Moraalin luonne ja omantunnonkysymykset

The nature of human morality is a time-honoured theme in social sciences. This paper sheds lighton the nature of morality and moral-based or ethics-driven politics in a democratic society. It combinesempirical and theoretical research. As for the theoretical approach, the paper attempts toidentify the differences between political and moral deliberation and how the differences appear incase studies. In countries with coalition governments politics is often about compromising. However,there are limits for compromises and negotiations. These limits are often conceived in termsof morality. A key feature of ethical deliberation is that the ethical convictions are ultimate andnon-negotiable. This is in stark contrast to most political issues that are negotiable. The empiricalpart focuses on the so-called cases of conscience in Finnish parliamentary politics which split up theestablished divisions of party-lines. We will study five recent cases in Finnish parliamentary politics.Our empirical material consists of the transcripts of parliamentary debates and records of votingbehaviour. The debates will be analysed by means of argumentation analysis. The conclusion of thearticle is that theoretical analysis and the outcomes of empirical analysis do not meet conveniently:the cases of conscience in eduskunta are an exceptional way of coming to a decision in an exceptionalinstitution