For a long time, the dominant standard of political thinking and its practical implantation was the ideology of Machiavelli within the framework of which politics and morality were viewed as incompatible things. However, in the 20th century, especially in its second half, this ideology largely exhausted its potential and moral “justification”. After the policy became public, the people gradually realized their right and duty to directly participate in it, and the policy gradually returned to its original essence – in its Aristotle understanding.
Aristotle "saw in politics the continuation of ethics, a kind of developed ethics, ethics “in concreto”, and at the same time considered ethics itself as the highest political science." Even Socrates as a character of the Plato’s “Republic” said that a very important part of a personality is his spiritual principle – “thymos”. It is this that motivates a person to perform actions that are not satisfactorily explained within the framework of materialistic, including economical, ideas, and in extreme cases, to sacrifice life for the sake of not material values.
In essence, the same idea found this or that refraction in the philosophical systems of Hobbes, Kant, Hegel, Locke, Spinoza and many other great philosophers. Since the 15th century, from the beginning of the humanism era, “moral philosophy” has become not only a factor of social reflection, but also an element of the education system within the framework of the so-called human sciences (studia humanitatis).
One of the axioms of democracies says that in democratic societies more depends on the civil and moral qualities of people than on rulers and political institutions. For example, Americans, from whom democracy really needs to be learned, see “the four pillars of pluralism”: “Freedom of speech, virtue, capitalism, and limited rule (which implies limited authority). Americans do not like excessive concentration of power. However, the last thought also has European roots. Already at the beginning of the 19th century, Wilhelm von Humboldt wrote that limiting the scope of state activity is a necessary condition for maintaining a healthy morale in it, but too lengthy state care for citizens causes great harm to “the energy of activity and the moral character of people.” It seems that for Ukrainians the moral revival of society after the most serious long-term moral deformations is not only necessary, but maybe even crucial factor. This process does not promise to be easy and fast.
In the United States, the first Code of Ethics of the Government Service appeared in 1958, although, initially, in the form of a Congress resolution; and since the late 1970s. The ethical beginnings of state life become the object of quite strict social control and regulation, including at the legislative level. It was recognized that the viability and legitimacy of the country's political system largely depend on how state institutions and senior officials respond to the values and ideals dominating society, and their behavior is consistent with the norms of public morality.
1. Hence the attention to ethical codes (these sets of norms, defining standards of behavior, may have different names) in all branches of power in Western countries. People, as you know, largely live in the world of their subjective ideas about life, including power, which in a democratic society is obliged to strive to improve these ideas, in any case, so that there are real reasons. Therefore, the moral aspect of the behavior of public servants is very important from the point of view of public policy.
Back in 1923, P.I. Novgorodtsev foresaw the gigantic complexity of the task of the moral revival of the nation after the collapse of the Bolshevik regime: “In the coming years the Russian person will need heroic ascetic efforts to live and act in a country that has been destroyed and thrown back several centuries ago. He will have to live not only among the greatest moral devastation of his homeland, but also among the terrible collapse of all its cultural, social and everyday foundations ... Among this total destruction, the shoots of a new life will be made only with great difficulty. How many new dark feelings of a stupid element will appear again! How many new misfortunes will bring the harsh passion of order and peace! How many difficult stages will pass and the powerful need for economic recovery with its indomitable instincts of acquisition and accumulation”.
2. For more than 80 years that have passed since these lines were written, the situation has only worsened. Although now many processes have accelerated so much that centuries have shrunk to decades.
Franklin Roosevelt once said: "One generation has been given a lot, the other will be asked a lot, and some generations are meeting with the future." We met with our future and, unlike those who were before us, held and still, albeit to a lesser extent, hold it in our own hands.
Resourses:
1. Obolonsky A.V. Bureaucracy for the twentieth! Ages? M., 2002 pp. 120-124
2. Novgorodtsev P.I. On the social ideal. M., 1991. Article 577
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