THE MANIFESTATION OF MORAL IMAGINATION IN THE DEBATES OF THE SEIMAS OF THE REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA ON COVID-19 MANAGEMENT

The relevance of the study is based on the widely studied, but inexhaustible philosophy of the relationship between politics and morality. The main concept of the study is moral imagination, which theorists associate with two abilities of the subject: the ability to see the moral aspects of a situation (insight) and the ability to imagine a multitude of possibilities (insight quantity), i.e. alternative solutions to a problematic situation from a moral perspective. Compared to decision-making in the business management sector, where moral imagination has been empirically studied more, political discussions and deliberations are broader in their topics, and they are influenced by a larger and more diverse circle of actors and ideas. The goal is to discover the manifestation of moral imagination in political debates and its conditions through the analysis of the components of insight and foresight of possibilities. The empirical basis of the study is the Seimas debates related to the management of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study examines the extent to which politicians are able to perceive the spectrum of moral issues related to the situation under consideration and how broad (especially from a moral perspective) the range of possible solutions, proposals for solving the problem, and discussions are, assuming that these two components based on definitions of moral imagination define the characteristics of the ability of moral imagination in relation to the subject. The results of the study show that it is possible to detect (and further study) components of moral imagination in political discourse using the thematic analysis of content. The study also revealed that further research into the bond between moral imagination and ideology could be valuable.