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.

Metaphysical tenderness does exist – it lies at the core of joyful acceptance of all manifestations of life on both sides of our skin and determines our zest for life, perhaps to a greater extent than money, fame, or origin.

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).

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.

The article treats about a forgotten play Zaduszki (All Souls’ Day) by Stefan Grabiński, widely known as the author of fantastic literature and horror stories. The play Zaduszki consists of three parts: 1. Strzygoń. Klechda zaduszna; 2. W dzień zaduszny; 3. Sen Krysty. Misterium zaduszne. First of them is written in folk dialect. The second one, sometimes named „the longest one-act play ever staged in Polish theatre”, considers a problem of a fault and a punishment. The third one, similarly to the first one, presents folk beliefs in supernatural phenomena which take place on All Souls’ Day. Moreover, it partly resembles a mystery play. Although the trilogy got an unfavourable reception (it was shown only seven times in Juliusz Słowacki Theatre in Kraków), it may be considered as an ambitious attempt to match the heritage of Stanisław Wyspiański – according to Grabiński, the greatest authority in the field of theatre.

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).

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.

The aim of this article is a critical revision of the dominant philosophical conceptualization of plants. The author deconstructs the tradition of describing plants in metaphysical and anthropocentric categories by deploying a set of tropes and strategies from the toolkit of deconstruction and phenomenology. While considering the 'plant-being', he formulates an alternative concept of 'plant-thinking', whose distinctive features are non-identity, voicelessness, non-essentionality and existence outside any symbol system. Conceptualized in these categories the plant not only defies the received discourse of metaphysics but also becomes a stepping stone and a most important figure of post-metaphysical thought.

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.

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.