TY - JOUR N2 - The normative system of Bogusław Wolniewicz (1927–2017) can be subsumed under three categories: (1) pessimism (fatalism, or ‘tychism’ in Wolniewicz’s terms), (2) moral determinism (‘non-meliorism’), (3) conservatism (‘right-hand orientation’). Ad (1) Wolniewicz was pessimistic in two ways: he believed human life to be tragic (fatalism) and was also convinced that most people are guided by bad instincts (dualism). Ad (2) Wolniewicz believed that moral character was biologically determined and immutable. But his strong position on this subject ignores the classical view of Aristotle or the Stoics for whom moral character (or conscience) was acquired by habit and shaped deliberately. Ad (3) I suggest that a good historical example of conservative tendency was Critias of Athens. His famous fragment of the Sisyphus contains the idea of a supremacy of laws over human passions, and reduces religion to a supportive role with respect to ethics and politics. Wolniewicz’s dualism of right-hand and left-hand orientation encourages me to distinguish between a right-wing and a left-wing perception of value. For a leftist, value is intensity of a chosen feature (progressive value), whereas for a rightist, value is an area of freedom between inacceptable extremities (modular value). On these premises I propose a simple model of axiological conflict between left-wing and right-wing citizens. L1 - http://czasopisma.pan.pl/Content/109494/PDF/P.Filoz.%203-18%2026-L.Kowalik%202.pdf L2 - http://czasopisma.pan.pl/Content/109494 PY - 2018 IS - No 3 EP - 433 DO - 10.24425/pfns.2018.125471 KW - Bogusław Wolniewicz KW - normative system KW - metaphysics KW - pessimism KW - moral determinism KW - conservatism KW - religion KW - right-wing KW - left-wing KW - value KW - moral character KW - conscience A1 - Kowalik, Łukasz PB - Komitet Nauk Filozoficznych PAN PB - Wydział Filozofii Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego DA - 2018.12.04 T1 - Pessimism, determinism, conservatism SP - 409 UR - http://czasopisma.pan.pl/dlibra/publication/edition/109494 T2 - Przegląd Filozoficzny. Nowa Seria ER -