The concept of a "woman figure" by Emmanuel Lévinas, is an example, in which the notions of "masculinity" and "femininity" serve to determine the character of a certain proposition of a Subject. Lévinas introduced sexual characteristics into the neutral subject, yet he is incon-sistent in his treatment of the idea of a Woman and, moreover, he assigned subjectivity to a single gender: the masculine. Nonetheless, the criticism of Lévinas’s model of femininity from a feminist viewpoint is neither simple nor clear. (...) Lévinas continually evades such criticism. He re-established the body and sensuality as key aspects of meeting with the Other. And also, he criticizes the Western ontological tradition as a theoretical source of violence against the Other, since – as he claims – on a high level of abstraction it appears that thematisation itself is a violence. At the same time, Lévinas proposes ontology of a "woman". In relation to this, one needs to ask the question: why does Lévinas, whilst stating the need to be freed from ontology, at the same time create an ontological woman? And additionally, what are the philo-sophical and ethical consequences of the phenomenology of femininity that are presented by Lévinas? (shrink)

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)

Artykuł analizuje problem kosztów powstałych w wyniku realizacji obowiązku udzielenia pomocy osobie znajdującej się w niebezpieczeństwie. Autorzy prezentują trzy odmienne stanowiska dotyczące tego problemu, rozważając scenariusz, w którym osoba decyduje się, z własnej woli lub przymuszona za pomocą prawa, uratować inną osobę, w sytuacji, w której taka pomoc wiąże się z naruszeniem praw trzeciej strony. Przykładowo, A ratuje tonącego B, ale w trakcie ratowania narusza prawa C. Pytanie, które stawiają autorzy brzmi: zakładając, że istnieje obowiązek udzielenia pomocy osobie znajdującej się (...) w niebezpieczeństwie, kto powinien ponieść koszty odszkodowania za naruszenie praw trzeciej strony? Autorzy rozważają następujące możliwości: koszty pomocy powinny zostać poniesione przez (a) ratującego, (b) osobę, której prawa zostały naruszone, (c) ratowanego, (d) całe społeczeństwo. (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)

The article reviews the book Philosophia Vitam Alere. Prace dedykowane Profesorowi Romanowi Darowskiemu SJ z okazji 70-lecia urodzin, edited by Stanisław Ziemiański S.J.

The Cognitive Science of Religion represents a contemporary attempt at a naturalistic explanation of religion. There is debate as to whether its account of how religious beliefs arise is reconcilable with the religious account, which holds that religious beliefs are caused by God. In my paper, I argue that these two accounts cannot be reconciled when it comes to the specific question of how Christian religious beliefs arise if one accepts an important theological doctrine of the supernaturality of Christian belief. (...) This doctrine implies that there can be no natural explanation for how Christian beliefs arise because they are a gift of divine grace. This leads to a conundrum for Christian theists: they can either reject the CSR account of how their religious beliefs arise, or they can reject the supernaturality of Christian belief. I argue that the latter is preferable. I then draw on the work of the theologian Denis Edwards to illustrate how one can drop this doctrine without abandoning some other fundamental tenets of Christian theology. (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)

This article reflects on the current philosophical tendency to construct non-dualistic subjectivity models in response to the criticism of the traditional authoritarian human subject. Following thinkers such as Emmanuel Lévinas, Michel Foucault or Jacques Derrida, the literature has largely identified traditional metaphysics based on dualistic hierarchies as the major source of violence. Perceiving phenomenology as a method that focuses on the concepts of the lived experience and situatedness, I combine this approach with the feminist calls for dismantling the hierarchical relationship (...) of subjectivity to the world. I draw on the concepts of Sonia Kruks, Linda Martin Alcoff, Sara Heinämaa, Judith Butler, Bonnie Mann and Johanna Oksala to inquire how dualism-overcoming phenomenology can be applied to feminist thought. I focus in particular on the approach that Oksala outlines in her book, Feminist Experiences: Foucauldian and Phenomenological Investigations, where she proposes a transcendental view on feminist experience. Intriguingly, she understands transcendental as situated – historically, culturally and politically. Consequently, my final question concerns the possibility of combining the two usually conflicted approaches: transcendental and historical regarding the fundamental phenomenological distinction between the empirical and the transcendental. (shrink)

Historically, Ehrenfest’s theorem is the first one which shows that classical physics can emerge from quantum physics as a kind of approximation. We recall the theorem in its original form, and we highlight its generalizations to the relativistic Dirac particle and to a particle with spin and izospin. We argue that apparent classicality of the macroscopic world can probably be explained within the framework of standard quantum mechanics.

We show that for every enumeration degree $a there exists an e-degree c such that $a \leq c , and all degrees b, with $c \leq b , are properly Σ 0 2.

The text is a commentary to the phenomena in Polish modern art in the final years of the 20th century. It constitutes a “first-hand” account by a participant of the events and the host of the location. The location was the author’s private workshop in the attic of a Łódź tenement house in the very centre of the city, in the circles of artists creating situations, meetings, events and objects, which established Kultura Zrzuty [the Whip-round Culture], a phenomenon which described (...) the activities of artists independent of state institutions and officials patrons in the 1980s. The analysis of the events within the area of independent Okolice Sztuki inspired the author to discuss the form of other artists and his own, who created art in Strych [literally: attic] in an unchanging conflict between physical and social existence and freedom in art. (shrink)

The Marxian visions of the post-capitalist future evolved with significant changes over three decades. From the outset Marx and Engels divided the future into stages, economically and philosophically, a final communist or socialist stage, and a transitional stage or stages preceding it. The final stage remained largely constant throughout, the actualization of the ideal of Feuerbach's anthropological philosophy, supplemented by Fourier's ideas for the abolition of the division of labor and its transformation into pleasurable activity. The original institutional conception was (...) pastoral, adopted from Owen's communal plans and materialistic determinism, with socialized means of production and comprehensive communal control of social and economic life. They substituted for Owen's equal labor-time exchange principle Cabet's principle of from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs, and estimated the duration of the transition at one to two years. Interpreting history according to Hegel's dialectic they conceived this future as the inevitable result of a revolution dialectically effecting the complete rehumanization of a totally dehumanized proletariat, whose consciousness accomplishes the revolution and recovers its theretofore alienated nature. ;With the subsequent formulation of the theory of historical materialism and its conception of all history as class conflict their published descriptions of the final stage became brief and vague and it was relegated to an increasingly remote future, based on varying material and social requirements which would transform human nature sometime during these increasingly lengthy transitional stages. To preserve the material accomplishments of capitalism they substituted state centralization for Owen's communalism, but began to misrepresent this for tactical political reasons, defining the state and classes solely in terms of property, state expropriation thereby abolishing the state. Retaining Cabet's principle for the final stage, they formulated a succession of contradictory principles of production and distribution within a varying number of transitional stages. These principles ranged from the equal exchange of labor time, through unequal distribution for equal labor time based on results, and finally to equal distribution for unequal labor time and results. The most egalitarian plans were the most widely publicized, the least egalitarian restricted in circulation. (shrink)

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)

We show that for every enumeration degree $a < 0'_e$ there exists an e-degree c such that $a \leq c < 0'_e$, and all degrees b, with $c \leq b < 0'_e$, are properly $\Sigma^0_2$.

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)