JOSE INGENIEROS: "SOME APPROACHES TO MORAL STRENGTHS"

Abstract

Jose Ingenieros warns in the prologue of his texts ´Moral Strengths´, that his book completes the panoramic vision of a functional ethics. ´Mediocre man´ is a critique to morality; ´To wards a moral without dogmas´ a morality theory, ´Moral Strengths´, a deontology of morality. It prevails in cell these works of his the concept of ethical idealism in the function of social experience, unmistakable with captions idealism of ancient metaphysics.

Ingenieros affirms that a man who treasures these forces acquires moral values, honorable duty feeling that conditions his dignity. A man that thinks as he must, says what he feels and acts as he wants. A man that does not pursues rewards nor he fears misfortunes. A man who receives contrast with serenity and victory with prudence. A man who accepts the responsibilities of his own errors and who refuses any complicity with other people’s errors. Moral values are the only ones that support the ones who expend their lives for their country or their own doctrines trying to achieve heroism. Nothing is less similar to the occasional temerity of that of the bully or that of the praetorian, who face futile risks due to vanity of stipend. An hour of episodic bravery does not equate Socrates’ valour, that of Christ’s, nor Spinoza´s, which is a constant convergence of thought and action, pulchritude of sentence in opposition to insane of past superstitions. Pointing out some comparisons with our Nation’s present time is trying to demonstrate that time has thought Ingenieros is right or he is not and this is partly the purpose of this contribution about an Argentinian thinker of substance put away and forgotten in every library of this country.