The early philosophical standpoint of Professor Bogusław Wolniewicz alluded mainly to the so-called first philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, as expressed in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Professor Wolniewicz’s views have found their expressions, first, in the book (in Polish) Things and Facts. An introduction to the first philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1968), and finally in his monograph (in Polish) Ontology of Situations. Foundations and Applications (1985). In both cases, Wolniewicz’ standpoint has been expressed by giving a substantive interpretation to semiotical and logical concepts (i.e. by producing hypostases). This practice looks rather dubious to me, in both cases, although I hope that ontology of situations can be usefully treated as a general formal theory of semantical correlates characteristic for sentential statements.

In the opinion of Bogusław Wolniewicz (1927–2017), Wittgenstein in his Tractatus presented a new metaphysics – a modern ‘metaphysics of facts’, in opposition to the traditional ‘metaphysics of substance’ (Aristotle) or to the ‘metaphysics of things’ (Tadeusz Kotarbiński’s ‘reism’). The new metaphysics describes, just like the old ones did, the structure of the world. First, it refers to the world as a whole, seeing in it an actualization of one of numerous possible worlds. It also refers to the elementary unit of world-structure, which is an ‘atomic fact’ (an independent unit, though at the same time not the simplest one, since it involves further ‘simple objects’). Those concepts of ‘world’, ‘atom’ and ‘possible beings’ make the system of Tractatus ‘metaphysics’, comparable to the Aristotle’s metaphysics of ‘form’ and ‘matter’. In Tractatus, the Aristotelian ‘matter’ turns into ‘simple objects’, while ‘form’ becomes a form of ‘fact’. In this view, the world is conceived as a set of facts and equals a particular choice made from the universe of possible situations. But one element is missing in Wittgenstein’s system, namely, the ‘efficient cause’ responsible for the choice of facts (actualization of possibilities). Leibniz believed there was a ‘sufficient reason’ why a particular choice was made among possible situations and one possible world has become real. This ‘sufficient reason’ finally turned out to be God’s rational will. In Wolniewicz’s late philosophy however, the ‘efficient cause’ is only ‘fate’ or ‘chance’ (τύχη). Fate is therefore the mysterious deus absconditus of Wittgenstein’s metaphysics.

In this article I try to think about the terms “stories” and “ontologies” in Ewa Domańska’s works: Mikrohistorie. Spotkania w międzyświatach (1999; 2005), Historie niekonwencjonalne (2006), Historia egzystencjonalna (2012), Historia ratownicza (2014) and I try to compare my conclusions with her latest publication. I am interested in the turning point in her thoughts, giving up the theory and methodology of history and switching to the ontology of the dead body. In order to do this I look through these publications and indicate which threads could help work out the excellent, innovative, and fresh conception of Nekros. The main part of the article is a detailed discussion of this. In the other part, I consider how to interpret more traditionally a past description like “cultural memory” and whether Domańska’s works accidentally invalidate them. I suggest a short statement of Marcin Napiórkowski’s and Stephen Marks’ works to show closer (Marks) and further (Napiórkowski) parallels or completely different presentations of similar problems.

The paper concerns the validation of the selected issues related to the new ontology-based approach to the elaboration and management of evidences prepared by developers for the IT security evaluation process according to the Common Criteria standard. The evidences are implied by the claimed EAL (Evaluation Assurance Level) for a developed IT product or system, called TOE (Target of Evaluation). The evidences envisage the TOE features and its development environment. The validation and use of the author’s elaborated ontology are discussed, including: composing evidences for the given TOE and EAL, expressing details of evidences documents, issuing queries to get given information about model, etc. The paper also shows how the evidences are organized, developed and used. This work is aimed at the development of a prototype of a knowledge base, designed mainly for developers to allow them to compose and manage different kinds of evidences elaborated on the patterns basis. This knowledge base can be used by a software tool aiding developers who produce evaluation evidences.

Formalization of a set of beliefs expressed in one language consists in translating them into sentences of another language. The characteristic property of a good formalization is that the target language is correctly chosen and the translations precisely reflect the meaning of the original sentences. In the paper a formalization of ontology of situations (given by Professor Bogusław Wolniewicz) is discussed. I argue that this is an example of a perfect solution of the problem.

In the extensive polemic with the book Haunting History: For a Deconstructive Approach to the Past by Ethan Kleinberg, the reviewer comments on the innovative potential of deconstruction as it enables the conception of various scenarios of the future. Kleinberg’s reflections on the ontology (or hauntology) of the past are located within the current discussion about “the ontological turn.” The reviewer compares Kleinberg’s take on a deconstructive approach to the past with similar considerations presented by Sande Cohen in the US as well as by Keith Jenkins, Alun Munslow and, more recently, Berber Bevernage in Europe.

This article is a review of Ethan Kleinberg’s Haunting History. For a Deconstructive Approach to the Past (Stanford, 2017). I focus on three issues related to that work. These are: historians’ attitude towards the deconstruction; the idea of ontological realism and its critique; the role of young historians in modern academia. This text is based not only on the book reviewed but also on its different analyses and ways it was used in other research. In the conclusion, I present how Haunting History can be used as an emancipatory tool by scholars who are starting their academic careers now.

In this article I present the problem of identity of objects (that persist in time and space) and their identification (also in time and space, when these objects persist and change their location) indicated in the title of the paper. I therefore present an outline of P.F. Strawson’s proposal, but also a purely formal approach that can be found in formal sciences (logic and mathematics). In the final part I give some ontological solution to Strawson’s research. It is a solution based on formal considerations within the so-called ontologically oriented versions of modal and temporal logics, which I proposed in my book Indywidua. Idee. Pojęcia (2008).

The paper tries to defend the thesis that it is impossible to decide upon moral issues without any references to the ontology of the world we live in. An illustrative example of the main argumentation line is the choice made by Cypher—a second plan character in the movie Matrix. Cypher decides to betray human rebels fighting against machines for freedom and, as a reward, accepts affluent life in the virtual reality. His choice seems to be superficially reprehensible because of the abandonment of the real world and authentic life. However, one can argue that the dichotomy between the real and virtual world is seeming. By choosing the virtual reality Cypher decided to act in a world which, like the real world, makes it possible to be a moral subject and enables authentic experience. The difference between both the worlds lies in the type of determination limiting any conscious subject. Cypher prefers to live in a world determined by the algorithm of Matrix more than in a world where his behaviour is determined by genes and other biological factors.