Visible Religion, Invisible Ethics

Abstract

In Poland, after the fall of communism we observe, as before in the Western World, processes that can be described in terms of secularisation and normative deconstruction. Religion and morality are no longer recognized as universal, coherent systems. In the words of Z. Bauman, ethics, religion, and social world become liquid. However, must liquidity lead to anomie? Is it heading towards the social world in which social control is reduced to a narrow field of law and economics, and the rest of our life will be a normative chaos?

The thesis of this chapter is as follows: the disappearance of traditional mechanisms of social control, based on codes, norms, imperatives, and prohibitions is accompanied by the emergence of new mechanisms of regulation of social relations based mainly on empathy, kindness, moral intuition, ethics of care, and so on, in the same way as a traditional religiosity in the post-modern world is replaced by the invisible religion, the “Kantian man” in the dimension of moral life, controlled by absolutised rules and norms supported by religious institutions, is replaced by sensibilities and more intimate, invisible forms of morality, and social control.