General lines of research: Ethics and metaethics: objective nature of ethical cognition based on analysis of the structure of the act (judgment) of conscience; ethics and philosophical and theological anthroplogy (the truth of moral judgment, and experience and Revelation); ethics and politics (a person in the community of persons: the basic "goods for the person" considered as the person's rights (the "human rights"), and the foundations of a law-abiding state; the principle of majority rule, and the principle of respect for the human rights, especially in the context of the right to freedom and the right of the unborn to live; the thought of Karol Wojtyła - John Paul II.
The foundations of the research project in the above field have been presented synthetically by the editorials to particular monographically treated volumes of "Ethos", the quarterly of John Paul II Institute, published since 1988.
Detailed explanation of present research lines and programmes being carried out:
The problem which has attracted my attention since I started to be intersted in ethics is the challenge expressed in Hume's thesis that any attempt to infer the theses of ethics as normative theorems (as statements of theorematic character) from affirmative theses of the philosophy of man or from the philosophy of being (metaphysics), which in their nature express non-normative states of affairs, involves a formal logical fallacy of the transition from an "is" to an "ought" (cf. the article Spór o naukowość etyki - The Controversy About the Scientific Character of Ethics 1966). This is the fallacy which since the times of G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica, 1903) has been called "naturalistic illusion". I have devoted two monographies to this problem: Problem możliwości etyki jako empirycznie uprawomocnionej i ogólnie ważnej teorii moralności. Studium metaetyczne (The Problem of Ethics as an Empirically Justified and Universally Valid Theory of Morality. A Metaethical Study), Lublin 1972, as well as the book Etyka niezależna? (Independent Ethics?), Lublin 1980, an also a number of articles written before 1980. A selection of them was published in the books W drodze do etyki (On the Way to Ethics), Lublin 1984 and Wprowadzenie do etyki (Introduction to Ethics), Lublin 1993.
The core of my ethical and metaethical interests is still a problem which in my opinion is crucial for methodological justification of ethics as genuine knowledge and for showing its fundamental link with anthroplogy. I have posed this problem already in the book Etyka niezależna? (Independent Ethics?). It can be summarized briefly by the following two questions:
1) How to understand the moral obligation which ethics is a theory of ? - and:
2) Is ethics, as the theory of moral obligation understood in the above way (which I believe to be the only adequate one), epistemologically and also methodologically independent of other theories, (as T. Kotarbiński and T. Czeżowski, among others, believed treating the above interpretation of its methodological character as the only formulation free from Hume's and Moore's objection, as the only formulation which makes it possible to assert the cognitive value of ethical propositions against acognitivism dominating in contemporary metaethics)? Or: may ethics, and even does it have to, enter some necessary methodological relations with other theories, especially with a philosophical theory of man, and further on with a general theory of being - metaphysics (due to the nature of the questions which the moralist is provoked to ask because of the data inherent in a direct cognitive act, that is in sui generis experience)?
My interests are reflected in the works where I have been trying to demonstrate that each piece of auto-information (any judgment on anything) is simultaneously an auto-imperative. It is an act by which the cognizing subject binds himself by the power of the (f)act of the truth which he has cognized. He binds himself to recognize it as truth, that is he orders himself to respect it - also by the acts of of his own free choice of this truth (by testifying to it with his acts of freedom) on pain of destruction of the identity of his self, that is on pain of breaking up his internal unity with acts of self-deception and self-constraint.
This outcome reveals a fundamental identity of the starting point of anthropology and of ethics: primum anthropologicum et primum ethicum convertuntur. It also shows a radically experiential nature of ethics, and by that it helps to reveal total unfoundedness of the so called Hume's guillotine, that is of the objection to ethics on the grounds of its relation to anthropology and mataphysics, as it was raised by D. Hume.
This outcome also confirms and helps to reinterpret St. Thomas's of Aquinas thesis about the close link between the "practical reason" and the "theoretical reason" which nevertheless remain two separate faculties. At the saame time this vision of ethics demonstrates that I. Kant's conviction of the necessity of treating the two faculties of reason as opposing each other is totally groundless. Once the subject has stated the ("theoretical") truth, he remains a witness obliged to absolute respect for it, which is to be shown by the acts of his free choice. He is thus confronted with a "practical necessity" to testify to the truth by the acts of freedom. As the witness he is obliged to do it also in the name of his duty to respect (the truth about the identity of) the particular subject cognizing the truth, that is in the name of his duty to respect himself.
This discovery helps to uncover the obligation to respect every other being endowed with an internal structure identical with the one presented above, and to see this being through the truth which reveals and demonstrates his personal mode of existence. So, this respect becomes a necessary condition of self affirmation, despite the fact that the regard for the actual affirmation of oneself turns out only secondary in relation to the obligation which stands above it, namely in relation to the duty to affirm truth as truth, to affirm truth for its own sake, to affirm truth which constitutes the axiological primum for the cognizing subject, which is given to him directly in the act of his own cognition. This experience is simultaneously his act of entering direct relation with the truth of the object which is transcendent both to his act and to himself. The communional dimension of moral self-cognition is revealed here.
The research results sketched above were first presented in the paper: C'e notizia senza esperienza? in: Il Libro del Meeting `86, Rimini 1986, pp.175-183, and then in the little book: Wolność w prawdzie (Freedom in Truth), Rome 1987, Rome 1988, and in still a little different shape in the papers: Moralność - wyróżnik człowieka (Morality - The Distinguishing Mark of Man), in: "Żeby nie ustała wiara" ("So That the Faith Did Not Stop", Lublin 1989, pp. 409-427, and Dobro moralne a światopogląd (Moral Good and the Outlook upon the World), in: M. Rusecki (ed): Z zagadnień światopoglądu chrześcijańskiego (Some Issues Concerning the Christian Outlook Upon the World), Lublin 1989, pp. 63-78, finally, in a more general context in the study: Problem człowieka problemem miłości (The Problem of Man as the Problem of Love), in: Tadeusz Styczeń (ed), "Człowiek w poszukiwaniu zagubionej tożsamości. Gdzie jesteś Adamie?" ("Man in the Search for His Lost Identity. Where Are You, Adam?") Lublin 1987, pp. 4-84.
The attempt to characterize the human person as "the subject who constitutes himself by his self-dependence, who in the act of his own cognition, freely makes himself dependent on the truth which does not depend on him" makes it possible to show further on that the self dependence which is a characteristic feature of the human person is given to him together with his contingent existence. This is why this self dependence must be considered a gift. It also follows that in the dimension of the reality which we experience, this existence is necessarily a corporal one (viventibus vivere est esse). So, there appears a possibility of an effective discussion with the followers of the thesis, widely spread among moral theologians in the West, which claims that no general norms of moral conduct determined in their content or absolutely binding can be formultaed. The above standpoint makes it not difficult to prove that the necessary condition of respecting every other human person for himself, because of the dignity belonging to him (due to his ability to bind himself with the cognized truth) is above all the respect for his life which is "good for the person", inseparably tied up with the good (value) of the very human person as person.
The conclusions reached above may, as I believe, be used successfully in the discussion with those contemporary moral theologians who on one hand declare personalism in ethics (by recognizing the absolute character of the principle: Persona est affirmanda propter se ipsam), while on the other one question the very possibility of any universally valid moral norms determined in their content. Their standpoint opens the way for ethical relativism and subjectivism, and thus makes the conscience the only and ultimate truth and norm creative instance as far as determining the contents of morally right conduct is concerned. (Cf. point 3 of the so called Kölner Erklärung). The international symposium "Human Person - Freedom - Conscience - Nature" organized by the International Academy of Philosophy from Liechtenstein together with the Institute of John Paul II in Lublin between the 9th-11th August, 1991 was devoted to that problem. The conclusions which the symposium helped to reach were subsequently presented to the participants of the Theological Congress of Middle and Eastern Europe: "The Testimony of the Catholic Church in the Totalitarian System of Middle-Eastern Europe" which followed it (11th - 15th August 1991). (The materials were published in "Ethos" 4(1991), vol. 15/16 and in the German edition "Ethos" 1993, Sonderausgabe Nr. 1.).
The above conclusions make it also possible to show objectively the impassable axiological borders of forming a democratic law-abiding state, unless the state decides to reject arbitrarily (on the grounds of formally treated principle of majority rule) the principle of equality of all in front of the law, that is the principle of justice (suum cuique), and finally, unless it decides to question the basic conviction about the equality of all people and to stop considering this conviction the fundamental requirement of establishing any political order.
In this context, as an expert of the Constitutional Committee of the Senate of the Republic of Poland, I have posed the problem of the axiological foundations of the political system in the Republic of Poland (cf. Works of the Constitutional Committee of the Senate, Vol.3,5), and specifically the problem of the legal protection of the unborn (treated as a particular minority in a law-abiding state). The Institute of John Paul II brought the latter problem up for discussion with the representatives of the Senate of the Republic of Poland. The discussion, which was held in the Rector`s Suite at the Catholic University of Lublin on Feb. 2nd, 1991, was published in: Tadeusz Styczeń (ed): Nienarodzony miarą demokracji (The Unborn Is the Measure of Democracy), Lublin 1991, "Biblioteka Ethosu" ("Ethos Library"), the Institute of John Paul II, the Catholic University of Lublin.
To sum up: both the research work of the Ethics Department (in particular, the Ph.D. seminar) and the projects carried out by the Institute of John Paul II in its research and didactic activity (the seminar in the thought of John Paul II, the yearly symposia), as well as in its editorial programme (collective works devoted to the comments on the main documents of John Paul II's pontificate, and the monographically designed volumes of the quarterly "Ethos") are meant to deepen and popularize the vision of the human person which has been sketched above, and which, as I believe, possesses a profound theoretical grounding, and by that constitutes the basis for such a creation of interpersonal communities of marriage, family and state which would be commensurable to the human dignity. This vision, as I believe, converges with the vision of the human person which was expressely presented in Cardinal Karol Wojtyła`s work The Acting Person, and which has its theological grounding in the documents of the 2nd Vatican Council, and getting still deeper, in the Good News itself. This is the vision of the human person as the being which finds and confirms himself in the communion with others. The essence of this communion is individual and joint creation of such conditions for every other human person, and for the the community in general, which would make it possible for anyone to find and choose the truth about man, and also, and above all, about himself, which has been cognized and checked in the dialogue with others.