Roczniki Filozoficzne

The article consists of two parts. In the first part, I offer various understandings of modern republicanism and the republican tradition that we can find in the contemporary literature in question. At the same time, I point out that the term functions in different senses: the republican tradition can be studied by classical scholars (ancient Rome), historians of different countries (Italy, Holland, Poland or England), historians of law and governance systems (e.g., American founding myth). Republicanism can be an inspiration for contemporary philosophers who seek a conception of freedom as non-domination that is distinctive and competitive in relation to other traditions (liberal, communitarian) and seek structural forms of its implementation in the body politic (the[TS1] question of justice and legitimacy of the state). At the same time, reference to modern republicanism may perform certain rhetorical and argumentative functions (the so called ‘historical costume’), that is, by projecting certain values and social relations that would be derived from them, and connecting them to certain valued historical identities (e.g., a common European heritage or a national tradition). In the second part, I explain the reasons for a selection of the authors of the texts published in the second part of this issue, which is concerned with specific theorists. I point to their achievements and to the mutual permeation of the Polish and Transatlantic republican tradition in the texts devoted to the tradition of freedom of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Gałkowski, Pietrzyk-Reeves, Grześkowiak-Krwawicz). The section on contemporary issues opens with a text by Philip Pettit to whose ideas, sometimes critically, refer to texts by the other authors (Lis, Grygieńć, Ciżewska-Martyńska and Wierzchosławski).

The problem of republicanism belongs to the set of issues of politics that Kant addressed towards the end of his life. The development and perfection of man does not lie in the action of human nature, which is constant, but in the person’s action of freedom. The ultimate goal of human’s development is eternal peace. The condition for the attainment of this supreme goal is the establishment of a republican system. Kant illustrates his account of historical progress with the example of the French Revolution. Although he is a staunch opponent of every revolution because of the means of its enforcement, he views its effects positively. He thinks it expressed the right of the people to freely give themselves a civic system that is legitimate and recognised as good: a republican system, which is the best of all systems. Republicanism determines the form of the state, and, more importantly the form of government, one that is characterised by the separation of legislative and executive powers, and by three essential principles: 1) the principle of freedom for all citizens; 2) the principle of dependence of all on the universal law; 3) the principle of equality of all citizens.

This article discusses the republican concept of freedom presented in the Polish and not only Polish republican theory of the sixteenth century. The starting point for the discussion is the thesis that the category of freedom in republican theory is closely related to reflection and findings regarding the essence and purpose of the political community referred to in the Roman tradition as civitas libera. Freedom is a derivative of a well-ordered, free political order in which law and virtue play a key role. Analysing the idea of republican liberty through the prism of two contexts: the classical republican tradition and its findings and the socio-political order of Poland-Lithuania it is argued that liberty is closely connected with other key categories of the republican theory, such as res publica, justice, law, virtue, mixed government and citizenship expressed in the ideal vita activa, and only in connection with them is it possible to understand freedom and its conditions. The republican theory of the sixteenth century brings also a unique insight about freedom as non-domination which has been widely discussed by Quentin Skinner and others in recent decades.

Researchers have long drawn attention to the deep conviction of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth nobility about the uniqueness of their country and its freedoms. Contrary to what is sometimes believed, it was not an expression of Sarmatian megalomania, which made itself felt in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, this opinion was propagated at least from the middle of the sixteenth century. Nor was it some kind of Polish peculiarity, citizens of other free commonwealths said and probably thought about their freedoms in a similar way. Already in the 15th century, the inhabitants of Florence considered their republic to be unique and extraordinary, precisely because of its freedom. The Venetians, and later the Dutch and the English, assessed their country and freedom in a similar way. The sentence: “there is only one kingdom on earth where freedom has found a home” contrary to appearances does not refer to the Sarmatian Commonwealth, but to Hanoverian England, and its author believed that his homeland was the only country and the British were the only people who can truly say about himself: “we are free.” Noble citizens of Polish Republic entered this discourse early, even before the first free election. The author discusses the history of this discourse in the times of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, stating that, contrary to the references in the 16th century, and even at the beginning of the 17th century, later references to republics other than the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth or ancient republics (especially Rome) were not numerous and quite superficial, their authors generally did not know much about the mentioned countries, but they had no doubts that they share a certain similarity with the Commonwealth, which could be described as a community of freedom. Because this very motif, also important earlier, became dominant in the 17th century and the first half of the 18 century. The crisis and ossification of political reflection, combined with a decrease in interest in the outside world, meant that more extensive references to other countries and their political solutions no longer appeared in noble political discussions. Their participants, however, continued to include their country in a fairly elite community of European republics and still, regardless of all social, religious and political differences, of which they were often unaware, they still considered them their “companions.”

This paper addresses three claims that are often made among contemporary policy-makers, political scientists and political theorists about democracy. The claims, in my view, are false and indeed revealingly false: they display a serious misunderstanding of the nature and appeal of democracy. As we see why they are false, we will come to appreciate dimensions of democracy that easily escape notice. I name the mistakes after outstanding thinkers who have made them. The first I describe as Berlin’s mistake, finding it in the work of the Anglo-Russian philosopher, Isaiah Berlin. The second I describe as Schumpeter’s mistake, naming it after the Austrian-American banker, economist and political thinker, Joseph Schumpeter. And the third I describe as Riker’s mistake, associating it with William Riker, the American political scientist, famous for his distinction between liberalism and populism.

The article proposes a discussion with Philip Pettit’s theses developed in his book On the People’s Terms: A Republican Theory and Model of Democracy and his article “Two Republican Traditions.” Focusing on the so called Italian-Atlantic tradition, Pettit emphasises the linkeage of the ethos of contestatory citizenry and that of mixed constitution as crucial for republicanism. It is no coincidence that understing the tradition of republicanism in such a way, Pettit does not include Jean-Jacques Rousseau, seen rather as a forerunner of communitarism. Yet, one can hardly agree with Pettit’s classification of the republican tradition and — especially — with his reading of Rousseau. In the first place, it is precisely Rousseau’s thought that helps understand that republicanism, after all embodying the idea of citizens’ government, could absorb the values of mixed government only temporarly and conditionally — only until the latter could serve limitate non-civic (non-elective) elements of power. Pettit’s suggestion that the theory of popular sovereignty initiated by Rousseau must undermine the ideals of civic vigilance is also difficult to accept.

The subject of the article is the concept of contestatory democracy proposed by Philip Pettit, and its place in contemporary republican thought. The author describes the relationship between this concept and the ideas of radical democracy and republican freedom, as well as its institutional implications and related controversies. The main accusations of Pettit’s critics are considered: the fragmented and undemocratic nature of the proposed solutions, the undesirable consequences of making political decision-making both deliberative and de-politicized. The author claims that one of the most relevant shortcomings of Pettit’s concept is the attempt to de-politicize democracy by empowering democratically unsupervised expert institutions, as it leads to the question about the criterion of dividing decision making between radical-democratic or elitist institutions — question, to which Pettit does not give a definite answer.

The article is an attempt at summary of the discussion on republicanism of the Polish Solidarity and the Eastern-European dissidence movement of 1970s and 1980s that took place after the fall of communism in 1989. The author comments on the debate’s sources and most important threads, placing them within the context of contemporary political philosophy. She presents three ways in which republicanism has been evoked in the debate: as a historical analogy, as a tradition that is intellectually coherent with the movement’s ideas, and as the movement’s legacy. In this way, the author comes closer to choosing a type of republicanism that corresponds with the Polish experience, and, what is more important, to evaluating the debate itself.

Philip Pettit is one of the leading philosophical codifiers of the [neo-]republican conception of freedom and government, which is guided by the ideal of non-domination (empire and dominion). At the same time, he is the author of many important works in the areas of philosophy of social science (the question of explanation and interpretation), ethics (consequentialism), social ontology (how social groups exist) and philosophy of mind (how the intentional subject functions). In light of the criticisms and polemics that have emerged from the new ‘republican wave,’ to use this term, proponents of populist republicanism (John P. McCormick and others), who accuse representatives of an earlier generation of the republican tradition like John G.A. Pocock, Quentin Skinner and especially exactly Philip Pettit of aristocratic ‘deviation’ (only the upper classes and elites benefit from the project of depoliticizing the republic), it is important to point out the relevance for a reading of the republican project of the solutions developed by Pettit in social ontology. The author puts forward the thesis that it is only by considering his position in social ontology that his proposals in political philosophy can be fully understood (which does not mean accepted). The structure of the article is as follows: (1) the author presents the three dimensions of social ontology as seen by Pettit; (2) he then shows their relevance in defining the category of the common good, in the context of a republican political community (condominium model); (3) he points out some paradoxes related to the realization of the republican ideal of civic contestation. At the same time, author draws attention to the evolution of the republican project (certain aspects of it) in relation to analogous evolutions of propositions (solutions) in social ontology.

The article consists of three parts. In the first part, the possibility is taken into account that people, and perhaps also all other finite epistemic subjects that have the ability to formulate moral judgments, are subject to the universal illusion regarding the hierarchy of moral values by which they act, so that they have reversed axiological spectrum. In the second part, the thesis is justified that the only means to exclude the possibility of being subjected to a radical axiological illusion by finite epistemic subjects is to refer to the metaphysical concept of God understood as the concept of the most perfect being and to His knowledge about what is good and what is bad. The question of the existence of God and the indication of how the concept of God should be religiously concretized are not discussed. To carry out the argument presented in the article, it is enough that God is understood as a person with the attribute of omniscience and perfect goodness. The third part is devoted to remarks on moral relativism, moral dilemmas and the problem of the essence of moral good.

The article presents Thomas Aquinas’ concept of pleasure in other’s misfortune (Schadenfreude), i.e. specific joy, the source of which is the suffering of other people. The first part describes the ancient Schadenfreude sources that inspired Aquinas. The second part deals with the concept of hatred that underlies the concept of Schadenfreude. In the third part, it is presented Aquinas’ attempt to distinguish between various cases of the occurrence of Schadenfreude and an attempt of their moral justification.

One of the main questions in philosophy of logic is whether there is one logic or there are many logics. This question has been answered in many ways. Various answers have formed opposite standpoints: logical monism as against logical pluralism. Willard Van Orman Quine has been acknowledged as a representative of monism and Susan Haack — of pluralism. Both standpoints are maintained now: monism (e.g. Michael Dummett, Graham Priest, Timothy Williamson) or pluralism (e.g. Jc Beall and Greg Restall, Johan van Benthem, Ottavio Bueno and Scott Shalkovski, Stewart Shapiro and Roy Cook). Monism is significantly less preferred than pluralism. In this article, the sources of pluralism in logic have been indicated (among other things, ambiguity of connectives in the natural language, various understanding of truth and of logical consequence). Argumentations of some representatives of this standpoint have been presented.

Rozwój studiów nad pierwszo- i trzecioosobowym doświadczeniem ludzkim, jaki nastąpił w XX wieku, ujawnił potrzebę reempiryzacji antropologii tomistycznej. Wśród myślicieli, którzy podjęli się tego zadania, byli Karol Wojtyła i Mieczysław Krąpiec. Reempiryzacja ta była związana z dostosowaniem narzędzi poznawczych wypracowanych w ramach nowożytnej filozofii podmiotu do opisu doświadczenia pierwszoosobowego. Wojtyła zakładał, że punktem wyjścia poznania osobowego podmiotu jest doświadczenie spełniania aktu, w opozycji do tego, co dzieje się w człowieku. Krąpiec poddał krytyce tę koncepcję i zaproponował oparcie antropologii tomistycznej na podmiotowym doświadczeniu istnienia, w którym „ja” przejawia się poprzez „moje”-akty. Z jednej strony dosświadczenie aktu, a z drugiej – immanencja i transcendencja „ja” w odniesieniu do „moich”-aktów pozwoliły tym filozofom zbudować antropologiczny pomost do systemu tomistycznego.

In Polish philosophical aesthetics Karol Tarnowski’s considerations about art reflect transformations that occurred in phenomenology — particularly French — in the second half of the 20th century. Religious thinking combined with the scholastic tradition and the classical doctrine of transcendentals turn out to be similar in many aspects, but still not identical with Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenology of givenness and Michel Henry’s nonintentional phenomenology of invisible life. The aesthetic views of Karol Tarnowski, an outstanding philosopher of religion and pianist himself, can be found in scattered texts whose main subject matter is not always art. This is why the article aims at a synthetic presentation of this particular reflection in the context of current debates around phenomenology.

In the article, I present the philosophic contribution of the contemporary Russian neo-patristic thinker, Sergey Khoruzhy, with particular emphasis on his original concept of the theory of asceticism (the theory of energoforms). It is based on Patristic sources, but reveals inspirations from the findings of contemporary Western European philosophy as well, especially from the thought of Martin Heidegger and Michel Foucault. In the article, I analyze the main assumptions of Khoruzhy’s theory of asceticism and comment on the Heideggerian-Foucaultian elements contained in it. Reflections on asceticism touch on both typically philosophical problems, the ontological ones, where Heidegger’s inspirations are manifested, and on historical and hermeneutical ones, where we see a polemic with Foucault. In conclusion, I attempt a comparative analysis of Heidegger’s and energystic vision of man, probing whether the phenomena of spiritual life such as asceticism can successfully be a subject of theoretical considerations and how universal are some theological and philosophical (ontological) interpretations of the human condition.

The author analyzes, from the point of view of the philosophy of culture, the historical and contemporary issue of the relationship between religion and technology. As a result of this philosophical reflection, he states that this relationship can take four different forms. The presented typology of the relationship between religion and technology then becomes a tool to find an answer to the question of whether world religions in their worldview and institutional dimensions can constructively (and not only pessimistically and critically) relate to the increasingly complex civilization issues at the turn of the XX and XXI century.

The aim of the article is to present and critically scrutinize the conception of existential feelings offered by the contemporary phenomenological philosopher of psychiatry — Matthew Ratcliffe. Existential feelings are a special class of affective states that grant an emotional coloring to the subjective experience of reality. They are pre-reflective by nature and constitute the implicit background of phenomenal consciousness, which remains outside the scope of attention in everyday experience. These feelings are closely related to emotions, determining the types of intentional objects contained in emotional states and determining the repertoire of emotions that can be experienced. The most important existential feelings that Ratcliffe distinguishes are: (1) a sense of reality that is the pre-reflective and phenomenal impression that the world exist; (2) a sense of belonging that is the pre-reflective and phenomenal impression of one’s own existence, embedded in the world among people and things. These two categories are fundamental components of the subject’s first-person experience, thereby determining his relationship to other people and to reality in its most general sense. In this article, I present the main features and types of existential feelings. I also pay attention to the special role of psychopathology in the analysis and justification of the existence of such feelings. Therefore, following Ratcliffe, I describe how certain aspects of existential feelings are disintegrated in mental disorders such as depression and schizophrenia. I also show the difference between the phenomenological and cognitive-behavioral approaches to mental disorders. Referring to neurobiological research, I try to indicate potential neural correlates of existential feelings. The text is completed with critical remarks on Matthew Ratcliffe’s concept of existential feelings. The identified flaws and shortcomings in Ratcliffe’s philosophical theory are held to suggest future prospects of its development.

The paper is a response to the polemic of Stanisław Ruczaj with the argument from the Incarnation, which was presented in the book Ukrytość i Wcielenie. Teistyczna odpowiedź na argument Johna L. Schellenberga za nieistnieniem Boga [Hiddenness and the Incarnation: A Theistic Response to John L. Schellenberg’s Argument for Divine Nonexistence]. Ruczaj accuses the so-called incarnational defense that it does not consider the possibility that God is both incarnate and not hidden. In my response, I am focusing on the reasons why I believe it is possible that the option described by Ruczaj is excluded for God. In my opinion, there are reasons to think that it is (a) logically contradictory, (b) inconsistent with God’s perfect moral character, (c) it would not result in the elimination of nonresistant nonbelief in the Incarnation.

The article discusses two excellent works on the hiddenness of God by Miłosz Hołda (Źródło i noc. Wprowadzenie do współczesnego absconditeizmu [The Spring and the Night: An Introduction into Contemporary Absconditheism]) and Marek Dobrzeniecki (Ukrytość i Wcielenie. Teistyczna odpowiedź na argument Johna L. Schellenberga za nieistnieniem Boga [Hiddenness and the Incarnation: A Theistic Response to John L. Schellenberg’s Argument for Divine Nonexistence]). They belong to the so-called friendly theists, who try to treat the thesis of God’s hiddenness as an important extension of the problems of classical theism. It seems, however, that they succumb to the illusion of conducting a dialogue with the so-called friendly atheists, who involve theists in such an interpretation of the thesis about the Divine hiddenness, which seems to be completely contrary to classical theism. The question then arises: whether the contemporary formulations of the problem of the Divine hiddenness are in any way compatible with Christian theism?

This paper concerns an important and exciting book by Marek Dobrzeniecki Ukrytość i Wcielenie. Teistyczna odpowiedź na argument Johna L. Schellenberga za nieistnieniem Boga [Hiddenness and the Incarnation: A Theistic Response to John L. Schellenberg’s Argument for Divine Nonexistence]. After a brief discussion of the content of the book’s chapters, critical remarks are presented. They concern the adopted method and approach to Schellenberg’s philosophy in general and the argument from hiddenness in particular. The conceptual framework serving as a typologization of the propositional dimension of the phenomenon of theistic belief/faith is dubious and requires in-depth research. It is worth considering the possibility of asymmetry of the attitudes of belief/faith and unbelief, which requires consideration in the reasoning whose legitimacy would assume the transfer of features from one to the other and the negation functor. Regarding the voluntarism of belief in God, the paper suggests that extreme, purely intellectual, and purely volitional positions should be considered, as well as moderate and mixed ones. It is argued extensively that Dobrzeniecki’s criticism against the arguments of Rea and Mourad is not conclusive. Just the possibility of voluntariness of disbelief undermines the validity of Schellenberg’s argument and should therefore be ruled out as much as possible. The paper suggests supplementing Dobrzeniecki’s approach with a ‘trans-paradigmatic’ approach consisting of external criticism, which, in the light of Schellenberg’s arguments being probably incompatible with the described phenomenon of religious belief in God, leads to a modification of the theoretical apparatus of Schellenberg’s paradigm. Such a modification deprives the latter’s argument of justification.