THE SOCIALIST CONSCIENCE

Abstract

It is a fairly widespread conviction that conscience offers not only a yardstick for moral evaluations but constitutes a cognitive faculty that helps one learn something about the world. If so much is true, and, as it seems to be the case with Henryk Jankowski, one is equipped with a socialist conscience, the resulting position is equally informed by certain evaluative and epistemological premises. A conscientious socialist sees the world as a vast terrain of opportunities that can be used to make the world a socially better world. This attitude can be very strong, deep rooted, intransigent and good natured. It may sometimes desensitize its representative to the implications of many facts that are incompatible with his vision of the future, but it can also make him a loyal, ingenious, honest and tireless defender of the common good. An example of Henryk Jankowski is adduced, on the seventieth anniversary of his birth, as a particularly admirable embodiment of the socialistic ideals, motivated by ethical rather than political reasons.