From the Editors – The «Priority of Truth» means the «Priority of the Person» (A.M.W.)

The 20th century, marked on the one hand by an appalling contempt for the human being and by numerous testimonies to his greatness on the other, was a time of challenge for philosophy. Yet during that time of trial of humanity, “filled to its upper limit or weakened to its lowest” and vacillating “between heroism and bestiality,” Polish philosophy would stand by man. For centuries oriented towards practical issues rather than purely speculative ones, in the 20th century it produced a pleiad of ethicists who were an important voice in the controversy about man and morality and whose views had weight that was significant to culture. Thanks to the works of Roman Ingarden, Władysław Tatarkiewicz, Tadeusz Czeżowski, Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Maria Ossowska, Henryk Elzenberg, Jacek Woroniecki, Konstanty Michalski, Karol Wojtyła, Tadeusz Ślipko and Józef Tischner Polish humanistic reflection received an ethical foundation which, while methodologically and philosophically varied, was strong in its axiological depth. The philosophical output of Fr. Tadeusz Styczeń (1931−2010), an inherent part of 20th century ethics, occupies a prominent position in this panora− ma of the work of Polish thinkers.

Fr. Tadeusz Styczeń was always proud to point to his intellectual genealogy as that of a student of Karol Wojtyła’s. It was from Wojtyła that he learnt to see a human being as a human person, and to perceive the human as well as transcendent reality through the category of person and his actually existing inner subjectivity, of the irreducible in man. He would acknowledge: “I believe it was Karol Wojtyła who «infected» the Lublin philosophical milieu with his personalism and I believe he continues to perturb it with it in a healthy way.” Precisely the same can be said about Tadeusz Styczeń’s ethics: due to its inherent personalism it does not cease to be both inspiring and perturbing. However, the «content» of personalism is by no means determined by finding the key to ethics in an insight into the dignity of the human person. Needless to say, the insight in question was already familiar to Socrates and to Sophocles’s Antigone, and it is generally acknowledged by Christianity as well as by secular humanism. Thus Fr. Tadeusz Styczeń became a participant in the modern− day controversy about personalism. While exploring what is due to a human person from another, he would point that the key to this issue is the person’s capacity to know the truth about himself as person. The thesis that freedom consists in self−determination of the human subject in truth results in questioning the conceptions in which the human person is approached as creating the truth about himself, either individually or collectively, and ultimately leads to their rejection. Styczeń was aware that personalist ethics may become absolutist as well as relativist. Moreover, he did not consider the emergence of these two options in anthropology and ethics or their clash in the field of Christian moral theology as a merely theoretical problem, since theoretical conceptions, much as they are interesting in themsleves, bear practical significance. Thus Father Styczeń’s philosophy of the human person as witness and depositary to truth would frequently be considered as perturbing.

His view that the greatness of a human being lies in the acceptance of the duty to affirm truth for the sake of truth only also sheds light on the relation between philosophy and life. It would certainly be a truism to say that all the problems considered by ethics are practical issues of life. It is popular knowledge that moral problems spring from the question: How should one live? Moreover, Father Styczeń’s frame of ethics as the theory of the normative power of truth demonstrates that the humanity of man lies precisely in his power of theoretical investigation, in his pursuit of truth and in its recognition. Styczeń observes that truth lies at the root of the human person, and at this point he would probably add that the righteous one lives by truth. Indeed, a closer inspection of the human being as capable of recognizing truth and simultaneously of binding him− self with it in a free act enables one to see the inherent junction between the theoretical reason and the practical one, between philosophy and life, between logos and ethos.

For the sake of the integrity and rectitude of its discourse, the ethical reflection which originates from the concern about the human in man and about the growth of the humanity of the person, enabling him to match the truth about himself, must necessarily turn to metaethical problems. Thus, it must see a connection between ethics and metaphysics, as well as the possibility – or even a necessity – of the encounter between ethics and Revelation. Tadeusz Styczeń’s ethical works, written in the space of fifty years, demonstrate an impressive effort to engage in a critical exchange with modernity. The author of the essay Freedom in Truth would paraphrase Simone Weil’s well known phrase about justice, saying that truth is “a fugitive from the camp of the victors,” yet in his writings one will not find even the slightest trace of diversion from the pursuit to know truth, to say it aloud and defend it.

He cherished genuine admiration for the witnesses of truth, persons considered as introducing discomfort, whether among a majority, as Socrates did in Athens, or among oppressors, as it was the case with the proverbial Kowalski in the totalitarian regime in Poland under communism. Father Styczeń would not hesitate to speak himself as a witness. It was precisely in this sense that he conceived of «academia,» which was the love of his life. Always concerned about its independence, he by no means considered it a place for the fugitives from the «polis»; on the contrary, he considered it a realm where great service is being done to the community, both national and international, and as such transgressing the political borders. This service is accomplished, according to Styczeń, by means of philosophical reflection on the moral foundation of the reborn Poland and of the unifying Europe. The ethics of Tadeusz Styczeń is a political ethics in the noblest sense of this term, as it argues for the primacy of conscience in politics and for the primacy of truth over power.

Soon after martial law was declared in Poland in 1981, Father Styczeń wrote a letter to General Wojciech Jaruzelski, protesting against acts of the breaking of consciences due to the coercion and the pressure exerted on particular individuals to sign false declarations of loyalty to the regime, in which those bound by them apparently promised to abandon their efforts to undermine the communist system. As an ethicist Styczeń could not remain indifferent to the question of the political order, as well as to the hope to transform it which originated together with the Solidarity movement, uniting millions of Poles in years 1980−1981. In December 1981 the Solidarity was brutally supressed by the declaration of martial law all over the country, but in his letter to General Jaruzelski Father Styczeń would not discuss questions of the political order, but he wrote about human persons being greatly harmed. The measure of justice in a state, indeed the measure of the goodness of its political order, is respect for the human person as a being who is free in truth. The test case for state injustice is a situation of attack by the state on the person’s dignity, when truth becomes an object of manipulation on the part of the state and is “politically distributed,” according to decision of its representatives.

When, after year 1989, a controversy about democracy emerged in Poland, Father Styczeń considered it a continuation of the controversy about man. If the state is to be truly righteous and in this sense democratic (according to the common view after the tragic consequences of the totalitarian tyranny), it must be simultaneously jurisprudent and as such respect the personal dignity of each and every one of its citizens. A democratically imposed limitation of the inherent rights of any social group, or even an attempt to question them, sabotages democracy from within. Fr. Tadeusz Styczeń is also known to have formulated the compact rule for a righteous state, “the unborn is the measure of democracy,” which grants him a prominent place in the history of European humanism. Needless to say, this formulation was deeply perturbing. Yet when he was engaged in a controversy as an ethicist, the reason was by no means making a sensation. Neither did he refer to his religious views, while they might have had their gravity, but in keeping faithfully with the insight into the truth about the human being and about the relation of the state to this truth, he would conclude by saying that the state will not save itself as the community of all its citizens unless it saves each and every one of them, in particular those who are the weakest among them. A just and righteous state must not use the majesty of law in order to distribute human life.

In 1991, Father Styczeń, who was then the Director of the John Paul II Institute at the Catholic University of Lublin, invited the senators of the Republic of Poland to a debate on the axiological foundations of human life protection by state law. He connected being an ethicist to initiating public discourse, because – as he used to say – the truth is one, and cannot be divided into «academic» and «parliamentary». Consequently, he believed, unless democracy is considered a political order based on cognitive relativism, it demands an honest reflection, engaging various milieus. Father Styczeń was deeply convinced that democracy can derive its power from the culture of reflection. He did not want to con− vert anybody to “his truth,” but he was concerned about creating the conditions in which each person – by way of pursuit accomplished in solidarity with others – will be able to find common values with them. Thus he was happy when one of the senators, without having changed his own views, which were dramatically different from those cherished by Faher Styczeń, declared that the debate he had initiated was most needed, since it concerned issues which a human person, a rational being, is not allowed to abandon.

Yet to Father Styczeń ethics did not exhaust itself in initiating debates, and not infrequentley would he speak out publicly as a witness, as well as an accuser. He paid his deep respect to King Baudouin of Belgium for his «royal no» to the new law reducing the protection of human life in his country. The ethicist from Lublin worked on developing his ideas, he published books and articles, organized symposia and presented lectures – in all of it he was serving the purpose to develop the «culture of life.» In year 2000, he refused to accept a high decoration he was awarded by the President of the Republic of Poland, who by his decisions made a step backwards from the law on the legal protection of human life, which had been passed by Polish Parliament. This refusal was Father Styczeń’s own «royal no,» expressing the sovereignty of his conscience.

The current volume of Ethos was born from gratitude we feel towards our Professor and Master, who was Head of the Department of Ethics, Founder and long−standing Director of the John Paul II Institute at the Catholic University of Lublin, as well as long−term Editor−in−Chief of our quarterly. During the years of our cooperation with Father Professor Tadeusz Styczeń we continually learnt from him that to live means to thank.

Gratitude towards a thinker is best expressed in various forms of contact with his thought. Thus in the current volume we present selected articles by Father Styczeń, motivated by the conviction, which he cherished so deeply, that «the whole can be seen in the fragment.»

A proven and fruitful form of contact with philosophical reflection is its critical exploration and interpretation. Thus some of the articles included in the current volume offer studies of various aspects of the philosophy of Tadeusz Styczeń. It is the first so wide−ranging monograph of the ethical output of the personalist from Lublin. While it by no means exhausts the richness and depth of his original philosophical insights, developed by him throughout his active years, it in a way orders the thematic fields he explored in his works, and presents his most important ideas. Moreover, some authors continue a debate with the views of their Master and Friend, which evidences their truly philosophical passion of the pursuit of truth, for the sake of truth only. Faithfulness to the Master demands reiterating his insights and controlling their results, and this intellectual attitude protects the philosophical school, a milieu of a living thought in pursuit of truth, against sinking into scholastics. Father Styczeń would repeatedly say, after Plato, that one should love every truth, and in everyone, and he would paraphrase Aristotle saying that one should love truth more than one loves one’s friends.

The depth of his bonds with others – developed in the encounter of those concerned about truth – is shown in the testimonies of his friends, disciples and collaborators.

Translated by Dorota Chabrajska