The article discusses Socrates’ views on what the Good is that are presented by Plato in his Politea. It takes into consideration two interpretations: Socrates’ statements contained in Politea on the one hand, and interpretation of the Good that functions in the so-called indirect tradition, that is in doxographic texts by Aristotle, Theophrast and other authors (Testimonia Platonica). According to Socrates the Good is the most fundamental principle of all that exists (arche), but Socrates did not define further what it is. According to the ‘indirect tradition’ the Good is also a positive principle, and its essence is One. Besides the Good as One the ‘indirect tradition’ also assumed existence of an unspecified duality. Mutual determining of these principles leads to the origin of reality. The author of the article tries to find an answer to the question: which of these interpretations of the Good is more accurate.

Russian philosophy appeared the in the 19th century on the basis of christian patristic, Ancient Greek thought, German idealism and world outlook ideas of the Orthodox Church. In ontology it is inclined to platonism. Most of all it is interested in a problem of belief and intellect, and also anthropological problematics of suffering, freedom, good and evil, sense of life. The presence of realism an ontology and personalism in anthropology is conditioned by a religious context.

Alexander of Aphrodisia in his treatise attempts to present his own conception of destiny, which – as he stresses – is to be in line with the teaching of Aristotle. Fate is identified with one of the efficient causes, namely with nature. The greater part of the work is devoted to a polemic with Stoics, whom he regarded as his main opponents. What is characteristic, he does argue with those representatives of the Stoic school who were his contemporaries (New Stoa), but with the founders of this philosophical trend. From this point of view, the treatise is one ot the main sources to study the views represented by the old Stoic school.

The paper proposes a system of formal logic, called Relative-Identity Logic (RI-logic). It is shown how to translate a large class of sentences using the vocabulary of Trinitarian theology into the language of RI-logic. This class includes sentences containing singular terms like „God” and „the Holy Spirit”. It is argued that no contradiction is derivable from this class in RI-logic. This treatment differs from the work of P.T. Geach and others in its detailed attention to singular terms and its use of „is the same being as” in place of the more specific „is the same God as”.

Determinizm, przyczynowość, przypadek, wolna wola i Boska opatrzność stanowią klasyczny, splątany problem, leżący w trzech domenach: filozofii, teologii i fizyki. Niedawny artykuł Dariusza Łukaszewicza w Rocznikach Filozoficznych (nr 3 z 2020 r.) jest tego znakomitym przykładem. Klasyczna fizyka, ta Newtona i Laplace’a, może prowadzić do deizmu: Bóg stworzył świat, ale ten działa sam, jak mechaniczny zegarek. Fizyka kwantowa przyniosła pewną „nadzieję” dla raczej naiwnej teologii: Bóg działa w lukach między kwantami nieoznaczoności. Oczywiście, ścisły determinizm zagrażałby istnieniu wolnej woli. Tak, ale tylko wówczas, gdyby ludzki umysł był rządzony tylko prawami fizyki i gdyby nic nie istniało poza fizycznymi granicami czasu i przestrzeni. Dyskutujemy, że ludzkie działania leży pomiędzy dwoma światami: „ziemią” i „niebem”, używając języka Księgi Rodzaju. W świecie niematerialnym, poza ograniczeniami czasu i przestrzeni, zdarzenia deterministyczne nie stanowią sekwencyjnego łańcucha. Dyskutujemy natomiast, że zasada przyczynowości, prawo nadrzędne nawet dla fizyki, rządzi również w świecie niematerialnym. Tak więc, determinizm w świecie materialnym i przyczynowość w obu światach wydają się być warunkami dostatecznymi, aby wyeliminować „chaotyczne” czy przypadłościowe przyczyny ludzkiego (i Boskiego) działania.

The well-trotted path of interpretation of tragedy refers to a positive conflict of forces or values. In this article, we examine another possibility: to focus on a negative act involved in the tragedy, i.e., avoidance of essential goods and attachments. The avoidance makes the tragic hero live in a contracted world in which he cannot choose a good or save himself. The distinction between the positive and negative aspects of a tragic situation intersects with the distinction between the two layers of tragedy. The first layer involves unfortunate events and the subject’s strategies of resistance and self-preservation. The second layer involves new interactions between the subject, and the new reality changed by the effort of resistance. The new interaction leads to tragic guilt and turns the subject into a tragic hero. Between these layers, there is a dynamic exchange of content as it is between the negative and positive aspects of the tragedy. The negative act (rejection of values and attachments) and the affirmative act (the stand taken in an actual conflict of values, rations, claims) are mutually entangled. Any viable interpretation of tragedy should be able to follow both directions of their interaction. It is natural for philosophical hermeneutic to start with the negative act because it shows the immersion of tragedy in the structure of existence. This approach does not, however, remove the need for another hermeneutics, starting with the tragic experience. We tried to show this possibility by referring to the philosophy of Lev Shestov.

Czy miłość może usprawiedliwić zdradę? Autorka tekstu zaprasza do spojrzenia na powieść Borysa Pasternaka Doktor Żywago przez pryzmat krzywdy i przebaczenia. Bohaterów powieści przedstawia jako ludzi ze skazą, naznaczonych winą i cierpieniem. Zastanawia się, czy Lara Antipowa i Jura Żywago mogą usprawiedliwić swoje czyny pięknem i siłą swojej miłości, bo wydaje się, że w tym kierunku podąża narracja Pasternaka. Wskazując na skutki moralne ich czynów, Autorka uważa, że nie sposób ich usprawiedliwić najbardziej racjonalną interpretacją. Jej zdaniem powieść, kończąc się śmiercią głównych bohaterów, otwiera się na sferę transcendentalną, w której poranieni ludzie, udręczeni cierpieniem, stoją wobec siebie nadzy w swoim człowieczeństwie, uwolnieni od bagażu winy i krzywdy.

The article examines the relation between correspondence and convergence in Charles S. Peirce’s theory of truth. An analysis of the context in which the pragmatic concept of truth was introduced, as well as the logical structure of Peirce’s definition, support the claim that Peirce’s position should be understood as a reform of the classical concept of truth rather than its rejection. In particular, the question of the nominalist and realist interpretation of classical and nonclassical accounts of truth is addressed, as well as a critique of the proposal to reconcile the actualist and counterfactual interpretation of the convergence condition for truth.

This article aims to analyze the theory of truth contained in Edmund Husserl’s Logical Investigations. In my analysis, I start from a detailed description of conditions of the possibility of truth based on Husserl’s alethiology. I show that his theory assumes correlation, the parallelism between subjective and objective conditions of the possibility of cognition as a condition of truth. Based on this, I explain Husserl’s interpretation of the correspondence definition of truth found in Logical Investigations. I also provide arguments that this interpretation presupposes the ontological definition of truth and the idea of the infinite intellect as the ideal of a direct and exhaustive presentation of the object of cognition. Nonetheless, my conclusions don’t provide a complete interpretation of Husserl’s alethiology because I refrain from drawing metaphysical consequences from it. That is to say, I neither answer the question about realism/idealism in Logical Investigations nor the question of whether the idea of the infinite intellect should be understood in some metaphysical way (e.g. theistic one) or only as a regulative idea in the Kantian sense.

The paper discusses the lingual genesis of consciousness. The author reconstructs Daniel C. Dennett’s naturalization strategy, showing how, according to Dennett, language enables the emergence of consciousness in the evolution of humankind. This naturalization assumes a behavioristic view according to which consciousness is a covert verbal behavior. The author shows that Dennett adopts and transforms Mead’s, Skinner’s, and Jaynes’s original behavioristic approaches inscribing them into a course of human evolution. This inscription leads to specific problems discussed in the final part of the paper: There are actually two definitions of consciousness in Dennett’s philosophy — first says that consciousness is a kind of verbal behavior, second says that it is a virtual memetic machine. There is no explanation of the execution rule that could show how given mind content becomes conscious; Dennett introduces the competition metaphor instead. Some contentful events in the brain (mind contents) simply win with others. Inscription of the possible scenario of consciousness development in the evolutionary landscape does not mean that one can testify the theory yet.

Robert B. Brandom’s semantic inferentialism is an important and new theory of meaning in the contemporary, analytical philosophy of language. This theory is presented in an extensive way in the monograph entitled Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing and Discursive Commitment. The theory is pragmatic, normative, holistic and discursive. On the one hand, Brandom’s standpoint is glorified and on the other hand, it is controversial. This is why a metaphilosophical question arises: How to evaluate the impact of this theory into the philosophy of language? Inferentialism emphasises a material inference, de re ascription and the usage of demonstratives. Such categories are “vertical” and they accent „connection” with reality. Nevertheless, Brandom also emphasises an anaphoric concept of reference and truth. It makes his standpoint valuable because anaphoric understanding of reference and truth delivers an additional explication of the usage of words “refer to” or “is true.” But such categories are “horizontal.” Brandom grasps the problem of acquiring empirical meaning by expressions which initiate anaphoric chains. This is why he proposes — as an attempt of solving the problem — a modification of semantic inferentialism by adding revisionary and fallibilistic epistemology. In addition, Brandom enforces his theory by normative pragmatics which applies categories of assertion, entitlement, various commitments and a “score-keeping.” However, it seems that what is still missing is a notion of truth stronger than the one proposed in the anaphoric conception. What is requested is a notion of truth expressed in terms of the relation of the correspondence between a language and a reality. The disadvantage of the idea of correspondence is that it is difficult to define in a satisfactory way. But an important advantage is that it is “a language-reality” relation and not only “a language-language” relation. The objection does not demolish inferentialism. It expresses only a general epistemological difficulty of defining truth. However, the importance of inferentialism is that it tries to unite various elements. The theory attempts to explicate — in a more adequate way — what a meaning is and to explain how it is acquired by expressions.

The article analyzes the theory of philosophy of nature presented by Piotr Chojnacki. This concept was an important component of the Leuven (neo)Thomism, developed also in the Polish Thomistic philosophical milieu, which since the beginning of the 20th century has been in crisis. I argue that the cause of this crisis was the eclectic nature of the Leuven Thomism as it was developed by Piotr Chojnacki. Although in contemporary philosophy eclecticism is being rehabilitated, due to the dominant scientism and naturalism, the prospects for the development of the philosophy of nature inspired by the program of Leuven Thomism seem to be very limited.

Leszek Kołakowski w swoich licznych książkach i artykułach podejmował wiele zagadnień z zakresu zarówno historii filozofii, jak i filozofii współczesnej. Prowadził badania związane m.in. z problematyką filozofii Karola Marksa, filozofii społecznej czy filozofii religii. We wszystkich tych obszarach głównym przedmiotem zainteresowania polskiego filozofa pozostaje pytanie o człowieka. Niniejszy artykuł ma na celu przybliżenie wybranych rozważań Kołakowskiego związanych z tym pytaniem. W sposób syntetyczny zostają pokazane dzieje jego myśli. Punktem wyjścia tych dziejów jest marksistowska koncepcja człowieka, która po pewnym okresie zostaje skonfrontowana z koncepcją religijną, by tę z kolei skonfrontować z koncepcją liberalną. Wobec żadnej z tych koncepcji Kołakowski nie pozostaje bezkrytyczny, co pokazuje ogromną złożoność każdej próby zrozumienia tego, kim jest człowiek — niezależnie od stanowiska, z perspektywy którego próbuje się go interpretować, wymyka się on jednoznacznym odpowiedziom. Mimo braku tych jednoznacznych odpowiedzi, Kołakowski przyjmuje jednak, że jedynym w zasadzie punktem odniesienia w stosunku do wszelkich prób zgłębienia sytuacji człowieka w kulturze jest religia.

The aim of this article is to present the problem of truth in ethics in the light of the ethical theories of two philosophers: Polish philosopher Tadeusz Styczeń and French philosopher Alain Badiou. The article is divided into three parts. The first part and the second part, introductions are to the ethics of truth by Tadeusz Styczeń and the ethics of truths by Alain Badiou. The third part is a presentation of the notion of truth as a basis of ethics in order to reveal the concepts of truth lying at the base of these thinkers’ ethics’ and to compare them.

The article discusses the sources of philosophical inspirations of Andrzej Maryniarczyk, one of the most outstanding representatives of the third generation of the Lublin Philosophical School. This school draws on the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition, in which metaphysics plays a central role. Thus, it is not surprising that it was the thought of Aristotle and Aquinas that became Maryniarczyk’s main research subject and a source of inspiration. The author of Metoda metafizyki realistycznej [The Method of Realistic Metaphysics] was also interested in the thought of Mieczysław Albert Krąpiec and Karol Wojtyła, contemporary representatives of the Thomistic tradition, and, at the same time, prominent representatives of the Lublin Philosophical School. From his predecessors, Maryniarczyk learned what philosophy is, what its subject is, and how it should be practiced. He treated these thinkers as his guides in realistic philosophizing, drawing from them inspiration for being a philosopher in the twenty-first century by taking a particular attitude towards reality and ongoing discourse.

The article presents the method of analytic description as applied in the theory of questions. This procedure, described by Tadeusz Czeżowski and broadly used in the Lvov-Warsaw School, is applied first of all at the pre-theoretic stage of research, namely to construct the conceptual scheme of a given discipline and to classify the objects of investigations. Ajdukiewicz’s theory of questions and its developments, in particular recent works of Adam Jonkisz, are presented as examples of the applications of this method. Analytic description is contrasted with other procedures, which differ from it with respect to the empirical basis and theoretical perspective. On this background, differences between various currents in erotetic research as well as the sources of misunderstandings between the representatives of these currents are explained.

In this paper I first present in a few sentences the main theses of Ajdukiewicz’s theory of questions, then I briefly express the main theses of Professor Jonkisz’s book and the indisputable advantages of this work. Then I put forward my objections to some theoretical solutions adopted by the Author, namely the assumption that datum questionis is sequence of components without any syntactic requirements, the assumption about the special character of the so called generalized negation and the assumption that no ontological assumptions are adopted in the work. The adoption of the language of set theory is already a privileging of a set theory ontology.

In this text I discuss and debate Adam Jonkisz’s book Questions and Answers: Set-theoretic approach. I consider, among other things, the problem of the minimal component of question, of the division of questions, of the specificity of existential questions. I put forward a thesis that every question is a question to be completed, in the sense that every question expresses a ‘gap’ in our knowledge that should be filled. The natural division of questions corresponds to the numbers and types of these ‘gaps.’

In this article I address the contributions of Anna Brożek, Marek Lechniak and Jacek Wojtysiak as formulated in the course of their discussion of my monographic study Pytania i odpowiedzi. Ujęcie teoriomnogościowe [Questions and answers: A Set-theoretic approach]. My responses in the article are divided into substantive and methodological ones, depending on whether the comments and suggestions for improvement formulated in their contributions refer to the actual conception proposed in the book or to the methods used in its construction. In my substantive comments, I respond to issues relating to the structure, types and accuracy of questions. I argue that: (i) the schematisations of question structure proposed in the monograph are a development of the so-called “Polish schema” that is such as to make it possible to exhibit and remove the elements of ambiguity in any interrogative sentences and questions based on them; (ii) although the general schematic structure is common to all questions, the division of questions adopted in the monograph — especially into questions to be resolved and others — is substantively justified and logically correct; (iii) the claims put forward regarding the relations between the accuracy of questions and the truth of their assumptions are correct — even though a general inference to the accuracy of the questions at issue from the truth of their assumptions requires (as J. Wojtysiak has observed) an additional condition to be met. My methodological remarks concern the so-called component-combinatorial method of analysing questions, the notion of so-called “generalised negation”, and the evaluation of the philosophical methods on display in the monograph in the light of the relevant model of the philosophical method (as described by A. Brożek). I show that: (iv) the method of representing and analysing interrogative sentences used in the monograph provides a tool for distinguishing all of their possible meanings (possible questions), which in the reconstruction of question situations narrows down the analyses to questions that comply with the rules of language (excluding as it does the construction of meaningless combinations, as warned against by M. Lechniak), while on the other hand enabling it to be the case that out of the total number of possible ones, only questions relevant in a given situation are taken into account; (v) the negation non, though ultimately based on propositional negation ~ (it is defined by disjunction ∨ and negation ~), is its generalisation, since it can be applied not only to the whole matrix p of the question “Is it the case that p?”, but also to any of its parts, right down to its individual components, and at the same time is equivalently replaceable with ~ in the situation of negation of the entire matrix p; (vi) the mode of philosophising that I have employed in the monograph is consistent with a method combining analysis, paraphrasing, and axiomatisation, even if it is far removed from model axiomatisation especially, and needs further completion in respect of the so-called theoretical “verbal corpus” — i.e. in terms of the references it makes to other conceptions of questions and answers.

Ireneusz Ziemiański argues that idolatry belongs to the essence of religion and for this reason a non-idolatrous religion is impossible. I formulate three objections to this thesis: the objection from "religion zero", the objection from the accidental act of worship and the objection from the non-relevance of ontic distance. The objection from “religion zero” refers to the possibility of the existence of an individual and non-institutionalised religion, thus lacking the components of typical religions that are constantly threatened by idolatry. The objection from the accidental act of worship suggests that it is possible that someone confuses the object of his own act of worship and unconsciously worships God without committing idolatry. The objection from the nonrelevance of ontic distance indicates that the transcendence of God is not an obstacle to worship, but a necessary condition for it.