The book by professor Stanisław Kowalczyk, renowned scholar in the field of social philosophy, is, without doubt, one of the most important studies on the idea of freedom. The concept of freedom is as old as mankind. It has many meanings and has been interpreted in many different ways. For instance, we also have the word „liberty," which means „freedom or right" and is synonymous with the word freedom, which means „the condition of being free." The author indicates that (...) in our times the notion of freedom is most frequently used; however, it is often misused or deceptive. Mass media and people of all walks of life talk of liberty; everyone talks of freedom and, for many, it is the highest value. Longing for freedom is rooted in the heart of every human being, for freedom is an existential correlate and the fulfilment of the rational human being. The semantic confusion about the notion of freedom leads to many misuses of the concept. Personalism, as a philosophical concept in which a person stands in the centre of all discussion, serves as a framework for the author's delineation on the concept of freedom. He further states that the appropriate understanding of this value is possible in the context of the personalistic interpretation of a human being. This is the focus of this informative and insightful book. (shrink)

Sport plays today an eminent role in man's life and in societies. Various sciences have made it the subject-matter of their reflection, i.e. psychology, sociology, the natural and humanistic sciences, art, philosophy, and theology. The present work seeks to answer some fundamental questions connected with the phenomenon of sport: what is it for man? whether and when does it serve the social integration of a community? what are the premises and principles of the ethics of sportive activity? what is the (...) aesthetic dimension of sport? what are the relations between sport and religious faith? The philosophical profile is dominant in the book, taking into consideration various aspects of sport: anthropological, social, axiological, and theological. (shrink)

The first part of the paper shows two types of the systems of contemporary logic placed in one of J. Bocheński’s works. The second part of the paper contains Bocheński’s theses concerning contemporary logic. They have been shown against the backdrop of the views held by other authors who discussed some kin issues. In order to supplement Bocheński’s considerations a division of functors has been added. They are divided into extensional and non-extensional. Much attention has been devoted to the problems (...) of logical constants that is rarely discussed in learned literature. It has been stressed that at least one of Bocheński’s typologies should basically be changed, having taken into account the remarks in the paper that supplement Bocheński’s analyses. The above issues have been discussed against the backdrop of the question of relations that obtain between contemporary logic, mathematics, and philosophy. (shrink)

La chronique dite de Monemvasie se divise en deux parties : la première présente le peuple slave qui a envahi le Péloponnèse et qui y est resté pendant 218 ans de la fin du 6e siècle jusqu'au début du 9e siècle, la seconde relate le contrôle du Pélopponèse par Byzance. Elle décrit notamment la construction de l'église de Patras.

The purpose of the essay is to critically analyze the influence of J. Derrida’s deconstruction on David J. Gunkel’s book Deconstruction (MIT Press 2021). Gunkel’s handbook is aimed at making deconstruction a tool of critical thinking accessible to non-professionals. It turns out that accomplishing this task comes at the expense of precisely the critical potential of deconstruction itself. Gunkel is well aware that his arguments are sometimes superficial and overlook deeper problems that should be addressed. Such a failure takes the (...) form of a fetishistic denial, which in psychoanalysis is summarized by the formula “I know well, but all the same.” In turn, deconstruction itself, insofar as it is separated from Kant’s transcendental philosophy and Hegel’s dialectics, becomes an academic ideology. Restoring its proper subversive potential can only be done by returning to a philosophy of reflection, in which the thinker himself must ultimately consider his own position as an author and bring it under criticism. This is the path that Gunkel avoids, because he could then no longer be the author of a handbook on deconstruction, rather than someone who practices deconstruction. -------------------------- Received: 4/11/2022. Reviewed: 13/12/2022. Accepted: 20/12/2022. (shrink)

Democracy - hope or illusion? Blooming, failing or declining? Our doubts and hesitation make part of unbending efforts to endorse and explain democracy. Who is right - the custodians of promise or the prophets of decline? The book concentrates on doubts. The author tries to explore «the other side of the moon», emphasizing the role of critical thinking, opposing a main-current optimism. Defending democracy we want to generate hope, but hoping may be a dangerous craft. Protecting our hope we are (...) prone to believe that democracy - even if it is not a full success story - is justified in its nature and out of question. How much do we have to forget to sanction this view? This is, in fact, the main question the book raises. It gives voice to those who never, in their writing on democracy, used a flattering tone. Starting with Greek giants - Plato and Aristotle - up to modern and most recent times, going through a broad field of revealing criticism, leaving us with an unsettling feeling that democracy is rather something to be explained than something to be celebrated. Living in democracy, lamenting its underperformances, we must not overlook a fundamental question - in what part do our disappointments reflect the «art of forgetting», allowing us to cast into oblivion all serious doubts originating in a critical discourse on modernity and democracy? (shrink)

Author: Czerniak Stanisław Title: CAN WE RIGHTLY SPEAK ABOUT “KAZIMIERZ HOFFMAN’S PHILOSOPHY”? (SOME REMARKS CONCERNING THE PUBLICATION POZNAWANIE KAZIMIERZA HOFFMANA) (Filozofia Kazimierza Hoffmana? Refleksje na marginesie książki Poznawanie Kazimierza Hoffmana) Source: Filo-Sofija year: 2011, vol:.15, number: 2011/4, pages: 1038-1046 Keywords: KAZIMIERZ HOFFMAN, IDEA OF DIVINE, EXISTENCE, POETRY Discipline: PHILOSOPHY Language: POLISH Document type: ARTICLE Publication order reference (Primary author’s office address): E-mail: www:The article shows the philosophical background of Kazimierz Hoffman’s poetry. The author points to Hoffman’s idea of the (...) Divine, which creates all possible objects in the world and incessantly sustains their existence, treating it as the crucial point of his philosophical stance. Another question is devoted to a possible relationship between Hoffman’s philosophical views and the traditions of the philosophy of life and phenomenology. Worth examining are also some similarities between Hoffman’s concept of donation and the ethical standpoint of E. Lévinas. In conclusion to those considerations one could claim that in Hoffman’s poetry we experience an interesting kind of mysticism uniting the contemplation of the absolute order with the aesthetic, perfectionist attempts to write the “ideal poem” and to connect the metaphysical insight with the experimental form. In the article the author quotes extensively the most important hermeneutic conclusions contained in the book Poznawanie Kazimierza Hoffmana (“The Understanding of Kazimierz Hoffman”). (shrink)

Temptation and Free Will. A Solution to the Problem of the Relationship Between Human Free Will and God’s Omniscience The article aims to show that none of the today discussed positions concerning the relationship between human free will and God’s omniscience—determinism, compatibilism, molinism and libertarianian revisionism—is an adequate solution and proposes a position to some extent resembling Kant’s solution to his Third Antinomy, where he made the distinction between subject as causa phenomenon and subject as causanoumenon. God possesses not only (...) an absolute knowledge concerning all processes and events in the world, but He also has a full knowledge concerning what all human subjects will decide to do. Nevertheless, His absolute knowledge in this sense is compatible with human freedom, because ‘real freedom’ is ‘located’—as a causality of freedom—in individual human natures which already exist in eternity and of which our actual inner experience gives us only a ‘sensual scheme’ (Kant). Human persons are tempted by different life experiences which they receive, i.e. they are tested by God and it cannot be excluded that some of these personal essences will turn out to be only illusory and in this sense will be condemned. For all other persons worldly experience was planned by God as a necessary element of their future eternal life. Keywords:God, omniscience, freedom, determinism, eternal life, persons. (shrink)

This paper introduces the special issue on the Concept of God of the Journal of Applied Logics (College Publications). The issue contains the following articles: Logic and the Concept of God, by Stanisław Krajewski and Ricardo Silvestre; Mathematical Models in Theology. A Buber-inspired Model of God and its Application to “Shema Israel”, by Stanisław Krajewski; Gödel’s God-like Essence, by Talia Leven; A Logical Solution to the Paradox of the Stone, by Héctor Hernández Ortiz and Victor Cantero; No New (...) Solutions to the Logical Problem of the Trinity, by Beau Branson; What Means ‘Tri-’ in ‘Trinity’ ? An Eastern Patristic Approach to the ‘Quasi-Ordinals’, by Basil Lourié; The Éminence Grise of Christology: Porphyry’s Logical Teaching as a Cornerstone of Argumentation in Christological Debates of the Fifth and Sixth Centruies, by Anna Zhyrkova; The Problem of Universals in Late Patristic Theology, by Dirk Krasmüller; Intuitionist Reasoning in the Tri-unitrian Theology of Nicolas of Cues, by Antonino Drago. (shrink)

In his book Między ukryciem a jawnością [Between Hiddenness and Openness] (2023), Professor Jacek Wojtysiak argues that on the assumption of atheistic naturalism, no convincing explanation can be given for the ‘great fact of faith,’ that is, the phenomenon of the historical persistence and universality of the belief in the existence of God. The purpose of this paper is to challenge this thesis. Drawing on selected theories from the field of the Cognitive Science of Religion, I sketch a naturalistic explanation (...) of how religious belief arises. (shrink)

The aim of my paper is to interpret S. Kierkegaard's concept of a leap as a metaphor for the process of moving from one conceptual scheme to another. The basis for this reading of the concept is provided by the growing recognition of Kierkegaard's philosophy as dealing with conceptual schemes, equipements or paradigms through which reality is interpreted. I use Kierkegaard's metaphor as a point of departure for the analysis of the conditions of possibility and the very process of changing (...) conteptual schemes in general. I use the story of Abraham and Isaac, as described in „Fear and Trembling”, as a source of examples illustrating more general points I make during my analysis. Firstly, I present a general understanding of what a conceptual scheme is and how it is functioning. Afterwards, I show how this functioning is impaired in case of Abraham and Isaac. Finally, I put forward a hypothesis that the problems that Abraham's scheme is encountering due to God's demand to sacrifice Isaac can all be reduced to the fact that a very deep change in meaning of certain terms within the conceptual scheme, such as "God", "good" or "duty", has occured. The adoption of new meanings would be equivalent to moving into another conceptual scheme. (shrink)

Starting from the 1930s logicians tackled problems connected with applicability of logic in natural sciences and in many cases they tried to practically apply logic in these sciences. In the article entitled \'Logicians and logic on study of nature\' it is stressed that the broadly understood formal logic supplies natural sciences, and especially physics, with a paradigm for a method of ordering theses. It is also shown what application of logic laws to natural sciences consists in, and theses are formulated (...) concerning what the laws of classical prepositional calculus state. A lot of attention is devoted to the language of modern and contemporary physics. Modern and contemporary physics uses two languages, i.e. the mathematical language and the so-called notional language. The logic of the former language is classical logical calculus. In connection with the notional language logicians construed a lot of systems of non-classical logics in which laws are given that govern the correct use of non-extensional operators connected with such terms occurring in natural sciences as \"time\", \"cause\", \"change\" etc. The language of well construed systems of non- classical logics may serve saving, storing and precise communicating the results obtained on the ground of natural sciences. (shrink)

Jezuici nie mieli łatwej drogi do Polski. Wprawdzie niektórzy biskupi, tacy jak Stanisław Hozjusz czy jego późniejszy następca na biskupstwie warmińskim: Marcin Kromer, czynili starania u władz rzymskich, by ich do Rzeczypospolitej sprowadzić, widząc w nich skuteczne narządzie pomocne przy wprowadzaniu w życie reform Soboru Trydenckiego, lecz starania te były raczej odosobnione i nie znajdywały większego zrozumienia w ówczesnym episkopacie, o innych grupach społecznych nie wspominając.

Aspect-perception is a phenomenon described in detail by L. Wittgenstein in part XI of Philosophical Investigations. The most famous example is the duck-rabbit figure, which can be viewed either as a duck or a rabbit, but the phenomenon extends well beyond visual Gestalt pictures and permeates various fields of human life, including aesthetic, moral and linguistic experience. Recently there have been attempts to apply the notion of aspect-perception to religious faith. It has often been observed that religious faith involves a (...) particular way of ‘seeing’ different objects and events (recall the famous phrase from the hymn Amazing Grace, ‘I once was lost, but now am found; Was blind, but now I see’). For this reason, the attempt to use the category of aspect-seeing to analyze religious faith may appear promising. My aim in this paper to analyze critically one such attempt, made by N. K. Verbin in ‘Religious Belief and Aspect seeing’ and ‘Can Faith be Justified?’. In these papers Verbin argues for two closely related theses regarding religious belief. The first is conceptual; she proposes that we should understand ‘certain kinds of religious beliefs which we view as central to a person having a living faith’ as ‘a type of aspect-seeing’. The second follows from the first: we should modify accordingly the way we construe justification for religious belief. In what follows I expound Verbin’s conceptual claim and present arguments against equating religious belief with seeing religious aspects. Basing myself on examples of people who see religious aspects but do not reach religious belief, I conclude that the two categories should not be conflated. Although I reject Verbin’s overall claim, however, I concede that aspect-seeing does play a significant role in justifying religious belief, although not in the way Verbin proposes. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophy is characterized by the diverse and extensive presence of science in it. Science is its object, variously understood - as a field of cognition, as a cultural, social or anthropic phenomenon, as a scientific knowledge, including knowledge co-shaping philosophical concepts. The project's monographs explore the essential aspects of this presence - in various currents, schools and areas of contemporary philosophy.--Publisher's website.

The author goes out from Helmuth Plessner’s book Die Grenzen der Gemeinschaft to show how the basic categories of Plessner’s philosophical anthropology, especially the eccentric position conception, apply to his critique of community-oriented societies like communism and fascism. Plessner saw the alternative to a community-based society in a model where social bonds took place by association, and in which the anthropological a priori enjoyed the optimum conditions for self-expression. This social model also allows the full establishment of social roles in (...) the anthropological sense, something that is annihilated by community-type societies. The author also addresses the different ways in which the “social role” category is interpreted by Plessner and Ralf Dahrendorf, and concludes with a few concrete and methodologically grounded objections to Plessner’s theory. (shrink)

This comparative study of Max Scheler’s and Bernhard Waldenfels’ conceptions shows how they differ in their philosophical assumptions. Whereas Scheler’s strove to define the essence of suffering, which he saw in the objective situation of being a victim, Waldenfels emphasized the intentional aspect of suffering and its connections to activity. In this context Waldenfels introduced the distinction between suffering as a) that what happens to us, and b) that what we subjectively feel as “brutally” imposed upon us, ignoring all eidetic (...) questions related to suffering as well as the metaphysical threads which Scheler addressed. The author runs a detailed and critical analysis of Scheler’s position, to which he voices multiple objections, and concludes that it coincides conceptually with the axiological conception of tragedy he propounded in his work On the Tragic. In the section on Waldenfels the author reviews the polemical arguments against his views voiced by several contemporary German philosophers. (shrink)

In its formative period the state welds together groups of kindred language, religion and customs. A nation bereft of a state structure has a small prospect of survival, since it is weaker than nations which possess their own apparatus of force. The former is constantly endangered and is often helpless before the latter. The struggle for statehood is hence the most conscious expression of the effort to maintain national distinctness. Moreover, a nation deprived of statehood enjoys small prestige among its (...) own group members, nor can it create an image which arouses the respect of other nations.A striking phenomenon in the investigation of the state and the nation is the parallelism in the condition of their origin.The nation thus arises as a result of an extended processes of integration ; white the consolidating nature of national awareness makes it analogue of the state organization as a universa[ organization.It is possible to distinguish three types of nation-building processes :a) within the framework of native state organization which arises directly as a result of an external threat,b) within the bouddaries of farmer colonies which are accepted as the national state borders,c) the shaping of national entities of the foundation of federated forms of the state.An analysis of the different variants of historica[ experience suggests certain general propositions :1. The emergence of the state, or at least of a state organism, as a rule precedes the formation of the nation ;2. because of its general all-embracing character the state organization is the decisive factor of the nation-building process.The author deals also with the problem of the federal state and the national question. The different types of federations influence the national problem in different ways. (shrink)

There have been many papers on the Jesuit relationship with the State and with the civil powers in the Western Countries. But there are no such elaborations concerning Poland. However, it was not a central aim, the Jesuits had to engage in the political situation of the country where they did His apostolic work though they did not commit themselves personally in the policy. The Jesuits had their own concept of the State and the state policy. And they showed great (...) caution in preparing the policy treaties in order to save impartiality. (shrink)