"Ethics, Value, and Reality" is a collection of essays written
after Kolnai settled in England in 1955. These essays from Kolnai's
mature years sit atop a remarkable gestation of moral and political
thinking. At the heart of his thought is the special role of
privilege in a good social order. Kolnai relies heavily on the work
of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century value theorists
such as Alexius Meinong, Nicolai Hartmann, and Max Scheler. He
blends this continental tradition of ethics with British
intuitionism and Scottish Enlightenment articulations.
For Kolnai, ethical life cannot be adequately understood except
by reference to moral emphasis, and thus, Kolnai can be thought of
as a liberal conservative. He acknowledges myriad values, moral and
non-moral, and accepts that all can have some claim upon us. Low
values as much as high values have a legitimate claim. His is a
tolerant conservatism though not for a moment does he forgo the
necessity of judgment: a readily graspable hierarchy keeps the
respective demands of values in proportion. Kolnai welcomes the
call to seriousness, which is the hallmark of existentialism.
The ground of Kolnai's thought is the idea of emotion as
cognitive. He saw the typical analytical philosopher's fascination
with simplicity of explanation not only thoroughly refuted by the
gains in understanding wrought by phenomenological method, with its
deference to the richness of phenomena, but sensed in the monistic
inclination he dreaded a harbinger of totalitarianism. Never
denying his emotionalism, he nonetheless made his points well
enough by adopting an analytical approach to philosophy and ethics.
This is a major work crossing moral and political philosophy.
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