The question of professional ethics is one of outstanding significance today „ the author thinks, linking as it does theoretical moral considerations with constructive social didactic practice. Drawing attention to the recently observable efforts to determine moral obligations for various professional groups, the author discerns three controversial problems, namely, – the problem of the sense and nature of moral didactics, the essence of professional ethics, and, the utility of moral codes.

The article deals with the moral aspect of war. The writer points out the actual danger of total war and its consequences, as well as the reflection of this danger in social consciousness and in the development of the pacifistic movement. Further he emphasizes the importance of the ethical reflection relating to the phenomenon of war. This reflection has a long tradition and may be found both in philosophic and moral literature and in letters. Nowadays the social-political literature and the (...) military one are especially rich in ethic opinions. This requires not only a further development of the mentioned reflection from definite positions, particularly from the Marxist ones, with regard to the scale and the strength of the socialist anti-war movement, but also analyses relating to the essential contents of the mentioned reflection in the course of history and in the present time. (shrink)

The paper presents fragments of a Byzantine icon discovered in 2015 during regular archaeological excavations carried out in Chełm, eastern Poland. Iconographic analyses allow the nine surviving fragments to be interpreted as belonging to a diptych wing with the Great Feasts cycle. The icon represents archaic iconography of the subject, with the scene of Transfiguration placed after Entry into Jerusalem and before the Crucifixion. The artefact was created in the second half or at the close of the 12th century, and (...) it was made from steatite, which has been confirmed by petrographic analyses. The icon was discovered in the remains of a palace complex of King Daniel Romanovich, the greatest ruler of the Galicia-Volhynia Lands. The results of the archaeological research allow the terminus ante quem for the icon’s arrival in Chełm to be determined as before the middle of the 13th century. Various possible explanations as to how the icon found its way to Chełm are also explored in the paper. (shrink)