This is a Polish translation of a fragment of Institutiones Philosophicae ad usum studiosorum Academiae Polocensis by Giuseppe Angiolini S.J. It corresponds to an article, entitled On Being, its Essence and Existence. The original Latin text is also included in the article.

This article discusses the biography, works and philosophical views of Giuseppe Angiolini, an Italian Jesuit working at the Academy of Polotsk at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. The whole philosophy represented by Angiolini is in line with Italian Catholic philosophy, which in turn was influenced by the traditional Jesuit Collegium Romanum. The philosophy of Angiolini contains certain Suarezian ideas. In this respect it was influenced by the Jesuit tradition, especially as regards the mental (...) difference between essence and existence, and modalism. (shrink)

This article discusses the biography, works and philosophical views of Giuseppe Angiolini, an Italian Jesuit working at the Academy of Polotsk at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. The whole philosophy represented by Angiolini is in line with Italian Catholic philosophy, which in turn was influenced by the traditional Jesuit Collegium Romanum. The philosophy of Angiolini contains certain Suarezian ideas. In this respect it was influenced by the Jesuit tradition, especially as regards the mental (...) difference between essence and existence, and modalism. (shrink)

The movement for the revival of the Scholastic tradition (Neo-Scholasticism) was a reaction to devastating criticism by the representatives of Enlightenment which led to the destruction of traditional metaphysics and of epistemological optimism, the two pillars of European religious philosophy. Reception of Kantian ideas in Neo-Scholasticism varied from total rejection to its use in renewing the philosophical foundation of religious philosophy. In this regard the legacy of the Polotsk Jesuit Academy was one of the first attempts to interpret Kant’s ideas (...) and confront them in the framework of the Scholastic tradition. It is therefore not irrelevant to look at how Kant’s programmatic ideas were perceived at the Polotsk Jesuit Academy, one of the few centres of Jesuit philosophy that survived in the territory of the Russian Empire in the early nineteenth century. The object of this study is the attempt at a critical analysis of Kant made in the Philosophical Instructions for Students at the Polotsk Academy by the Academy’s professor, Giuseppe Angiolini. Angiolini constantly refers to Kant in his reasoning and sees him as his main ideological rival. The ideas articulated in the Philosophical Instructions influenced the philosophical positions of the Academy’s graduates who in turn made a tangible contribution to the development of the Belarusian intellectual tradition. The relationship between Kant’s ideas and the ideas Angiolini drew from the Scholastic tradition is analysed through the use of the concepts that are common to both trends, such as the transcendental, the empirical and the sensible, self-evident truths and common sense. (shrink)

This paper proposes a critical analysis of that interpretation of the Nāgārjunian doctrine of the two truths as summarized—by both Mark Siderits and Jay L. Garfield—in the formula: “the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth”. This ‘semantic reading’ of Nāgārjuna’s theory, despite its importance as a criticism of the ‘metaphysical interpretations’, would in itself be defective and improbable. Indeed, firstly, semantic interpretation presents a formal defect: it fails to clearly and explicitly express that which it contains logically; (...) the previously mentioned formula must necessarily be completed by: “the conventional truth is that nothing is conventional truth”. Secondly, after having recognized what Siderits’ and Garfield’s analyses contain implicitly, other logical and philological defects in their position emerge: the existence of the ‘conventional’ would appear—despite the efforts of semantic interpreters to demonstrate quite the contrary—definitively inconceivable without the presupposition of something ‘real’; moreover, the number of verses in Nāgārjuna that are in opposition to the semantic interpretation (even if we grant semantic interpreters that these verses do not justify a metaphysical reconstruction of Nagarjuna’s doctrine) would seem too great and significant to be ignored. (shrink)

This paper proposes an interpretation of Nāgārjuna’s doctrine of the two truths that considers saṃvṛti and paramārtha-satya two visions of reality on which the Buddhas, for soteriological and pedagogical reasons, build teachings of two types: respectively in agreement with (for example, the teaching of the Four Noble Truths) or in contrast to (for example, the teaching of emptiness) the category of svabhāva. The early sections of the article show to what extent the various current interpretations of the Nāgārjunian doctrine of (...) the dve satye—despite their sometimes even macroscopic differences—have a common tendency to consider the notion of śūnyatā as a teaching not based on, but equivalent to supreme truth. This equivalence—philologically questionable—leads to interpretative paths that prove inevitably aporetic: indeed, according to whether the interpretation of śūnyatā is ‘metaphysical’ or ‘anti-metaphysical’, it gives rise to readings of Nāgārjuna’s thought incompatible, respectively, with anti-metaphysical and realistic types of verses traceable in the works of the author of the Mūla-madhyamaka-kārikā (MMK). On the contrary, by giving more emphasis to the expression samupāśritya (“based on”), which recurs in MMK.24.8, and therefore, by epistemologically separating the notion of śūnyatā from the notion of paramārtha-satya (and of some of its conceptual equivalents such as nirvāṇa, tattva and dharmatā), we may obtain an interpretation—at once realistic and anti-metaphysical—of the theory of the two truths compatible with the vast majority (or even totality) of Nāgārjuna’s verses. (shrink)

This paper supports the thesis that nihilistic interpretations of Madhyamaka philosophy derive from generally antirealistic and/or metaphysical approaches to Nāgārjuna’s thought. However, the arguments and many images by way of which the author of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā and his Indian commentators defend themselves from the charge of nihilism show limits in these approaches, and rather confirm that Nāgārjuna’s philosophy should be read as a theoretical proposal that is at once realistic and antimetaphysical. The epistemology inherent to the soteriological dimension of the (...) Buddha’s teaching, of which Nāgārjuna presents himself as a faithful continuer, assesses on the one hand the accomplishment of a ‘cognitive revolution’ consisting in the achievement of a new vision of reality and on the other the avoidance of any metaphysical description of the same vision. Comprehension of the Madhyamaka philosophical enterprise through a realistic-antimetaphysical lens seems to hinder and prevent the possibility of any nihilistic interpretation of Nāgārjuna. (shrink)

Der vorliegende Band diskutiert die Geschichts- und Sprachphilosophie Giambattista Vicos, primär in Bezug auf die Rechtslehre. Dabei wird Vico sowohl als Denker seines Zeitalters als auch in der Auseinandersetzung mit Autoren wie Suárez, Bacon, Descartes etc. gelesen und es ergeben sich immer wieder Bezüge zu aktuellen Debatten.

This article considers the function and value of the mythos in Plato's Statesman. As first, I recall the context of the story and its function within the framework of diairetic inquiry about the definition of the real politician. Secondly, I point out that the formulation of the myth is based on a series of traditional stories to which a historical-reconstructive method is applied. I then highlight the ways of reasoning used by the characters in order to reconstruct a rational and (...) plausible account from the mythical tradition. Finally, I try to show that the story, even though it cannot reach the truth of the most stable objects of knowledge, displays a certain degree of plausibility, based on the internal coherence, on the respect of a series of principles admitted as true and, eventually, on its correspondence with the mythical tradition. (shrink)

La crisi della politica affonda le sue radici in uno spazio povero di riflessione culturale. Le scelte dell’Europa, dopo le due guerre mondiali, pesano come macigni sul futuro dei giovani i quali si trovano disorientati dalla crisi della politica e dell’economia dovuta, secondo l’Autore, alla loro separazione dall’etica. Nel libro viene auspicato un rinnovamento di fondo della concezione della politica, per realizzare il bene comune e promuovere la coscienza morale concretizzando una democrazia matura.