Joanna Gornicka

We used to consider ethics as a set of universal principles valid in every situation. It would be interesting however to ask if our activity in public or strictly political areas is to be submitted to the same criteria of moral evaluations as individual actions? What does just war mean? How far are we inclined to justify some moral aspects of war? What is the difference between the evil caused by acts of terrorism and the violence due to open military actions? Those are the questions the Author of this paper tries to answer in front of intensifying acts of ruthless political terror.

To evaluate non-acting involves more theoretical problems than to estimate actions. There is a full range of possible solutions of this question. The extreme ones are presented, on the one hand, by consequentialism that denies the difference between action and non-acting if their results are the same; and, on the other, by negative utilitarianism, that is based on the literal interpretation of the rule “Do not do the evil” that says nothing about non-acting. There is, of course, intermediary proposition held by moderated versions of absolutistic ethics and utilitarianism which, both, assert the responsibility for non-acting but differentiate it from the responsibility for actions.