The Situation of Aggression. Resolving Moral Conflicts in the Ethics of Tadeusz Ślipko

Tadeusz Ślipko SJ (1918-2015) is one of the prominent Polish philosophers dealing with ethics. He places his scientific work in the context of traditional Christian ethics, which he associates with the Thomistic way of thinking. He is the author of classic textbooks on general ethics and practical ethics. In 1988, he wrote the first monograph on bioethics in Poland, entitled The Limits of Life. In addition to general ethical issues, the Polish Jesuit analyzed practical issues to answer questions troubling his contemporaries (abortion, euthanasia, ecology, etc.). He proposed original solutions to the issue of resolving conflict situations. This article is devoted to this issue, which presents the theoretical assumptions of the concept concerning the situation of aggression that activates specific mechanisms in the moral system to secure the moral order. Such conflictual phenomena reveal the truth about the complex nature of certain moral values. The proposed construct makes it possible to deal with the problem of moral evil in the situation of killing an aggressor in self-defense, waging a defensive war in which people are killed, defending a secret, and capital punishment.