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http://jcs.sagepub.com/content/6/3/311The online version of this article can be found at:
DOI: 10.1177/1468795X06069681
2006 6: 311Journal of Classical SociologyMarcin T. Zdrenka
Maria Ossowska : Moral Philosopher or Sociologist of Morals?
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http://www.sagepublications.com
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Maria OssowskaMoral Philosopher or Sociologist of Morals?
MARCIN T. ZDRENKA Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland
ABSTRACT Maria Ossowska (1896–1974) was focused on the problem of asociology of morality. At the time she was writing, a sociology of morals was notgenerally considered proper subject matter for moral philosophers. Yet ethics wasalready showing its weakness and calling out for a new reformulation. MariaOssowska formulated a new project for moral philosophy involving a sociologicalperspective which not only understood ‘morality’ as a social phenomenon whichcould be researched with sociological methods, but which also understood itself asremaining inextricably related to philosophical reflection. She divided her new‘moral science’ into three parts: (1) an analysis of moral evaluations and norms;(2) a psychology of morality; and (3) a sociology of morality. In developing thisprogram, Ossowska worked upon various themes or areas, including the moralthought of the British Enlightenment, the chivalrous ethos and bourgeoismorality. She introduced and newly reformulated the term ‘ethos’, intending itboth as a term of sociology and as related to normative ethics, which is part ofmoral philosophy. Ossowska’s most general achievement was to widen aware-ness in both philosophy and sociology of a new necessary complexity and depthto any moral studies.
KEYWORDS bourgeois morality, chivalrous ethos, ethics, ethos, history of moral-ity, moral science, morality, norms, Ossowska, psychology of morality, sociologyof morality, values
Maria Ossowska’s Scholarly InterestsMaria Ossowska was born on January 26, 1896 in Warsaw. Her philosophicalinterests arose quite early when in high school she read in Polish An Outline of aMonistic Philosophy by a today rather forgotten philosopher, Ernst Haeckel
(1905). This early experience, she would later claim, had a great impact upon herdecision to study philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy of Warsaw University,newly reopened in 1915 (see Kicinski, 1983: 561).
Philosophy at Warsaw University at this time has been characterized byhistorians of the discipline as involving a wide, but specific stream of ideas whichis referred to as the ‘Lvov–Warsaw School’. The school was founded by KazimierzTwardowski and was further developed by many scholars, including KazimierzAjdukiewicz, Alfred Tarski, Jan Łukasiewicz and Tadeusz Czezowski. Its generalprogram was based upon a philosophical rationalism, along with a so-called‘minimalism’, understood as a critique of metaphysical speculation, and, inpossessing a high regard for formal logic and mathematics, it was focused uponcarrying out various semantical analyses (Jadacki, 2003; Wolenski, 1989). JanŁukasiewicz, a philosopher, but primarily a logician, became one of Ossowska’sfirst influential teachers, and with his help she started out upon studies insemiotics, ontology and the theory of meaning.
There exists a certain similarity between the Lvov–Warsaw School and theVienna Circle with its neopositivism. In both schools, moral philosophy was nottreated as part of the main stream of research. However, general Polish philoso-phy of this period, and thus even the Lvov–Warsaw School, never completelyunderestimated ethics. In this regard, Władysław Tatarkiewicz, and later TadeuszKotarbinski, became Ossowska’s most important teachers, forming a backgroundin moral studies which consisted of an interest in the ‘good’, a concern with theproblem of rendering moral language more precise, and investigations into therelationship between norms and values. It is important to point out that Ossow-ska’s first publication, even before receiving her doctorate, was a review ofTatarkiewicz’s O bezwzglednosci dobra (On the Absoluteness of Good; Ossowska,1919; Tatarkiewicz, 1919), in which she argued for a more precise differentiationbetween, on the one hand, absolutism and relativism and, on the other, objectiv-ism and subjectivism in ethics.
In 1921, under the supervision of Jan Łukasiewicz, Ossowska received herdoctorate degree on the basis of a dissertation on stoic axiology. She then traveledto the Sorbonne in France to continue her work on semantics for three years. Atthis stage she was still an analytical philosopher. Her new deeper interest in moralphilosophy would only come later when she read Eugene Dupreel’s book Traitede morale. Deuxieme et troisieme partie and began a long-term cooperation withthe author. (After Dupreel’s death in 1967, she would even translate and publisha Polish edition of a part of his book, Traktat o moralnosci (Dupreel, 1969[1903].)) Although Ossowska stayed in France for this substantial period, sheherself claimed she was never really keen on French philosophy. Krzysztof Kicinski(1983: 563) states that she used this time to study English-language philosophy.It could be said that her heart was now beating both for Britain and for StanisławOssowski,whom she married in 1924. The two scholars worked closely togetherfor some time and even published a coauthored article on scientific methodology
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(Ossowski and Ossowska, 1935). However, their interests and work would latergrow apart. The long and complicated history of their intellectual cooperationand marriage has been at least partially captured in the recent publication of apersonal correspondence between them (see Ossowska and Ossowski, 2002). Inany case, with the outbreak of the Second World War, and all the resulting crueltyand destruction, Ossowska did not halt her intellectual work for even a momentand further organized secret lectures and seminars during the German occupation(Kicinski, 1983: 563). Although she lost most of the materials for her importantwork Podstawy nauki o moralnosci in a tragic fire which destroyed her apartmentin Warsaw, she then spent about four years after the war reconstructing all her lostnotes. However, none of these experiences or those concerning her later life inPoland ruled by the communists were ever explicitly taken up in her work, which,although very common for many thinkers of that time, is still difficult tounderstand for sociologists. Ossowska remained generally focused on theoreticaland historical issues, and in regard to this lack of interest in concrete contempo-rary problems, it can perhaps be said that she never stopped being a philosopher,although the subjects of her analysis were primarily sociological. She died in 1974at the age of 78.
From Ethics to Moral ScienceThe influence of Jan Łukasiewicz and her previous work on the philosophicalanalysis of language were fundamental for Ossowska’s habilitation thesis, whichonce more concerned semantic issues. However, starting from then on, around1932, she completely turned to ethics. Yet this was not merely a turn back to themoral philosophy she had studied in Tatarkiewicz or Kotarbinski’s seminars, nordid it merely advance the methodological research in which she had been involvedwith her husband. It would take on a new independent direction.
In 1933, the young Ossowski couple traveled to England on a two-yearscholarship. Maria Ossowska, among other things, attended both BronisławMalinowski and G.E. Moore’s seminars (Kicinski, 1983: 563; Ossowska, 1983e[1967]: 539). Her contact here with the sociological tradition, and othercontemporary social and anthropological theories, along with the strong influenceof Dupreel’s book previously mentioned, provided her with new perspectives onmoral issues (Ossowska, 1983a [1933]). At the same time, it became clear to herthat G.E. Moore’s intuitionistic ethics did not and, moreover, could not haveanything in common with sociological or anthropological analyses due to a stronganti-naturalism most evident in Moore’s exposition of the ‘naturalistic fallacy’.
This opposition between a strong anti-naturalism in philosophy andgrowing achievements in sociology appeared to Ossowska to call out for a newsynthesis. In this regard, Ossowska developed her own new program, which shewould henceforth call ‘the moral science’. As she herself points out, her attempts toestablish and develop this program of a new moral science rooted in a sociology of
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morality were not accepted, particularly in the English-speaking academic world.As late as 1966, she still spoke about the ‘distrustfulness’ with which she was metas a sociologist of morality, a reaction she deemed more adequate for ‘anillegitimate aspiring of a member of the Salvation Army to be a scientist’(Ossowska, 1966: 19). She further spoke of the different situation she met inFrance, where the tradition of the Durkheimian school was much stronger, andeven in her native Poland.
Ossowska’s new project was aimed at redefining the status of ethicsunderstood as ‘moral philosophy’. Disappointed with theoretical philosophy as atool for describing all the intricate complexity of morality, she no longer wantedto be merely a ‘philosopher’, at least in the strict sense. She claimed that classicalethics demonstrated its own weakness. First, classical ethics is not yet ‘moralscience’, because philosophers very often overlooked the differences between thenormative and descriptive aspects of their own moral theories. In such a situation,she claimed the best way to penetrate into and to research human relationstowards good and evil is by using the term ‘morality’ rather than ‘ethics’, so as tobe freed from any normative philosophical, theological or similar abstract pre-suppositions. In fact, the history of ethics shows that the term ‘moral’ itself hadbeen understood in two ways. First, as a context for only human acts ormotivations, and, second, as a description of the value of things, that is, what isvaluable per se. Philosophers often further overlooked this specific descriptivedifference concerning what is a human duty, good or norm, and what is anindependent value. Finally, ethics, unlike botany, which is a purely descriptivescience, never merely describes morality, but creates rather than discovers, con-structs rather than explains (Ossowska, 1983a [1934]: 254).
At this point, Ossowska draws out a new more general problem. Ethicaltheories also fundamentally involve speculative generalizations about judgments,systems of norms and values without any detailed background research at thesociological or anthropological level. Indeed, it was the positivistic sociologists,for example Emile Durkheim, with their ‘positive’ sociological methodology, whocame closest to uncovering the scandalous disguise and incompetence of thatnoble old lady, moral philosophy. Likewise today, we may find thinkers who havemore generally ‘discovered’ that philosophy is based upon a dream of ‘universal-ization’ and who suggest much better and safer terms, for example ‘globalization’(Bauman, 1999: 59).
However, for Ossowska, the positivists, rather than solving it, only fur-ther revealed the complexity of the problem upon which she was working.Positivistic methodology, although very promising at the level of a quantitativedescription of such social phenomena as morality and although in this sensefree as the positivist believed from prejudices and speculative conclusions whichare so characteristic of hot-headed moralists, does not itself solve any ethicalproblems as such. The description of what a group of people calls ‘moral’,
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‘good’ or ‘valuable’ is not enough to discover what really ought to be done orwhat is really worthy of pursuit.
In being very much aware of these problems, Ossowska, who, as has beensaid, no longer wanted to become a philosopher in the strict sense, can also nowbe said to have never really wanted to become a sociologist in the narrow,positivistic sense. She did not accept Auguste Comte’s faith in a completereduction of ethics, metaphysics and other parts of philosophy to the new-bornchild, sociology. Ossowska was much more prudent. She neither wanted aspeculative ethics alienated from sociology nor an ethics reduced to a sociology ofmorality. At the most general level, Ossowska would rather use sociologicalmethodology whenever and wherever it could help to enlighten and solve ethicalphilosophical problems.
However, in claiming that for research purposes, instead of ethics, the term‘morality’ should be used, and yet not wanting to reduce ethics to a sociology ofmorality, the very term ‘ethics’ becomes a problem. The question arises whetheranother general concept which is more precise and free from the danger of pastusages can be found. Ossowska comes to the following conclusion:
We will not try to find any new, better replacement for this criticized term.. . . But this is not dangerous resignation. Researchers in many disciplinesof science are developing their studies without any good answer to thequestion what is the name of your work.
(1983b [1934]: 254)
In a much later text in regard to a debate on the role of a philosophy of values, shefurther claims:
. . . the problem lies not in neglecting a philosophy of values. Logicalanalysis in its function of evaluation is the work of philosophers andlogicians. A psychology of values is carried out by social psychologists andphilosophers. A sociology of values is carried out most of all by anthro-pologists. The point is that all the work in these various directions must becoordinated.
And a little later she adds:
. . . but I prefer to use the term ‘theory’ of values, rather than ‘philosophy’of values. I reserve the latter word for great thinkers who knew which wayof life is worth choosing and which should be rejected. (1983d [1962]:491–2)
From these last few quotations, the following conclusions may bedrawn. On the one hand, Ossowska never betrayed ethics as a part of the
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philosophical tradition; never forgot about the role of logical analysis; and neverreduced moral philosophy to anthropology or sociology (like the positivistsdid). However, on the other hand, when she says that she reserves the word‘philosophy’ for great thinkers, one may sense a bit of irony addressed to allthose ‘great’ ones, for example philosophers who claim, as Hegel essentiallydid, ‘Reality does not fit to my theory? What a pity for reality!’, and who in theglory of their own greatness forget about basic research on the sociological,anthropological and historical levels.
Let us now summarize the general direction of Ossowska’s overall pro-gram. Ossowska starts from a reevaluation of the term ‘morality’. At first, a closerlook at the term ‘morality’, rather than ‘ethics’, is needed. This is in answer tophilosophers’ speculative ‘jump’ from the description of a local set of values,which often happens to be their own, to ethics as such intended as universal, thatis, common for all people and all times. When the term ‘morality’ is used to guideresearch and not simply used as ‘moralists’ use it (in the sense of ‘moralizers’ and‘preachers’), one is essentially in the position of an ornithologist who studiesbirds, but cannot fly. The ‘only’ price for this comfort is that one cannot possessambitions to formulate a final set of norms and values, but only to describe anexisting social phenomenon. This ‘empirical minimalistic postulate’ reflects theobvious influence of sociology upon Ossowska’s work, but, as has been men-tioned above, sociological methodology itself also would be prudently used tohelp to solve philosophical problems and always with an awareness of the complex-ity and role of the ethical tradition. The point being made here by Ossowskaappears to involve a general call for a restraining of all speculative ambitions at leastuntil a reliable basis is prepared for a new type of ethical studies.
Ossowska’s following new program, which was perhaps weak in goals butstrong in methodology, was clearly in opposition to ethics understood as moralphilosophy. When contemporary scholars divide the latter into three main parts –(a) normative ethics, (b) descriptive ethics and (c) theoretical ethics (also oftencalled ‘meta-ethics’) – it is easy to subsume Ossowska’s new approach underdescriptive ethics. However, this would be an unjust simplification. It is morecorrect to say that she would rather reconstruct the whole triangular structure.
Ossowska fully presented her new idea of a moral science in Podstawynauki o moralnosci (Foundation of Moral Science; Ossowska, 1947). Here she putsforth a panoramic view of her new way of organizing research on morality,articulating it according to three interconnected aspects: (1) an analysis of moralevaluations and norms; (2) a psychology of morality, which is often forgottenabout both by sociologists and by moral philosophers; and (3) a sociology ofmorality, which is based on sociology, anthropology, history and other socialsciences.
From the background of this general framework, Ossowska goes on insome detail to speak about the fundamental importance of the first aspect, ‘aphilosophical analysis of moral evaluations and norms’. We may understand this
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aspect in two senses: narrow and broad. In the narrow sense, the analysis of moralevaluations and norms concerns merely an introduction to any forthcomingresearch and is in general a methodological preparation of tools. Ossowska refershere to Kotarbinski’s postulate of ‘little philosophy’, best understood as ‘mini-malistic philosophy’, which she had taken over as her own from her studies atWarsaw University. The main element of this program has been said to be‘necessary hard work on denotation of terms, which is fundamental to providephilosophical problems with the form that will let us solve them’ (Kicinski, 1983:562). ‘Little philosophy’, then, is neither a new philosophical paradigm nor asubstantial philosophical theory. At the most general level, therefore, forOssowska, the analysis of moral evaluations and norms understood in the narrowsense involves a denotation of terms; a reflective awareness of the role languageplays in research and its required precision; the influence of presuppositions and arequired knowledge of them in research; and even a first establishment ofprudence in constructing any forthcoming generalizations and theories. In short,for Ossowska, it concerns a deep responsibility regarding a first preparation oftools for philosophical research, which is to say, a reflective formulating andclarification of the terminology to be employed in research, starting out from themost obvious terms, ‘moral evaluations’ and ‘moral norms’.
In the broader sense, ‘the analysis of moral evaluations and norms’ meansfor Ossowska simply all the work that needs to be done at the theoretical level,and this includes the general acquisition, understanding, in-depth analysis anddevelopment of the philosophical, logical and semantic background necessary forany initial research. From this point of view, such analyses take on a similar role formoral studies as meta-ethics (theoretical ethics) does for moral philosophy. It isnot only a theoretical introduction, but also a way to build a framework for allethical, respectively moral, reflections from a meta-perspective.
It is now possible to begin to understand why Foundation of Moral Sciencemust be understood as a fundamental first in a series of books by Ossowska. Itessentially concerns a sketch of her whole project where, as we have attempted tosummarily outline above, she takes up a short history of studies on morality,problems with classical philosophical ethics, different approaches to morality itself,the primary different branches of her moral science program and general per-spectives for any future research. After Foundation of Moral Science, Ossowskapublished Motywy postepowania: Z zagadnien psychologii moralnosci (Motives ofAction: Elements of Psychology of Morality; Ossowska, 1949), which expounded herapproach to a psychology of morality; Bourgeois Morality (Ossowska, 1986[1956]), which she called a ‘monographic approach to a sociology of morality’;and, then, finally Socjologia moralnosci: Zarys zagadnien (An Outline of a Sociologyof Morals; 1963a). All three of these books provide us with an excellent opportu-nity to observe how Ossowska’s project was flourishing in practice. Indeed, whilestill containing general indications of their theoretical roots, they appear muchmore ‘practical’. It seems that all of what needed to be said about the theoretical
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framework was already presented in Podstawy nauki o moralnosci, which clearlydemonstrates not only the importance of this book as the basis for her furtherstudies, but also the obvious theoretical and even philosophical value of Ossowskaas a thinker.
Unfortunately, only one of these books, which refer to various parts ofOssowska’s moral science, was translated into English. What is worse is that thisbook, Bourgeois Morality, is most probably not one that Ossowska herself wouldcall very representative, due to its strictly ‘monographic’ and historical character,lacking in diachronic theoretical analysis. Thus, the English-speaking reader hasaccess to only a limited fragment of Ossowska’s general working project. Never-theless, Bourgeois Morality is important for our purposes not only because it istranslated, but because Ossowska called this book ‘sociological’ and for some timetreated it as an exemplification of the third part of her project of a moral science.Until Sociologia moralnosci: Zarys zagadnien was published in 1962, which will betaken up later, it constituted the direct sociological continuation of her projectsketched out in Foundation of Moral Science, and Ossowska even called it one ofher favorites (Mikke, 1983 [1974]: 558). Finally, a characteristic feature ofall of Ossowska’s work is that, while every book has its own specific focusand may be treated as a separate set of questions, problems and conclusions,each offers a great opportunity of seeing and drawing out many further moreimplicit issues connected to her other works. Bourgeois Morality is one ofthe best examples of this, alongside a number of other monographic studieswhich shall be briefly considered.
The Social-Historical StudiesAfter the general basis for studies on morality was prepared and laid out inPodstawy nauki o moralnosci, the main problem of Bourgeois Morality, that is, todescribe a specific ‘bourgeois morality’, concerned finding a precise denotation ofthe term ‘bourgeois’. In the long history of definitions concerning ‘townsmen’,‘citizens’, ‘burghers’, ‘middle-class persons’, and the like, there are so manymeanings, characteristics and types employing different criteria that it appears tobe an insurmountable task to try to find a specific definition of ‘bourgeois’. At thesame time, Ossowska would argue that we do all appear to possess at least astereotype of the philistine or bourgeois involving a specific set of attributes.What, then, exactly is this bourgeois morality? In Bourgeois Morality, Ossowska’sgoals are twofold. First, she wants to arrange such various meanings and types intosome kind of order, especially because at the time, and we may presume eventoday, the term ‘bourgeois’ has strongly negative connotations. Second, shewould like to investigate the history of this specific type of morality.
Ossowska’s initial approach to the term ‘bourgeois’ draws out fourdifferent types of interpretive understanding of it. The first stems from theopposition between ‘rural’ and ‘urban resident’. In this sense, ‘bourgeois’ means
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someone who is not part of traditional local society, but rather lives and workswithin urban structures. The second meaning understands ‘bourgeois’ within amore specific context where it is not enough or even necessary to live in a city.Here another criterion is formulated such as a special type of work or lifestyle. Inthis view, ‘bourgeois’ comes close to Werner Sombart’s (1913) ‘homo oeconomicus’and Edmund Goblot’s (1925) ‘being part of society’. The third type is related tothe second and may be treated as its modification. Here ‘bourgeois’ is furtherplaced in a higher position within a specific hierarchy of citizens. This perspectivecan essentially be found in the many theories of class society or in such argumentsas Thorstein Veblen’s theory of the leisure class (2001 [1899]). Finally, the fourthtype, which is itself somewhat vague, essentially approaches ‘bourgeois’ as a moregeneral type of various subtypes such as in Gerard Degre’s (1950) ‘white-collarworkers’ and in theories of the middle class. Although Ossowska’s typology is onlypreliminary and is formulated in the very first pages, it does anticipate andillustrate particularly well the very important conclusion at which she willultimately arrive, namely that ‘bourgeois morality’ has many different faces andmust not be taken as a coherent type, especially before the beginning of anyserious historical analysis.
However, the problem concerning the criterion for ‘being bourgeois’becomes even more complicated when Ossowska attempts to reconstruct thegeneral historical framework concerning the bourgeois set of norms. When shedraws together the set of Italian Renaissance norms formulated by Leon BattistaAlberti, Benjamin Franklin’s classical scheme, the psychological research onressentiment by Friedrich Nietzsche, and ‘the moral indignation’ of the middleclass described by Svend Ranulf, it is difficult to reject her final thesis. Accordingto Ossowska, finding a ‘common area’ that could safely be called ‘bourgeoismorality’ and which would therefore include all the specific problems andphenomena, different types of evaluation, and sets of norms found in differentcultural, historical, geographical and political contexts appears to be impossible toachieve. Thus, she finally develops the argument that what is really needed here is,rather, a special kind of awareness or ‘methodological care’ understood ashistorical research which simultaneously and in an ongoing fashion searches outand eliminates any temptations towards speculative generalizations which occur sooften and with such vividness in various descriptions of bourgeois morality.
Another issue which Ossowska confronts along the way concerns MaxWeber’s classical studies of capitalism and its connection to Puritan ethics.Ossowska herself particularly focuses on the predestination theory and its inspira-tional role in the development of the so-called ‘spirit of capitalism’. The mostimportant conclusion, among others, which she reaches concerns BenjaminFranklin. Ossowska discovers that Franklin’s personal set of values and norms isindeed very specific and involves a broad Enlightenment program that extendswell beyond simply the Puritan religion, which was inherited, according to Weber,from Franklin’s parents. In the end, she claims that besides the influence of the
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‘spirit of capitalism’ there are other important social factors in the development ofcapitalism not mentioned by Weber.
It is important not to leave the impression that Ossowska’s greatestachievement in Bourgeois Morality was once more to caution against ‘quickgeneralizations’, now at the practical level of both avoiding and eliminating themin her own social-historical research. The primary achievement of BourgeoisMorality concerns Ossowska’s exposition of her own not insignificant historicalanalysis and research of specific empirical manifestations of this morality, alongwith a very wide and well-selected review of contemporary and past concepts ofbourgeois morality itself. In general, Ossowska mixed her own historical andanthropological research with a critical discussion of other classical and contem-porary studies. This perspective places the reader in a very comfortable positionin which he or she can both explore of lost or forgotten traces of traditionalbourgeois culture and confront studies of that culture by other philosophersand sociologists.
Even if one lays aside Ossowska’s theoretical goals as presented in her firstbook and only considers her as an author of such monographic analyses, she stillmay be considered a very inspiring thinker. Apart from Bourgeois Morality, shepresented two other similarly inspiring books, Mysl moralna oswiecenia angiel-skiego (Moral Thought in the English Enlightenment; Ossowska, 1966) and her lastbook, Ethos rycerski i jego odmiany (The Chivalrous Ethos and Its Variants;Ossowska, 1973). The first is related to her past studies in Britain. It is an in-depthanalysis of the ‘moral theories’ which appeared during the British Enlightenment.1
However, unlike many other possibly related historical studies, Ossowska alsodevotes her attention to the wider social context of these theories, throughcarrying out research into the press, personal diaries and other such everyday textsto provide the reader with a fuller picture of the time and the prevailingintellectual climate. A term which she already employs here is ‘ethos’, whichwould become fundamental for her next book and is easily connected with herformer work.
The history of usage regarding the term ‘ethos’ is, Ossowska reveals, afairly complicated one. The word itself stems from ancient Greek, where it means‘custom’, ‘behavior’ and ‘character’ (the latter being understood in both apsychological and moral sense). Later, the word was used as a base for ‘ta ethica’the name for that part of philosophical reflection focused on right and wronghuman acts or good and evil. Then it was translated into Latin by Cicero (De fato,1) as ‘moralis’, a word which became the basis for ‘moral’ and ‘morality’. Formany centuries, the two words ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’ were commonly used inmoral philosophy. However, today the ancient word ‘ethos’, once completelyforgotten, has undergone a new rebirth.2 Nevertheless, Ossowska argues that thetwo terms ‘ethics’ and ‘ethos’ are now often wrongly used as synonyms. Shepoints out that, strictly speaking, ‘ethics’ refers to a special kind of theoreticaldiscipline, while ‘ethos’ refers to the ‘way of life of a social group’, its ‘cultural
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orientation’ or ‘hierarchy of values’, whether explicitly formulated or simply pres-ent in the behavior of group members (Ossowska, 1973: 5–6). Thus, for Ossowska,the meaning of ‘ethos’ lies close to the sense of the term ‘morality’, but, it may bepresumed, is even much less related to any normative context, since only in regardto the term ‘morality’ can one still speak of something like ‘moralists’.
It is clear, then, that the term ‘ethos’ understood in this strict sense is avery convenient tool for Ossowska for achieving the goals which she formulated inPodstawy nauki o moralnosci. First, ‘ethos’ is something different from ‘ethics’ anddecisively directs one away from the deceiving connotations of ‘moral philosophy’and its ‘moralizing’. Second, ‘ethos’ is something different from ‘morality’, andthis is important, because sometimes a wider perspective than simply a set ofmoral norms is needed. Often new or really interesting problems only appearwhen morality is viewed from the perspective of the wider scale of culturalphenomena (Ossowska, 1963a: 255; see also Ossowska, 1963b [1961]).
In The Chivalrous Ethos and Its variants, Ossowska goes on to explicitlyemploy the notion of ethos and this wider cultural perspective. She not onlyattempts to describe a specific set of empirical moral norms, but also attempts tounderstand these norms within a wider cultural context. More specifically, sheprovides us not only with a rationally ordered catalogue of what is specifically rightor wrong within a particular group, but also the roots of these ways of evaluation,the general motivational context, the specific history of various evaluative construc-tions and models, and the general sets of moral argumentation.
Apart from Ossowska’s immediate intellectual contribution involving sucha social analysis of morality and, more specifically, a social analysis of the chivalrousethos, there is a further important theoretical issue to be considered here. Thisparadigm of what could be called ‘the wider view’ has many features in commonwith some contemporary theories in moral philosophy, particularly in British andAmerican circles. If we take Alasdair MacIntyre as an example, this becomesespecially clear.
MacIntyre’s After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (1984) and later WhoseJustice? Which Rationality? (1988) are primary examples of a new approach toethics based upon an attempt to reevaluate the wider context of moral studies in arather sociological, anthropological and historical fashion, rather than focusingonly upon, for example, an analysis of ethical language. MacIntyre does notconstruct a new philosophic ethical theory, but rather tries to sketch a panoramaof the whole European moral culture in its historical context which displays themost important elements of our moral identity, including Aristotelian ethics,Thomas Aquinas’s revaluation of the latter, the role of the Enlightenment, andemotivism. This ‘Hegelian’ style of narration, which may also be found in CharlesTaylor (1989), is based upon a kind of historicism or Nietzschean-style genealogy,which is not, however, lacking in critique of Nietzsche. Admittedly, this approachis still quite unique in modern moral philosophy and is taken, as MacIntyre (1984:53) himself emphasizes, from Elizabeth Anscombe’s ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’
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(1958). There Anscombe claims that our understanding of ‘what moral philoso-phy is’ is blurred by using terms which may be inadequate, because they are nottaken historically.
A further argument formulated by Anscombe in this article proposes thatstudies in moral philosophy should pay more attention to their forgotten youngersister, the psychology of morality. Sounds familiar? The date of publication is1958, which is to say, about ten years after Ossowska’s first edition of Podstawynauki o moralnosci; six years after Motywy postepowania: Z zagadnien psychologiimoralnosci; and two years after the first Polish edition of Bourgeois Morality. Inrelationship to the importance of rebuilding the classical philosophical approachto ethics carried out by Anscombe and others, one may here ask about the role ofOssowska in this process. Although the answer to this question can be properlyarrived at only in collaboration with scholars from other countries, it is importanthere to state the following. Even if it is assumed that the range of influence ofOssowska’s work on other thinkers in Europe was much narrower because hertexts were published first in Polish and only much later in English (for exampleBourgeois Morality in 1986), it is important not to underestimate as a con-sequence of this her own great intellectual achievement, which was a direct resultof her own new approach of a moral science and which included substantialconcrete monographic studies. The final aspect of Ossowska’s work concerns asociology of morality in the strict sense.
The Sociology of MoralityBourgeois Morality, Moral Thought in the English Enlightenment and The Chiv-alrous Ethos and Its Variants are all books which fit into Ossowska’s project of amoral science. However, what really exemplifies what is ‘sociological’ in herproject is the book explicitly entitled Socjologia moralnosci: Zarys zagadnien (AnOutline of a Sociology of Morals; Ossowska, 1963a). This work is divided into twodifferent parts. The first and main part was developed from a series of lectureswhich she presented at Columbia University in 1960 and is focused upon threemain areas: (a) elements forming the morality of social groups; (b) norms in sociallife; and (c) methods and theories. The second part is developed from articleswhich were published either in various journals or as independent publications.
In general, the book may be said to be a presentation of the mostimportant problems which a researcher will find on the way towards developing asociology of morality. For example, in the part which concerns ‘elements formingthe morality of social groups’, Ossowska presents the influence of the physicalenvironment, demographics, economic processes, social differentiation, familystructure, and so forth, on the shape of morality. This and other lists of problemsare very long, so we may assume that Ossowska primarily wants to demonstratehere how many important contexts must be taken into consideration in anysociological analysis of morality. She most often drives her point home by
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debating against contemporary and past theories. It should be noted incidentallythat the part which concerns ‘norms in social life’, which is rather short, alsoappears to contain the promise of a later book which has fortunately beentranslated into English, as Moral Norms: A Tentative Systematization (Ossowska,1970). The presentation of Ossowska’s own research experience is best found inthe part concerning methods and theories, although here one also finds asomewhat surprising and even devastating conclusion. Ossowska starts returningto theses established long ago in Podstawy nauki o moralnosci to reevaluate them.Her most important conclusion concerns the discovery that moral norms are notautonomic, but secondary. Values and dispositions to evaluate a good as good areprimary. However, if values are present in a social group on a more primordiallevel than their related now secondary norms, then formulating a proper theory ofmoral norms which is based only on their function in social life, as argued in theFoundation, is impossible to achieve. Another perspective is needed. Thus, one ofthe main goals of Ossowska’s general project appears to have been relinquished orwas at least left in need of further development.
In general, this pointed presentation of An Outline of a Sociology of Moralsclearly shows that the latter did not fulfill the promise first extended in Podstawynauki o moralnosci, namely a completed formulation of the third part of the greatproject of moral science called a ‘sociology of morality’. Of course, Ossowskanowhere can be found to regret any of the efforts which she put into attemptingto establish her project of a moral science, nor is there any indication that she evergave up on it. From the present writer’s point of view, perhaps one of the greatestlessons to be learned from Ossowska’s general theoretical work concerns theimportance of a more precise demarcation between which aspects of moralphenomena (that is, moral norms, values and dispositions) may be taken asaccessible to sociological analysis and which require a different approach.
Receptive or Unreceptive Successors: The Issue ofNormativityAlthough Ossowska focused on bringing modern sociological achievements tomoral philosophy and ethics, providing them with modern and adequate tools fordescription, the most striking thing about her students, followers and successors isthat none of them tended to follow this path. More specifically, none of themtended to follow her project of a moral science or her attempt to establish a newsociology of morality. Furthermore, it cannot be overlooked that they are foundto constitute two separate groups. The first group, which constitute the majority,became philosophers and more particularly moral philosophers again. This groupis best represented by one of the most famous of Ossowska’s students, Ija Lazari-Pawłowska, who returned to the direction of normative and theoretical ethics. Sheis best known for her studies on meta-ethics and Albert Schweitzer’s ethics
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(Lazari-Pawłowska, 1975, 1993). The second group became traditional sociolo-gists again. It is best represented by Janusz Marianski, who carried out work onmoral transformations in Polish society and produced a handbook of a sociologyof morality (Marianski, 1986, 1988). This state of affairs concerning the mostimmediate reception contexts of Ossowska’s classical sociology in Poland alreadygives rise to two extremely important questions. Has the first group, which hastaken up moral philosophy again, sensed traces of normative leanings in Ossow-ska’s work, thereby attempting to further pursue them, while the second, inreturning to traditional sociology, sensed them but rejected them in favor of amore so-called ‘scientific sociology’? More generally expressed, are there norma-tive leanings or elements in Ossowska’s work itself?
Attempting to approach a potential normative aspect in Ossowska’s workof course goes well beyond the official explicit written statements by her concern-ing her new moral science which have been focused upon above. However, it ishoped that some initial light may be shed upon some rather unspoken depths ofher work. In general, it appears that any possible normative aspects in Ossowska’swork can be drawn out in two major ways. First, it is possible to look into herminor or smaller texts for any elements of a normative program. Second, it ispossible to reread her canonical works again with a view towards decrypting anytraces of a hidden morality.
In regard to the first approach, there are only a few small minor textswhich can be said to come anywhere close to be written from the perspective of amoralist, rather than a sociologist of morality. The best example is a short article‘Wzor obywatela w ustroju demokratycznym’ (‘A Model of the Citizen in aDemocratic Political System’; Ossowska, 1983c [1946]; see also Ossowska, 1983f[1969]). Here Ossowska first attempts to clarify her theoretical point of view. Sheshows how sets of moral norms are formulated based upon personal models. Sheclaims that, although moral patterns are as old as ethics itself, only relativelyrecently have thinkers discovered their importance for shaping an ethos and thesocial group. She further provides different examples of such personal patterns,including ‘the warrior’ in Homer’s eposes, which founded part of the Greek wayof understanding what is good; the ‘civis romanus’ of Rome; the ‘self-made man’of modern America; and the ‘udarnik’ of Soviet Russia. After this brief presenta-tion, she then rhetorically asks ‘What values do we expect from the citizen of ademocratic state?’ and attempts to provide an answer.
Ossowska proposes as value attributes of the democratic citizen ‘perfec-tionism’, ‘being open-minded’, ‘discipline’, ‘tolerance’, ‘activity’, ‘civil courage’,‘intellectual honesty’, ‘responsibility for one’s words’, ‘aiming for social goals’,‘respect for rules of confrontation’, ‘aesthetical sensitivity’ and, finally, a ‘sense ofhumor’. This last attribute, even if it at first looks trivial, has a great significance.Although all the previous attributes can at least be arguably expected as valuecharacteristics of a democratic citizen, the last comes as a surprise and is of interestin indicatively revealing an important value found and assumed by Ossowska as
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her own. Ossowska goes on to write that for her a ‘sense of humor’ is not merelya pleasant aspect of human behavior or pleasurable conversation. Much more thanthis, she argues that it is a perfect weapon against any form of political dictator-ship. It always wins out against all kinds of monopoly of ideas and provides adistant perspective which defends against the many forms of manipulating peo-ple’s opinion.
Although Ossowska formulates only a few sentences concerning thissubject, and any attempt to generalize or present it as a final or her mostimportant value would be a misunderstanding, it is surely not out of place here topoint out its similarity to Richard Rorty’s notion of irony. Of course, Rorty hasmuch larger ambitions than just describing an ideal citizen in democratic societyand is far from reducing irony to simply a sense of humor. However, what iscommon to both authors is the aspiration to secure human social solidarity and toprotect it against any kind of dictatorship or fundamentalism of a ‘final vocabu-lary’ (Rorty, 1989).
Admittedly, Ossowska’s moral standpoint in this regard may be said to bevery weak, but this is due to her critically reflective relationship to all normativeclaims. Even in this short article one can see how uncomfortably she feels in therole of a moralist as the article is full of such protective or qualifying statements as‘this is not a full picture, just a pencil sketch’ or ‘all we wanted to achieve here isan introduction to a discussion’ (Ossowska, 1983c [1946]: 366). In sum, it issuggested here that a characteristic feature of Ossowska’s relationship to norma-tive claims involves both a critical reflection and humor, which may be may be besttermed prudent or the ‘prudent approach’.
The second possible way to discover Ossowska’s normative background ismuch more difficult to carry out. As we have just seen, even when writing at thelevel of potential explicit declaration, she is extremely cautious about making anymoral or normative claims. Nevertheless, there are a few small traces of normativ-ity which we may attempt to draw out. The first trace concerns Ossowska’s way ofusing specific terms. For example, when she describes ‘bourgeois morality’, sheprefers to use the terms ‘set of norms’ and ‘morality’, whereas when she sketchespictures of ‘chivalrous morality’, she prefers to use the term ‘ethos’. This is evenmore generally reflected in the titles of the two books devoted to these topics. Ofcourse, this has already been explained above in the sense that, while shediscovered the term ‘ethos’ in Bourgeois Morality, she expressly used and devel-oped the term in The Chivalrous Ethos, and this represented an evolution in herwork whereby she found the term ‘ethos’ to be largely free of the contaminationthat affected ‘morality’ and ‘ethics’ within a normative context. However, Ossow-ska could never have freed herself from at least the assertive character of semanticmeanings, and in the present context of attempting to draw out a normativeaspect of her work it is necessary to now view the words ‘morality’ and ‘ethos’within the specific contexts in which they appear and are used. It is of interest, forexample, that she did not go back to replace the term ‘morality’ with ‘ethos’ once
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it was discovered in Bourgeois Morality or to insert it into the title. In a sense, thisis not much different from what Ossowska herself does with the works of EmileDurkheim and Lucien Levy-Bruhl when, although they themselves postulate afreedom from any normative context, she attempts to unmask their devotion to aspecific morality through a use of terms like, in Durkheim’s case, ‘moral sanity’,which contain a hidden normative structure (that is ‘sanity’ is good and natural;‘insanity’ is pathological). Perhaps, the only real difference is that in Ossowska’scase, due to the weak and reflective philosophical cautiousness of her claims, it iseven more difficult to attempt to determine her relationship to the subject matterof research.
In any case, in viewing the terms ‘ethos’ and ‘morality’ in the specificcontexts of their use in Bourgeois Morality and The Chivalrous Ethos, it still appearsto be impossible to clearly find anything absolutely definitive which indicates anormative stance. Of course, at first sight there appear to be two possibilities.Either she uses the term ‘morality’ for the bourgeois set of norms because she isnormatively distant from and cannot mask her aversion to such philistine ethics,while having no such problems with chivalrous morality, or she uses the term‘morality’ for them because she actually finds them moral and cannot helpstressing this, while again having no such problems with chivalrous ethics.
However, if we circle back to the at first non-obvious character of ‘humor’found in our first approach and further take it as an important subtle feature of allof Ossowska’s writing, perhaps there exists a third possibility. This leads us to asecond trace in the search for a potential hidden normative context in Ossowska’swork. In the Foundation, when Ossowska attempts to describe what ‘morality’ is,she uses the Polish word ‘nabiał’, which means ‘dairy and egg farm products’.Although this is an everyday and often used word in Polish, it is a very strangeword in that it is used to refer to specific entities which are grouped togetherwithout any precise criterion (Ossowska, 1947: 375). Perhaps, a somewhatanalogous example for the English-speaking reader would be the old American‘drugstore’. This was a place where one could buy drugs, the newspaper and manyother types of products, have breakfast or lunch, drink coffee or have a milkshake,and even sometimes post letters, use the public telephone, and so forth. There isno precise theoretical criterion for describing all of what ‘naturally’ fits into thisdefinition of ‘drugstore’ (or what is to be excluded from it). Only everydaylanguage use illustrates the meaning (Ossowska, 1963a: 14). Of course, there isthe crucial difference that Ossowska fundamentally uses the Polish word ‘nabiał’,or if you will, ‘milk and eggs’, to refer to the character of morality, itself whichindicates not only a subtle humor on her part, but also the expression of a needfor a necessary empathy and warm interpretive understanding, in order to graspthis in essence ‘natural’ (that is non-theoretical) aspect of morality which is onlyexpressed in everyday common speech practices.
In general, insofar as this often overlooked meaning used by Ossowska fordescribing ‘morality’ occurs so early in her foundational work, is nowhere rejected
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in her later works, and is rooted in a reflectively chosen most general everydayspeech practice, it may be legitimately assumed that it most probably lies behindand encompasses any more specific meanings of ‘bourgeois morality’, and even‘ethos’. In this sense, Ossowska’s attitude towards bourgeois morality is then bestmost generally characterized not only as involving a reflective humor, but also asempathetic and having a warm, even everyday, feeling for it. Further support forthis can now be found in otherwise apparently unimportant comments made byOssowska in Bourgeois Morality such as her presentation of the ‘bourgeois’ assomeone who has furniture permanently protected by covers, synthetic flowersand a canary in a cage. With more humor perhaps, it is also not to be forgottenthat she called ‘bourgeois morality’ (the book or the phenomenon?) one of herfavorites (Mikke, 1983 [1974]: 558).
In sum, it is suggested here that Ossowska’s normative standpoint is at firstbest characterized as prudent, humor-bound and empathetic in looking for anywarm everyday feelings. It may be presupposed that she would have problemswith any ‘morality’ lacking in these features. Of course, all this represents only afirst step towards unmasking any deeper set of norms held by Ossowska. However,for our purposes, it already clearly displays new aspects of her work which, in placeof returning to simple past disciplinary divisions as previous scholars have done,are open fertile ground for further critical analyses of her work and newinvestigations of it.
ConclusionWhat role can Ossowska’s thought still play in moral philosophy or contemporarysociology? Does it belong only to history or is it still possible to learn somethingnew from it? Or maybe her program can be further developed? If not, maybe partsof her analysis may still be of interest to contemporary scholars? All these arequestions which can only be answered by present and future reading scholars. Ingeneral, an attempt has been made here to provide an encompassing depthorientation to this important classical author of Polish sociology which not onlydisplays her overall project of a moral science throughout her works, but also,upon the basis of the reception contexts of her successors, enters into previouslyunconsidered or unspoken of depths of her work, all with the purpose of bothrevitalizating and providing new critical analyses of her work. In line with thisgeneral attempt, it is only appropriate to end here with three key symbolic-likesummations to help provide a unifying hold on any dispersed recollections.
The first important aspect of Ossowska’s work can be said to be hergreatest and concerns her project of a moral science. She formulated a newparadigm of research which not only was at the time one of the best answers topositivists’ ambitions to reduce ethics to sociological or anthropological per-spectives, but which also simultaneously socially enriched the point of view ofmoral philosophers, who had become minimalists with their narrow analytical
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logic programs. Even though her program became difficult to complete, partic-ularly when she discovered a weakness in it in regard to exploring sets ofevaluations within a social group which needed to be described in a language ofaxiology instead of just sociology, its insightful character remains as a newapproach. Its relationship to other similar revolutionary programs, such as theinsightful inspirations provided by Elisabeth Anscombe in regard to moralphilosophy in the English-speaking tradition and which occurred ten years afterthe first edition of Podstawy nauki o moralnosci, is a topic of future research whichremains to be carried out. If it is thought that Anscombe’s work itself has more ofa historical than contemporary value, one need only recall its impact upon AlasdairMacIntyre’s fairly spectacular book After Virtue (1984).
A second important aspect of Ossowska’s work concerns her social-historical monographic studies on bourgeois morality, the chivalrous ethos, themoral thought of the British Enlightenment, and various other topics.3 Here shecombines her own specific analyses and careful research into literature, the press,personal diaries, and the like, so as to arrive at the wider cultural and social contextof these moralities with a discussion of the existing classical and contemporaryworks on the subject. Thus, the reader is provided with a double-sided perspectiveinvolving a direct contact with the empirical data and a critical presentation ofpossible different interpretations of these data from various points of view. Even ifan attempt is made to argue that Ossowska’s analyses and discussed theories arethemselves rather antiquated and somewhat loose in comparison to more contem-porary works by other authors, their insightful and orientational general breadthfor any research on these themes cannot be denied.
The third important aspect of Ossowska’s work concerns her specialpersonal climate of methodological attunement. We have heard of the menace ofspeculative generalizations, the necessary hard work of setting up basic terms andnotions, and a need to pay attention to basic research. At the same time,permeating through these demands, we have seen a responsible prudence, criticalhumor, an empathetic focusing, and a searching for warm everyday feelings inregard to ethics. Perhaps today, in the epoch of ‘globalization’, ‘the end ofhistory’, ‘the clash of civilizations’, ‘McDonaldization’, and other ambitious one-dimensional theories, Ossowska’s personally involved methodology of enteringinto ‘reality’ in all its subtle multi-facetedness and inducing it to speak out, insteadof simply pitying reality and its morals for not fitting one’s own theory, will be amost welcome invitation for certain scholars.
Notes1. Ossowska clearly recognizes that English-speaking academics use the term ‘Scottish Enlight-
enment’ to refer to the set of ideas originating and developing from John Locke to David Hume.She here purposefully uses the term ‘British Enlightenment’ to indicate that her goals are muchlarger than merely a consideration of the history of philosophical ethics. Instead, she wanted toattempt to sketch out a broad portrait of the entire intellectual climate prevailing in Britain at the
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time, and thus even takes up, for example, Bernard Mandeville, who obviously was notScottish.
2. For Ossowska’s explanation and account of this process of rebirth, see Ossowska (1973).
3. It is of interest to note, for example, that Bourgeois Morality has continued to be reprinted inPoland until the present day, and has undergone more than one edition in English.
ReferencesA complete bibliography of Maria Ossowska by Maria Smoła is available on pp.
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Marcin T. Zdrenka is Lecturer in the Institute of Philosophy at the Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun.He has studied the history of ethics, axiology, sociology and the anthropology of morality. In 2003 hepublished a book Problem uniwersaliacji etosu mieszczanskiego (The Problem of the Universalization ofthe Bourgeois Ethos) on bourgeois morality and its role in modern culture, based on comparing theoriesby Maria Ossowska and Alasdair MacIntyre. He is currently working on the history of moral terms,especially the issue of genealogy of moral meanings and the relation between moral and other norms.
Address: Instytut Filozofii UMK, ul. Fosa Staromiejska 1a, 87–100 Torun, Poland. [email:[email protected]]
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