Ontological Horizons of Ethical or How Deep is the Crisis of Contemporary Ethics

Abstract

The article analyzes the anomalies observed in various spheres of modern culture, which are interpreted as “ethical failures” and the rejection of the fundamental principles of Western ethics: the principle of justice, fidelity to a given word, stri­ving for the common good, etc. Taking into account the totality of these failures in the sense of “horizontal” and “vertical” prevalence, it is suggested that there are deep ontological changes that entail transformations in the field of ethics. This the­sis is substantiated by an analysis of the structure of an ethical act, which allows us to single out levels of “public” and “ontological” expertise in it, and to see in the ethical act itself a way of establishing “transcendent” (unobservable, absent in the empirical dimension) objects and layers of social reality. Ethics in this case is (by itself) a sphere of ontological creation, a way of establishing legitimate con­figurations, boundaries and goals of social action, including the social identity and subjectivity of individuals. The need to preserve one’s own self and the ability to act meaningfully is considered in the article as the ultimate basis of human social activity and a source of “ethical energy”, which, without external coercion, deter­mines a person to ethical action. Existential involvement in ontological and ethical action determines a close connection between ethics and metaphysics, which is traced in the article on the basis of the most important philosophical concepts and ethnographic material. It is concluded that the cultural transformations analyzed in the article are associated with the use of constructivist impact on the ontological intuitions of Western culture, which, however, do not affect its metaphysical core, and thus only threaten the peripheral layers of Western ontology.