Moral downfalls and their healing power
Beata Garlej
Abstract
The central issue of this article is the category of moral downfall analyzed with reference to two protagonists: Prince Stepan Kasatsky (Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy) and Constanza Briones (El ano del diluvio by Eduardo Mandoza). The characters constitute a faithful embodiment of Immanuel Kant’s concept, used later by Max Scheler, namely that „[f]rom timber so crooked as that from which man is carved, nothing entirely straight can be made”. Father Sergius and Sister Consuelo all yield to evil, and yet, paradoxically, their immoral deeds contribute to stimulating all that is good, positive, and valuable. The protagonists’ profiles then refer to Scheler’s thought that “the basis of all individual evil is the necessary connection between good and evil given to us with a feeling of impending tragedy, and even good and evil in human nature”. The point of reference for my study is then mainly Scheler’s Phenomenology, the ideas he presented, inter alia, in Problems of Religion or his work Ressentiment. Additionally, I refer to the views expressed by a Polish philosopher, Roman Ingarden, presented in his essay On Responsibility: Its Ontic Foundations.
