COMMITMENT VERSUS CONVICTION AND DOUBTING. A CONTRIBUTION TO THE DISCUSSION ON THE RATIONALITY OF BELIEFS BASED ON FAITH (Zaangazowanie a przeswiadczenie i watpienie. Przyczynek do rozwazan nt. racjonalnosci przekonan opartych na wierze)

In the article the author analyses and offers a critique of the relativistic idea of commitment, claiming that the objective rightness of consciously a chosen lifestyle and activities in the name of certain aims or values cannot be warranted by an appeal to universally important arguments. Proving the rightness of their own position, relativists usually invoke the thesis about the dualism of thinking and activity and the impossibility of deriving convictions concerning values from ascertainments of facts. This opinion is maintainable only if it can be shown that commitment possesses its own structure, simple and closed in itself, connected only with the act of faith, whose full expression results from the mere act of choosing a particular lifestyle. In the article the author quotes arguments as proof of the opposite argument. Relativism not only leads to linguistic solipsism and the impossibility of recognizing ethically blameworthy beliefs, but also to the defective qualification of commitment. For apart from the element of pure faith, commitment also contains cognitive and rational moments that make it possible to assess whether or not the convictions that constitute it are legitimate or true.