This paper attempts to demonstrate that the conviction about the harmony and order of the world was a fundamental metaphysical principle of the Pythagoreans. This harmony and order were primarily sought in the structures of arithmetics, yet following the discovery of incommensurable magnitudes (irrational numbers, as we now call them), the Pythagoreans began to see geometrical structure as a fundamental part of the world. On the example of the Pythagoreans’ metaphysics and science, the paper shows the mutual relations between metaphysics and science. It demonstrates— on the one hand—the necessity of the first as a guide for the latter, and—on the other—how our scientific research can change its basic metaphysical principles when these are found to be inappropriate. The paper also tries to show the need for a realistic approach in our scientific research by means of the same example of the Pythagoreans, that is, the need to discern something which is below the surface appearance.

As it is well known, Peter F. Strawson in the introduction to his book Individuals. An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics makes a famous distinction between two types of metaphysics: revisionist and descriptive. Descriptive metaphysics is defined there as a kind of philosophical reflection that “describes the actual structure of our thinking about the world”. Another formula used by Strawson is that descriptive metaphysics “reveals the most general features of our conceptual framework”. In the same text Strawson mentions Aristotle as one of the most important representatives of descriptive metaphysics. However, the question may be asked, whether the formulas used by Strawson adequately describe the actual conception of metaphysics in Aristotle. After all, the aim of Aristotle’s inquiry was to reveal the structure of real beings and to find the causes that are at work in reality, and not only to study our concepts with which we describe the world. In my paper I discuss different ways in which Aristotle’s metaphysical project might be understood and I try to determine to what extent it can be associated with descriptive metaphysics in the sense defined by Strawson. In particular, I inquire to what extent Aristotle uses in his metaphysics the methods proposed in his theory of dialectic, whose aim was to help in the study commonly accepted concepts and beliefs (endoxa).

In the first part, ‘Visions’, a pattern of interpreting Western philosophical thought, as an attempt to deal with the problem of axiological catastrophe, is outlined. In the second part, ‘Vastness’, the author tries to show how far human speculative thinking (metaphysical thinking) can be extended, regardless of whether the ‘vastness’ that human metaphysics aims at is realized one way or another. The third part, ‘God’, deals with the relationship between the concept of God and the concept of metaphysical vastness. The fourth part is called ‘Cradle’ and its intention is to show that in comparison with real or only possible metaphysical vastness, the world in which we live is a kind of beginning of an infinite life, and therefore serves as a cradle. In the last part, entitled ‘Fullness’, some ideas are proffered to show how the eternal life of such entities as human persons may appear against the background of metaphysical vastness.

This article aims to reconstruct Max Scheler’s conception of three types of knowledge, outlined in his late work Philosophical Perspectives (1928). Scheler distinguished three kinds of knowledge: empirical, used to exercise control over nature, eidetic (essential) and metaphysical. I review the epistemological criteria that underlie this distinction, and its functionalistic assumptions. In the article’s polemic part I accuse Scheler of a) crypto-dualism in his theory of knowledge, which draws insufficient distinctions between metaphysical and eidetic knowledge; b) totally omitting the status of the humanities in his classification of knowledge types; c) consistently developing a philosophy of knowledge without resort to the research tools offered by the philosophy of science, which takes such analyses out of their social and historical context (i.e., how knowledge is created in today’s scientific communities).

The celebrated Polish avant‑garde artist Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz turned form arts to philosophy in the later years of his life. He was in contact with prominent Polish professional philosophers, e.g., T. Kotarbiński and R. Ingarden. He wrote a philosophi-cal treatise of his own and published several essays explaining his views, defending them in fiery polemical tracts. Although an autodidact himself, his erudition on recent philosophical topics, scientific trends and achievements was impressive. To his favorite philosophical ‘enemies’, as he was fond to say, belonged Bertrand Russell, along with other famous thinkers of that time, e.g., A. Whitehead, R. Carnap or L. Wittgenstein.

Positivism is a family of philosophical views characterized by a highly favorable account of science. The characteristic theses of positivism are that science is the only valid knowledge and that philosophy does not possess a method different from science (scientism). Positivists attempted to eliminate all metaphysical components in the area of philosophy. Wolniewicz was one of the most original Polish analytical philosophers of second part of 20th century and he was a strong opponent of anti-metaphysical tendencies. The author discusses the problem of the relationship between science and philosophy and presents Wolniewicz’s arguments against positivism and scientism.

The works of Bogusław Wolniewicz contain a philosophical system. It needs to be extracted and revealed through a recomposition of his output which comprises close to 600 individual publications and auditions. It is a system of Pythagorean-Manichean kind, or, to put it differently, Leibnizian-Augustinian kind. The Professor described his philosophy as a rational ‘tychism’. It claims that the world and man are governed by chance (especially human nature in which an element of evil has some influence) and that mind, even though it uses logic to reflect the world, is barely an irrelevant addition in the vast universe. Such a stance is unusual in modern thought, though not in the history of thinking. It is in clear opposition to the scientifically bended rationalism and irrationalism that dominate contemporary thought. The logical coherency and extensiveness of Wolniewicz’s concerns constitute the essence of his philosophical system, though it goes largely unnoticed, due to the meaninglessness of several of his claims to his opponents. At its foundation lies the metaphysics of situations developed by L. Wittgenstein but further elaborated by Wolniewicz. The contribution by Wolniewicz is not his greatest accomplishment, however. The metaphysics of situations is his organon – merely a thinking tool – used to extract the most crucial and deeply hidden truths about the world. Due to these circumstances and the modern achievements in logic when it is practiced in Wolniewicz’s style, new discoveries are made that were not possible in the past. For example, it is possible to incorporate both Christian axiology and anthropology with Marx’s sociology in one system. It evocates widespread amazement but also fierce resistance from conservative readers, but their protests are ungrounded. ‘Truth always agrees with truth’ – said Wolniewicz. When it comes to Wolniewicz’s system, its coherence counts most, and it is best manifested in the objectivistic and absolutistic philosophy of values as well as pessimistic philosophy of the human condition (both being of Christian provenance). One can depict Wolniewicz’s system as a cathedral with numerous towers, persistently built over 70 years of his active academic life. The main towers are: ontological-theological, anthropological and axiological (of practical philosophy, describing human duties). Standing shoulder to shoulder with them are smaller turrets corresponding to such subfields as epistemology, philosophy of culture, philosophy of religion, esthetics etc. The metaphysical aspect of Wolniewicz’s philosophy is blended from specific classic theorems and original claims expressed in synthetic a priori propositions. They are supported by the logical structure of language, and language itself is supported by the structure of human genotype (DNA). Technically one can reach the most general truths about the world by continuous thinking, but the ability to use that skill is a privilege reserved for exceptional geniuses.

Zasadniczym celem artykułu jest przedstawienie rekonstrukcji, krytyki i reinterpretacji jednej z metod konstrukcyjnych zastosowanych przez Leszka Nowaka do budowy negatywistycznej metafizyki unitarnej. Twierdzenie Nowaka, że podstawową stosowaną przez niego metodą jest metoda idealizacji i konkretyzacji, nie da się utrzymać z następujących powodów: postulowana przez Nowaka struktura doktryn metafizycznych jest niezgodna z procedurą konkretyzacji na gruncie metafizyki unitarnej, sekwencja modeli jest w kilku przypadkach dowolna, kolejność wprowadzanych do koncepcji pojęć jest do pewnego stopnia dowolna oraz stosowana metoda nie prowadzi do zmniejszenia stopnia spekulatywności systemu. Ze swej strony proponuję uznać powyższą metodę za metodę abstrakcji i odabstrakcyjniania, i scharakteryzować odmienny sposób rozumienia metody idealizacji i konkretyzacji. W wyniku tych zabiegów zawartość Bytu i myśli uznana zostaje za spekulatywny pierwszy model metafizyki negatywistycznej

Żyjemy w czasach, w których wzrasta znaczenie sztucznej inteligencji oraz oczekiwanie na coraz bardziej inteligentne systemy. W miarę jak sztuczna inteligencja i inteligentne roboty przejmują od człowieka różne funkcje, pojawiają się pytania o rodzaj i zakres ich działania w stosunku do możliwości człowieka. Proces ten rodzi pytanie, czy można wskazać takie sfery ludzkiej aktywności, które nie mogą być powielone przez inteligentne programy lub roboty? Na pierwszy rzut oka takimi własnościami człowieka jest emocjonalność, uczuciowość i twórczość. W niniejszym artykule analizuję, czy inteligentne roboty mogłyby być twórcze artystycznie i zastępować w tym procesie człowieka. Zakładam, że choć trudno jest w dzisiejszych czasach wskazaćnowatorsko twórcze roboty, to równie trudno podawać w wątpliwość fakt, że roboty w jakimś sensie tworzą sztukę. Wprawdzie z dzisiejszej perspektywy natura ludzka jest jeszcze pod tym względem niepowielalna przez roboty i sztuczną inteligencję, ale równocześnie wykracza się w niej coraz bardziej poza postawę antropocentryczną, przyjmując, że twórczość nie jest wyłącznąwłasnością, lecz jedynie właściwością człowieka, i że mówiąc o sztucznej inteligencji, można dopuścić myśl o uprawianej przez nią twórczości.

The normative system of Bogusław Wolniewicz (1927–2017) can be subsumed under three categories: (1) pessimism (fatalism, or ‘tychism’ in Wolniewicz’s terms), (2) moral determinism (‘non-meliorism’), (3) conservatism (‘right-hand orientation’). Ad (1) Wolniewicz was pessimistic in two ways: he believed human life to be tragic (fatalism) and was also convinced that most people are guided by bad instincts (dualism). Ad (2) Wolniewicz believed that moral character was biologically determined and immutable. But his strong position on this subject ignores the classical view of Aristotle or the Stoics for whom moral character (or conscience) was acquired by habit and shaped deliberately. Ad (3) I suggest that a good historical example of conservative tendency was Critias of Athens. His famous fragment of the Sisyphus contains the idea of a supremacy of laws over human passions, and reduces religion to a supportive role with respect to ethics and politics. Wolniewicz’s dualism of right-hand and left-hand orientation encourages me to distinguish between a right-wing and a left-wing perception of value. For a leftist, value is intensity of a chosen feature (progressive value), whereas for a rightist, value is an area of freedom between inacceptable extremities (modular value). On these premises I propose a simple model of axiological conflict between left-wing and right-wing citizens.

Professor Juliusz Domański, a renowned classical scholar and neo‑Latinist, has published Wykłady o humanizmie („Lectures on humanism”, 2020). He starts from Plato and makes Erasmus of Rotterdam the terminal point of his intellectual voyage. This itinerary comprises the story of the conflict between philosophy and liberal arts concerning the question how poetry is to be taught. Platonic objections against poets met with eager welcome in Christianity. Yet even in the Middle Ages scholars remained devoted to the study of the ancient literature, although the dominant model of education was at that time more and more resolutely ‘scientific’. The goal of education was defined as developing astute abilities in specific ‘arts’ ( artes) rather than studying classical ‘authors’ ( auctores). In order to understand different views on the relation between philosophy and poetry I recall Bogusław Wolniewicz’s remark that human activities can be developed in four different fields: naturalistic rationalism, metaphysical rationalism, naturalistic irrationalism and metaphysical irrationalism.

From a historical point of view, Peter F. Strawson’s philosophical studies are an important element within contemporary interdisciplinary investigations of the mind-body problem. The aim of this article is to present and analyze Strawson’s program of descriptive metaphysics, along with the associated conception of persons, that he has proposed. In the second part, I also present his non-reductive naturalism, focusing on two of his analyses that belong to the field of mind-body relations: these concern the problem of other minds, and the question of the nomological reduction of mental states of persons to physical ones (i.e. mind-body identity theory). I then point to several possibilities of using Strawson’s conception of persons in the context of issues raised by other questions linked to the mind-body problem (namely, personal identity as it relates to split-brain persons, and the different phases of a person’s development).

W artykule konfrontuję koncepcję osoby Petera Strawsona z koncepcją osoby Paula Ricoeura, traktując je jako reprezentatywne ilustracje podejścia semantyczno-ontologicznego i pragmatyczno-egzystencjalnego (lub hermeneutycznego) zarazem do problemu języka i do problemu bytu zwanego osobą. Zaznaczam różnice między tymi podejściami, ale wskazuję także na ich punkty wspólne. Zgodnie z przedstawioną interpretacją, Ricoeur w swojej próbie przezwyciężenia ograniczeń semantycznej teorii osoby rozwija i uwypukla wątki, które w sposób marginalny były obecne już w teorii Strawsona, a skądinąd docenia znaczenie tych, które w tej teorii były pierwszoplanowe, chociaż je relatywizuje. Stosunek Ricoeura do Strawsona pokazuje złożoną relację między tzw. filozofią kontynentalną i tzw. filozofią analityczną.

In his 1903 monograph Principles of Mathematics Bertrand Russell formulated a theory which interpreted a proposition expressed by a sentence as a unitary bond of referents (meanings) of its parts. In the paper I argue that the problem he faced in his attempt to define the unity of proposition is a special case of a wider philosophical problem of the relation between language and the world. Mentioned for the first time by Plato in Parmenides and then repeated by Aristotle in Metaphysics, infinite regress formulated as ʻthe third man argument’ presented a problem for Francis Bradley, Bertrand Russell and Gottlob Frege. It was reformulated in syntactic terms by Hans Reichenbach and used by Donald Davidson as an argument against referential semantics. The conclusion of the paper is as follows: ʻthe third man argument’ is a result of projecting syntactic structures of language on metaphysically conceived referential semantics. It does not undermine ontology conceived as an investigation of possible beings.

The presented paper describes the phenomenon of secularisation and secularism in the culture of Western Europe, and attempts to identify its sources. The first point of the paper, The meaning of secularization and secularism, explains secularisation as a social process in which religion or, more strictly, religious institutes, religious behaviour, and religiously inspired conscience, are gradually losing their control over many fields of social activity such like education, arts or politics. Secularisation can be labelled as a philosophy of life “as if there were no God”, or a kind of ideology that tries to justify not only the very fact of secularisation but declares it a source and norm for human progress and demands the proclamation of man’s absolute autonomy in shaping his own destination. Among many philosophers who have influenced development of secularisation and secularism two stand out: R. Descartes (second point) and F. Nietzsche (third point). In the philosophy of Descartes one can identify at least four sources of modern secularism. These are: his concept of philosophy, theory of cognition with the resulting departure from classical concepts of truth and rationality and development of alternative ones, Cartesian metaphysics and the arguments for the existence of God and his concept of the nature of God evolving from those arguments. The last part of the article presents Nietzsche’s move away from the faith in Christian God and his turn to atheism. At least three fundamental causes for Nietzsche’s radical autosecularisation can be discerned: the emotional religion of his home, his disbelief in the authenticity of the Bible and his growing familiarity with the philosophy of Schopenhauer.

The main issues of this article are various references of Russian writers to the Bible that has a huge meaning and status in Russian culture. Such writers as representatives of „first wave" of emigration Boris Zaitsev, Ivan Shmelov, Aleksei Remizov, they use biblical material in orthodox, canonical way, what means that they do not change intention of the source. As well they paraphrase the Bible what means that they interpret and change semantical meaning of source. To the first group of writers belong Zaitsev (The Travel of Gleb) and Shmelov (The Year of Our Lord). To the second groupbelongs Remizov, who uses various techniques to transform the canonical text (Sisters of the Cross). Remizov, however, does not change the Christian meaning of text even when he modifies the text itself. Another writer, who was mentioned in the article, is Mikhail Bulhakov. He as well uses method of paraphrase in the biblical text. On account of lack of metaphysical horizon as well as not reli- gious meaning of the work The Master and Margarita, the writer illustrates humanistic and cultural reception of the Bible, her apocryphal version.

P.F. Strawson and J.L. Austin approach the problem of other minds from different perspectives. Peter Strawson looks at this problem from the perspective of descriptive metaphysics, which largely disregards the concrete situations in which we use mental language. John Austin, on the other hand, believes that to understand what is happening in such situations holds the key to solving the former problem. However, as it turns out, the considerations of both authors in the key fragments rely on similar observations. In addition, Austin’s perspective, which looks at the language from the point of view of its usage, makes it possible to formulate an answer to the Strawson’s critics. This does not exclude the possibility of agreeing with Strawson on the primacy of the reference function of language, if we understand it properly. Ultimately, Strawson and Austin’s approaches do not compete, but complement each other.

Stanowisko Feuerbacha nazywam antropomorfizmem co do pojęcia Boga, krócej – antropomorfizmem teologicznym. Uznaję je za teorię, i akceptuję. Teza główna tej teorii głosi (w sformułowaniu semantycznym): w każdej deskrypcji „Bóg” (takiej, że jej skrótem jest nazwa „Bóg”) występują wyłącznie wyrażenia dotyczące człowieka. W języku mentalistycznym natomiast (endemicznym Feuerbachowi): nie ma w pojęciu Boga niczego, co wykraczałoby treściowo poza pojęcia dotyczące człowieka. Antropomorfizm Feuerbacha ma wersję słabą oraz wersję mocną. Słaba – pojęcie Boga ma faktycznie feuerbachowską charakterystykę. Mocna – feuerbachowska charakterystyka pojęcia Boga jest konieczna na sposób konieczności przyrodniczej. Wersje te można zespolić, korzystając z dictum znalezionego dla opisu analogicznej sytuacji – ignoramus et ignorabimus. Antropomorfizm Feuerbacha konfrontuję z najmocniejszym argumentem, jaki potrafię sobie wyobrazić – z argumentem wymierzonym w naturalizm, rezerwuar przesłanek Feuerbacha. Argument ten dozbrajam obiecującą ontologią pojęć, zaczerpniętą od Bernarda Bolzano. Pokazuję na koniec, że maszyneria ta nie pracuje, a (niefeuerbachowskie) absolutne pojęcie Boga jest (uwaga: zależność o kontrintuicyjnym przebiegu!) niekonstruowalne, bo nieskonstruowane. W tym położeniu, mając antropomorfizm teologiczny za hipotezę przyrodniczą, czekam cierpliwie (zgodnie skądinąd z postulatem Stratona) na jej obalenie.