Katastrofa pod kontrolą
Disaster under control

The moral status of the victim and the executant in Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiment from the perspective of normative ethics

Summary/Abstract: The author of the article undertakes the task of presenting an alternative, ethical view of Stanley Milgram's famous experiment launched in 1961 and crowned with the work Obedience to Authority. For ethics broadly understood as a rational and systematic reflection on morality, this experiment has a special value. For self-evident reasons, Milgram’s research into destructive obedience first and foremost enhances knowledge within descriptive ethics that establishes moral facts. Without neglecting this contribution, the author poses the question: how does the research on destructive obedience present itself when we look at it from the perspective of normative ethics? Thus, he shifts attention to those elements of Milgram's reports and conclusions that point to assumptions about obligations and moral assessments, as opposed to observable facts. Milgram declares that he does not intend to offer a moral evaluation on the participants, but a closer analysis of his work leads to the conclusion that the American psychologist did not escape said assessment.

• Details
• Contents