modernity that extends from William Wordsworth and the Romantic era through the phenomenological writings of Max Scheler (1874–1928) and Karol Wojtyła, and into philosophical thought today: the differing claims of emotional intuitionism and discursive rationality as grounds for moral and theistic values. Although Wojtyła argues against Scheler’s ethical emotionalism as a sufficient basis for ethics, as a poet as well as philosopher he appreciates the power of moral and finally theistic intuition and particularly the wonder or reverent amazement we may experience in the natural ordering of things. In this he concurs with Scheler—indeed, with Aquinas—and also with the Romantic poets, including Wordsworth, who rooted moral value in intuition or intimation. However insufficient he may have found emotionalism’s claims as a totalizing philosophy, he entertains emotional intuition’s more limited role as “creative and rich in consequences for cognition of human reality.”</p> Adam POTKAY Copyright (c) 2025 Ethos. Kwartalnik Instytutu Jana Pawła II KUL http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2025-03-29 2025-03-29 38 1(149) 10.12887/38-2025-1-149-08 Towards the Desired Kingdom: For a New Translation od Giovanni Papini’s Storia di Cristo https://czasopisma.kul.pl/index.php/ethos/article/view/18447 <p>The article is a synthetic discussion of the value and topicality of Giovanni Papini’s Storia di Cristo. Recalling the Polish translation of this work by Wincenty Rzymowski, the author formulates a proposal for a new translation of the Italian writer’s work. It should be complete, as faithful as possible to the original, and it must take the necessary cultural contexts comprehensively into account.</p> Tomasz GARBOL Copyright (c) 2025 Ethos. Kwartalnik Instytutu Jana Pawła II KUL http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2025-03-29 2025-03-29 38 1(149) 10.12887/38-2025-1-149-09 “The time is out of joint”? Fr. Jerzy Szymik’s Poetry Confronts Contemporary Culture https://czasopisma.kul.pl/index.php/ethos/article/view/18450 <p>The research presented in the article discusses poetic works of Fr. Jerzy Szymik, a scholarly theologian and, at the same time, a keen observer and commentator of contemporary culture. The aim of the paper is to answer the question how his poetry addresses issues related to a diagnosis of contemporary culture (described, in discursive speech, in his other works). The article is to present artistic strategies used to incorporate diagnoses of contemporary culture into a poetic text and to identify the attitude of the subject and his responses (including theological ones) to the dilemmas inherent in the culture in question. The primary method adopted in the research is a hermeneutic reading focused on the categories of the word and the flesh used in the selected texts; the interpretation is supported by synthetizing references to Szymik’s whole oeuvre, not only to its poetic components. The article has been devised as a reconnaissance of the topic which may prove an interpretative key to be used in a general monographic description of Fr. Jerzy Szymik’s literary output.</p> Alicja MAZAN-MAZURKIEWICZ Copyright (c) 2025 Ethos. Kwartalnik Instytutu Jana Pawła II KUL http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2025-03-29 2025-03-29 38 1(149) 10.12887/38-2025-1-149-10 Contemporary Trends to Liberalize Abortion: On the Struggle Between the Civilization of Life and the Civilization of Death; The Approach of John Paul II https://czasopisma.kul.pl/index.php/ethos/article/view/18454 <p>Thirty years ago, John Paul II outlined in the encyclical <em>Evangelium Vitae</em> a picture of contemporary society “marked by a dramatic struggle between the ‘culture of life’ and the ‘culture of death’” (Section 95). “The profound crisis of culture, which generates scepticism in relation to the very foundations of knowledge and ethics, and which makes it increasingly difficult to grasp clearly the meaning of what man is, the meaning of his rights and duties” (Section 11) is a source of new threats, such as a gradual increase in the social approval for attacks against life in the name of the right to individual freedom and the recognition of such attacks as entirely legal by the legislative systems in numerous countries. Overcoming this crisis becomes the primary task for laying the foundations for the “civilization of life.” By undermining the inviolable nature of human dignity and inalienable human rights, the social transformations in question affect the very foundations of democracy. In Poland, such trends have sparked a debate on the limits of the legal protection of human life. The Constitutional Tribunal took a clear position on the matter, repeatedly emphasizing that a democratic <em>Rechtsstaat</em> (jurisprudent state) should recognize, as its primary value, the human being and the goods that are most valuable to human beings. Among these goods is all human life at every stage of its development, which, as such, must fall under constitutional protection. Legislative proposals which interpret abortion as a human right and result in questioning the fact that a human life is an inherent rightful good which requires direct legal protection certainly do not meet the standards of a <em>Rechtsstaat</em>.</p> Krzysztof WIAK Copyright (c) 2025 Ethos. Kwartalnik Instytutu Jana Pawła II KUL http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2025-03-29 2025-03-29 38 1(149) 10.12887/38-2025-1-149-11 Departure from Transcendence: On the Attitudes of Contemporary Polish Youth towards Religion and Spirituality https://czasopisma.kul.pl/index.php/ethos/article/view/18452 <p>The article presents considerations inspired by the results of the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study, which shows that in Poland, between 2009 and 2022, as much as thirty percent of eighth-grade students ceased to consider religion an important part of their worldview. This is a symptomatic result, which calls for reflection on (1) what the most important reasons for this situation are, (2) what young people are trying to replace religion with, and (3) what might be the consequences of replacing religion with the so-called new spirituality. On the first issue, some serious causes can be seen in the Church itself and in the style of evangelization it pursues, which seems to facilitate rather than hinder the “silent apostasy” of its faithful. On issue two, important distinctions are made between the extreme alternatives, which reject religion, and the moderate ones, focused on the pursuit of a new religion or a substitute for the existing one. Issue three highlights the difference between Catholic spirituality on the one hand and the para-religious form of spirituality without religion and proposals for an atheistic spirituality without God on the other. Mental and emotional experiences, including psychedelic ones, along with the techniques used to induce them, do not enhance a person’s rational control over his or her own life, shaping an (often risky) lifestyle rather than the human ability to guide one’s own choices in the perspective of perfection and the ultimate overcoming of evil.</p> Robert T. PTASZEK Copyright (c) 2025 Ethos. Kwartalnik Instytutu Jana Pawła II KUL http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2025-03-29 2025-03-29 38 1(149) 10.12887/38-2025-1-149-12 Moral Obligation or Decision? On the Controversy between Tadeusz Styczeń and Mieczysław A. Krąpiec over the Metaphysical and Anthropological Bases of Morality https://czasopisma.kul.pl/index.php/ethos/article/view/18445 <p>The author scrutinizes the debate on the proper object of ethics as a discipline continued at the Catholic University of Lublin by its two prominent philosophers: Tadeusz Styczeń and Mieczysław A. Krąpiec. The opening part of the paper discusses Styczeń’s thesis that the proper object of ethics is moral duty, which simultaneously provides the norm for morality and ultimately determines the shape of the entire conception of ethics. Due to the special rank of the moral subject’s duty towards another person by virtue of her being a person, the ethics Styczeń proposed had a deeply personalistic essence. Then the author discusses the anthropological and metaphysical bases of Styczeń’s ethics, as well as the objections towards it made by Krąpiec. The second part of the considerations includes an outline of the ethics proposed by Krąpiec, who emphasized the significance of the decision-making act which lies at the basis of human action and which, as such, can be conceived as a kind of moral entity: the decision to act (or not to act) is always accompanied by its moral evaluation on the part of the acting subject, who juxtaposes his or her practical judgment with the preceding, theoretical one, viewed in terms of “what is truly good for me.” The author then discusses the anthropological and ethical bases of Krąpiec’s position, called metaphysical ethics by its commentators, as well as Styczeń’s objections towards it. In the closing section of the paper, the author has included his observations concerning the complementary nature of the discussed standpoints.</p> Tomasz DUMA Copyright (c) 2025 Ethos. Kwartalnik Instytutu Jana Pawła II KUL http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2025-03-29 2025-03-29 38 1(149) 10.12887/38-2025-1-149-13 Jurisprudential Implications of Anthropology and Ethics of Tadeusz Styczeń and Karol Wojtyła: Towards a Personalist Legal Doctrine https://czasopisma.kul.pl/index.php/ethos/article/view/18453 <p>The goal of the article is to operationalize the findings of the philosophical anthropology and ethics proposed by Cardinal Karol Wojtyła and Tadeusz Styczeń, SDS, in a way that enhances the usefulness of their ideas for legal sciences. The ultimate aim of the research is to develop a personalist legal doctrine based on the thought of those renowned Lublin philosophers, making it applicable in contexts related to legislation and legal practice. The article pursues two objectives that get us closer to this general, ultimate aim. The first objective is identification of the personalist meaning of law, while the second is to describe the concept of a legal community based on such an interpretation of law. The objectives are achieved in three steps. The first section of the paper serves as an introduction, situating the approach presented in the article within the framework of natural law theory. The second section is dedicated to the personalist meaning of law, focusing on the central question of how human subjectivity and agency are reflected in legal norms. The third section explores the concept of the legal community that emerges from the personalist understanding of law. The guiding principles of such a community are human dignity and solidarity with every human being.</p> Michał RUPNIEWSKI Copyright (c) 2025 Ethos. Kwartalnik Instytutu Jana Pawła II KUL http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2025-03-29 2025-03-29 38 1(149) 10.12887/38-2025-1-149-14