Abstract

The article sets out to present the ethos of the Kashubians, a Polish ethnic group very distinct from others in its dialect, customs, personal traits, manners and style of behaviour. The author looks not only at the Kashubians' moral attitudes but also at the moral consciousness which is the foundation of their actions and attitudes. The discussion of the maral consciousness of the Kashubians is not based on psychological or sociological tests but on the literary work of Augustyn Necel. His writings tend to be documentary and factual and as such they are an excellent literary document of Kashubian life, one on which it is pcssible to base a scholarly account of the Kashubian ethos. The moral consciousness of the Kashubian people is shown from three aspects: as (a) moral experiences of a cognitive nature, (b) moral convictions and (c) moral motivations. The ethos of the Kashubians includes first of all the conviction that there exists a cognizable and actually known world -Of moral values and obligations. Furthermore, it includes the belief that the system of statements about moral norms and values, that is, the system of moral norms and judgments, is both decidable and genuinely justified. The description of the moral consciousness of the Kashubians has additional interest in that it enriches our views of man as a moral being and reveals authentic moral values as ,part of the Kashubian experience.