Pieniążek Marcin, Dimensions of Legal Ethics in the Light of Paul Ricoeur’s Petite Éthique

Legal ethics is a multidimensional phenomenon. This claim is validated by the multitude of ethical and professional qualifications, commentaries, and judgments of disciplinary courts, and even in the broad reception of questions related to legal ethics in pop culture. The degree of complexity of the phenomenon in question justifies the search for new theoretical tools that could allow its systematization. This article characterizes various aspects of legal ethics and employs a theory which was „modestly and ironically” called „little ethics” (French: la petite éthique) by its author, Paul Ricoeur .

The choice of such a theoretical foundation results from four types of reasons. Firstly, Ricoeur conducts his metaethical considerations at the intersection of currents that form the paradigms of legal ethics, that is, Kantian ethics of duty and Aristotelian virtue ethics. Secondly, the ontology of an active agent developed by Ricoeur connects ethics to the perspectives of describing,...