What Ought I Not to Do?

Abstract

The author examines the question how absolute morality (or moral absolutism) is possible and how it manifests itself in the act of the person. The well-known Kant’s question What ought I to do? is disclosed as the question asked by an individual to himself converting them into moral subject: it is referred not to an intellectual but a practical position which is connected with the obliging role of the moral motives. The given answer is based on the special role of moral prohibitions and their embodiment in the negative acts. The negative act is an act grounded exclusively on the strength of moral prohibition. Its positive meaning consists in the fact that it does not happen. The negative act corresponds to the criterion of moral absolutism: it is universally meaningful, elementary and reliant solely on the individual moral responsibility. The concept of negative ethics, the main question of which is What I ought not to do?, is elaborated. This conception solves the paradoxicalness of morality such as the paradox of moral perfection.