On life according to logic of gift, toil and challenges Urszula Wybraniec-Skardowska abstract. The present essay deals with certain questions in the eld of humanistic philosophy, ethics and axiology, discussed in the light of still newer and newer challenges of our changing times. It highlights the signicant role of Professor Andrzej Grzegorczyk in solving and overcoming problems encountered in the life of man, which is based on his natural logic and incessant eorts aimed at preservation of fundamental moral values, as well as at shaping the principles of the individual and social life. The views held by Andrzej Grzegorczyk, which are outlined in the work, form a certain rationalistic vision of the world and mankind. Life is a trial, an examination and a judgement. A. Grzegorczyk: The Philosophy of the Times of Trial Speaking about life, we mean here human existence, man's life and activity in changing times and social, political and cultural conditionings. Each human life is a peculiar gift, a gift of nature, or  to people who believe in God  a gift obtained from God. It is unrepeatable, a fundamental value.1 A life, thus, is something of great value, sincerity and uniqueness, and as such  has for centuries now made a subject of philosophical enquiry into the following: How to perceive this value of life? How to realize it? How to live so as the life should be invested with a sense that marks out a value in itself? What individual or general aims delineate the sense of life? They are questions which pertain to philosophy and which reach the very roots of humanity themselves. These questions are not only the object of interest on the part of broadly understood philosophy of life (theoretical and practical), as well as philosophy of human being, axiology, ethics and religion. After all, they touch each of us, especially when we ponder on the sense of all our deeds or actions 1This is declared by The Constitution of the Republic of Poland, art. 38. <book title>, 116. c© <2012>, Urszula Wybraniec-Skardowska. 2 Urszula Wybraniec-Skardowska to date. And in each human action and endeavor there are intellectual  cognitive elements and those desire  based ones, connected with our will, which are coupled, so to say, penetrate and complement each other. In each of us, there function both a logic that stems from our mind and a desire that is not always rational. This is the essence of human nature and its material and spiritual needs. An individual or collective life which is devoid of contacts with the leading logic of reason, cutting o from the reality, from the truth about the world, forfeits its essential sense. A practical life, be it individual or collective, private or public, directed solely towards pragmatism, inclined towards consumerism and benet, the `logic' of prot, not being able to nd proper cooperation with intellectual life, forfeits indeed whatever makes the nature of man as a reasonable creature that can: • think logically, • act rightly in compliance with universal ethical principles, as well as • look for the truth. Should we think that the highest value of life are the vital forces in it, the vital instinct and the want of benet, instead of a reasonable will? All people long for unrestricted development of their natural potentials, are willing to delight in beauty, long for happiness. While some have the knowledge of where and how to look for these values, others are not able to direct their lives to achieve them. Raising awareness in people so that they could possess these values is connected with realization of what ancient Greeks called logos. Socrates, the founder of dialectics understood it as the art of sober discussion or verbal argumentation, saw the sense of his life in comprehending and materializing the logos. Plato and Aristotle also referred to logos, the latter  the founder of formal logic, and later so did Marcus Aurelius  a stoic  in his famous Meditations. The last regarded life as a string of duties, and their fulllment as the road to happiness. You can always live a happy life if you follow the right road and want to think and do well, he writes in his Meditations [1, Ksi¦ga V 34]. Such a life is connected with toil, yet also is one lived in compliance with nature  as Marcus Aurelius states, accepting this fundamental principle which constitutes the supreme good for stoics [1, Ksi¦ga I 17]. Meditations is a praise of mind, the logos which penetrates the whole Universe, is a course book on the art of living. And even though there is no mention in it of logic, whose beginnings  in the today's understanding of it  are sought for just in stoics, the considerations included in it display the beauty of Aurelius' personal natural logic. We will soon make reference to the notion of natural logic of man. The Greek word logos, from which  etymologically On life according to logic of gift, toil and challenges 3  the contemporary word logic derives, has a number of meanings. For our purpose, however, we shall adapt its meanings in which it denotes mind that directs the will of man, thought that is a creation of the mind, as well as word that is a representation of the thought so that the latter could be transferred in communication  cognition processes; the word also means science. Not entering into a discussion concerning the history of logic as a domain of science, nor reminding of what scientic logic deals with, let us only draw the attention to the fact that it did grow out of the natural logic of man.2 Natural logic is unquestionably a feature of human beings. It is also called inborn or innate logic. It constitutes the basis of human life logic. It can also be called the gift logic of nature or the Creator, since it is a natural disposition of mind of each human being, which is linked to the nature of homo sapiens  the capability of correct and reliable thinking and reasoning without the knowledge of laws that govern this correctness, the ability to utter true sentences without realizing the fact that proving their truthfulness is possible just thanks to this logic. Does natural logic satisfy the needs of our everyday lives and actions? Or is the knowledge of logic as science indispensable? In a regular life, common, instinctive logical eectiveness  natural logic  does suce very often. There are common people who are not familiar with scientic logic, yet whose reasoning is correct, sometimes even surpassing that of those who were formally learning logic. There are people whose innate logic is developed in a peculiar way, for whom this inborn ability of their mind is a special gift. We shall call it here gift logic. It is typical of geniuses or those displaying unique intellectual powers. Their lives are often marked with toil and drudgery, intellectual effort, related to satisfying spiritual, non  material needs. There are, among them, individuals whose creative work is dedicated to a special service done to others and society as a whole, for whom the sense of life means rising above their regular duties and problems, recognizing challenges, following challenges of life and of the changing times in which they happen to live. Their logics, talents, toils and challenges are marked with their belief in the mind which makes the sense of their lives and, moreover, are what I would like to call logic of gift, toil and challenges. Life, according to this logic, is determined by the popularly accepted universal values: Truth, Good and Beauty. They are what builds up life, investing it somehow with a shape, setting goals, assigning new tasks and challenges in the transforming world, contemporarily dominated by money and socioeconomic, as well as religious conicts. Their lives become then a gift of themselves. They pay o the debt of the gift of living. The rst logicians made references to natural logic in order to codify the knowledge about what was merely instinctive or not 2See: [9, pp. 20 and 21]. 4 Urszula Wybraniec-Skardowska made conscious; they endeavoured to nd general rules governing the mind in the form of scientic laws. Scientic logic arose on the basis of the so  called fundamental laws of thinking: the law of contradiction, the law of identity, the law of excluded middle, and until the 19th century it had been regarded as part of cognitive psychology, as a science establishing its laws as inductive generalization of laws governing the mind. Abandoning of the trend  called psychologism  followed in the 20th century. The anti  psychologism of the 20th century assumed that the laws of logic are objective as they say not about how the mind works by reasoning, but how it should work properly. These two currents, in our century, seem not as much to compete with as complement each other. Scientic logic as a theoretical science cannot be torn away from life. Throughout all the years of its existences and development it has always been considered to be a tool (Greek: organon; Aristotle's logical works were collected and entitled Organon). Logic was, then, and still is of the instrumental nature, utility  oriented in relation to other domains of science and the needs of living and man. In this sense, logic is a universal science of the service  rendering character, and  on the one hand, provides the basis of each science, while  on the other one  proves useful in each walk of life and reality. It serves, especially, the needs of linguistics, computer science  Articial Intelligence and mathematics (deduction systems). It is of value to everyone who wishes to correctly, clearly and precisely express thoughts, think and reason in a correct manner, seeing that through deepening both natural logic and the acquired one in practice it makes it possible to avoid making mistakes in various situations of life, including both logical language errors and those of reasoning. It allows improving innate logical abilities: • perfecting the usage of language for communication  cognition purposes, • setting appropriate forms of reasoning against erroneous ones, • working out skills of independent, correct and at the same time  critical  thinking and justifying theorems. Thus, logic, in the broadest aspect, is to serve human beings. Practiced professionally, in the spirit of services rendered to man, it fullls a glorious role  it testies to the appreciation of the dignity of human beings and their intellect which needs cultivating and `rearing'. A crisis of mental culture is undoubtedly related to a crisis of logical culture of society. The life logic of man and of the community the former lives in, can be shaped only by perfecting logical skills, both the innate and the ones acquired through life experience. Masters of logic are indeed only these logicians and thinkers On life according to logic of gift, toil and challenges 5 who  on the basis of their logic of gift, toil and challenges  have not cut o, as scholars, their contacts with the reality and people, making their activity a peculiar service to man and society. ? Not many thinkers have managed to achieve the goals which they set earlier already in their lifetimes, only a few have been acknowledged to be celebrities already during their lifetimes, owing to their published works and personal activity, as well as their force of exerting an inuence on society. Consequently, those who have managed to gain recognition not only because of their output, but due to the attitude assumed in their lives and a peculiar kind of service rendered to people and society, ought to be valued in a special way. The unceasing, multi  directional writer's activity of Andrzej Grzegorczyk,3 which writes in the continuation of the rationalistic traditions of the Lvov  Warsaw School, constantly evolving and addressed to all people capable of logical thinking, an activity in which not only vital scientic problems of mathematics  logic, philosophy and ethics, but also important views of the typically life  related nature have been raised in a clear and transparent way, the views making a unique message and moral duty towards society as they are marked out by independence of expressing own opinions in the face of changing totalitarian systems and a variety of political trends, oers a challenge to all those for whom life makes a truly unrepeatable value and provides a sense of fulllment at the same time. Answers to the questions: How to understand this challenge of life? How to realize its values in the changing times, full of conicts, threats and in the light of various socio  political conditions? can be found in many of Andrzej Grzegorczyk's publications in the elds of humanistic philosophy, ethics and axiology. I shall limit myself to referring to a few of them which are connected with the subject matter of this essay, showing the particular dimension of the intellectual life of their author, according to principles of certain logical order that delineates the creative, uncommon activity of a man of science.4 A. Grzegorczyk writes about the exceptionality of human life in the course of history, [. . . ] each life in each epoch can be called a time of trial. We read the words in the Preface to his book Filozoa czasu próby (The Philosophy of the Time of Trial) [2],5 which  following a few failed attempts to have 3The characteristics of this activity is included in the work by S. Krajewski and J. Wole«ski [10]. 4I omit in this way, in particular, well-known achievements of A. Grzegorczyk in the eld of mathematical logic. 5The motto of this essay comes from the last sentence of the book. The quotes of Andrzej Grzegorczyk's utterances will be a free translation from the Polish language. 6 Urszula Wybraniec-Skardowska it published in Poland  came out in Paris in 1979, already in the time of declining communism. The work contains considerations that are a bold answer to contemporary worldwide and all  human problems related to the value and sense of life, and  simultaneously  makes an appeal to every man, recommending it to him to form certain moral attitudes and respect certain principles of each individual life, based on one's own eort and honesty, criticism, respect for every man, propagation of truth. By advocating indeterminism of human fate, the author opposes the Marxist ideology, and  as a follower of the non-violence movement  all forms of violence and tactic of subordinating society. This is connected with a display of some encumbrance of life in general, and life as a ght for justice and a new better tomorrow. Stressing the signicance of rational thinking and the cognitive role of science in rational search for, among others, solving conicts and displaying the world of human values, A. Grzegorczyk points also to the role of science to serve the whole society. From people of science and the well  formed, one can expect proper reaction to problems of the world. Shaping the life attitudes in the form in which life has been oered to us, with all the duties which it imposes, with all hardships and misfortunes it brings, is  as the author writes  the basic quality that characterizes man's attitude towards the world, which we will count on. He expresses his personal attitude towards the fate in the following manner, The philosophical image of man's fate and the essence of humanity can be thus perceived as a certain personal call to realize the ideal of humanity. Man, contrary to animals, is a creative being, able to actively change the conditions of his existence and his own lifestyle. Events of life can be perceived not only as something that touches us and what we suer from, but also as something that sets a goal and in this way invests our existence with a sense, as something that constitutes a call and a challenge to make an eort and to ght. Indeed, the greatness of man consists in the fact that he is able to creatively react to his own fate. The metaphysical basis of the creativity is human metaphysical freedom. [. . . ] Man always has the possibility of making a choice. [. . . ] As we are granted this mysterious freedom of decision, it seems proper to treat it as a chance, a call for investing our lives with a deeper sense, a certain value. [2, p. 128] Further on, we can read, [. . . ] as long as we are ready to fully accept our existence, if we accept the reality as it is given to us, [. . . ] then we will always nd a good number of tasks, [2, p. 133] A hard life, full of tasks, On life according to logic of gift, toil and challenges 7 becomes a trial and a judgment to us [2, p. 134]. Professor Grzegorczyk calls this attitude of acceptance of one's own existence as humility towards the reality. The world is given to us so that in the sea of man's toil and pain one could nd his own dicult task for himself, which  however  does not alter the architecture of this world [2, p. 140]. Assuming the attitude of acceptance of the reality and existence means also acceptance of another man like oneself, therefore devoid of any elements of dominance, violence, subordination, exploitation, but holding another man in respect (even in a conict situation), as well as respecting the existential value the latter, being concerned for the moral good. A. Grzegorczyk presents also a globalist vision of the social reality and humanity which gains a minimal number of conditions necessary for a compatible survival through a few successive hundreds of years, humanity saved from threatening cataclysms and driven to the state of stability as regards all the elements of life which ll with concern [2, p. 175]. Such a vision means transformation of the world and human life through recognizing extended spiritual needs, inuencing people's spiritual experiences in compliance with the principles of justice and equality, respect for human and nations' rights through abiding by determined forms of life, conscientiousness, dutifulness, not neglecting even the small elements of the order that compose the general order, [2, p. 18081] and also spreading free  from  violence (non-violence) culture of persuasion, understanding, and  if a need arose  even co  suering, patience and coordination [2, p. 183], as well as anticipating possible conicts in order to avoid potential hazards. In this small utopia (as the author called it), there is a place for preserving individual national character and guaranteeing a compatible co  existence between nations, which consists in mutual helping one another; the conciliatory policy allows avoiding misunderstandings and conicts. Attaining the above  presented vision is to be possible through common education of techniques of coordinating and anticipating possible conicts. A. Grzegorczyk underlines here the importance of the relevant rearing of youth, alterations in the educational system and the signicance of a rational effort connected with spread of knowledge and global consciousness; these factors would lead to realization of the humanistic concept of transforming the social reality and humanity, which is outlined here. A rational eort for the good of humanity is connected with new tasks permitting to meet the challenge posed to humanity. A. Grzegorczyk calls this challenge a challenge to a new moral attitude. It can be formulated in the form of the following sentence: Let us share our potentials of survival, let every nation take account of the desire for survival of other nations [2, p. 234]. A positive reaction to this challenge oers also a chance of one's own survival 8 Urszula Wybraniec-Skardowska that is neither more nor less vital than that any human being; this is in compliance with the Christian principle of love for the others. It is not the ght for existence, but emphasizing all  human moral sense of uniting with each human being [2, p. 236], the sense of all  human solidarity, concern for everybody can eliminate the situation in which humanity found itself  catastrophic, full of threats and adversity. It is not existence that invests life with its sense  A. Grzegorczyk writes in another place  but evidence of brotherhood [2, p. 227]. A feature of our existence is fairness in survival. The feature of life is dened by its quality, realization of moral values. Possibilities of choosing the path of life and overcoming unexpected circumstances are two versions of the moral trial of life; the other one is a test of life, our readiness to serve given ideals. The course of the sociopolitical events in Poland and Europe at the turn of the 1980s and the 1990s allowed Professor Grzegorczyk, in his new book bearing a meaningful title  ycie jako wyzwanie (Life as a Challenge) [3]  to update, deepen, develop and logically systematize the concept of a vision of the human world and human life, which he had presented 15 years earlier, by investing it with the direction of rationalism open to values towards current problems of life; logical, penetrating justication of the rationalistic condition and European Rationalism is contained, in particular, in another book by A. Grzegorczyk under the title Logic  a Human Aair [4], which was published some time later6 Life as a Challenge  the book published in Polish, Ukrainian and Russian, is designed for a wide circle of readers and performs  apart from the scientic function  also an educational one. It is aimed, among others, at raising society's moral level and eliminating certain negative ethical attitudes popularly accepted. The book provides not only theoretical knowledge relating to the very world of values itself, with pointing to their oppositions, but also practical knowledge necessary to realize all  human values such as: Respect for everybody, Justice, Kindness. Realization of these values, constituting here the basic element of life, is an action which contributes to forming valuable, precious, spiritual human experience. A. Grzegorczyk developed his concept of vision of the human world here with the aid of a creative construction of notions that serve the purpose of intellectual search for a new realization of accepted values and collective behaviours, with close abiding by requirements of logic, precision of systematization and clarity of presentation. The proposition is a creative concept of shaping spiritual values, as superior to those vital ones, and shows a peculiar gift of the author, sensitivity to spiritual values, richness of theoretical and practical knowledge in various domains of sci6The book includes the idea that the desired form of our rationalism should be rationalism open to spiritual values. On life according to logic of gift, toil and challenges 9 ence. It is characterized by the attitude of rendering services to others. The author follows, at the same time, a specic logic of toil, which he describes as overcoming dierent diculties that are sometimes hard to foresee, an inner discipline and psychic eort. Here are a few of the author's thoughts: If somebody intends to pass a value to somebody else and this message requires toiling, then resignation from this toil can be comfortable for the doer, yet it is harder to interpret it as a service rendered to others, and further, Eective serving others usually demands making a serious eort of attention and concentration on others' needs. [. . . ] Experiencing the toil of human action can be regarded as a reection in the sphere of psyche of a certain fundamental feature of human existence [4, p. 135]. Thus, realization of virtues acknowledged to be valuable requires toil. For a collective life, one that is not suppressed (non-violated) within the structure of a state (a state as a structure with a higher spiritual degree of organization) the good of its citizens is valuable. Without toil, intellectual eort and support from intellectual elites, true social good cannot arise. With reference to the pathology of social thinking (especially in relation to the German Nazism and the Soviet Communism) the sentence written on the cover of the book under discussion attracts attention. It reads: Attaining a structure that realizes spiritual values and its sustaining require spiritual activity and eort, without which there follows deviation or disintegration. A. Grzegorczyk means here, in particular, deviations of political totalitarian structures, sick and unjust, as well as an eort connected with realization of universal spiritual values, an eort of perseverance and uncompromising attitude in whatever is valuable. Good cannot arise without an eort. Good depends on a highly  organized social matter. This organization must simply be created by someone. Without an eort there follows merely a disintegration of highly  organized structures, A. Grzegorczyk asserts very rmly [4, p. 191] or degeneration of the structure  as he adds in another place. It is toil that is connected with the realization of spiritual values, a creative intellectual eort, full of sacrice, morally appropriate spiritual activity, as well as a physical eort and risk of suering related with this activity. Not undertaking this eort in order to realize values, and producing subjectively  accepted eects instead of this realization, leads to cognitive deviation, mendacity, and  in consequence  to deviation of acting. If the deviations penetrate the system of governing, they become dangerous to free, intellectual thinking and creative activity of citizens. Opposing such a situation is always a challenge to contemporaries. Rational opposing such a situation can be aided by a well  organized civic debate and propagation of logical culture, therefore an attitude of criticism towards disseminated ideas, on the basis of a reliable observation and analy10 Urszula Wybraniec-Skardowska sis of facts, logical argumentation and respect for others  a spiritual value which ought to be realized straight after satisfying basic vital needs, and which  in the opinion of the author of the book  serves the purpose of conciliation. The proposition of conceptualization of the world and human life, which is being discussed here, as a certain concept of rationalism open to values, sets the direction towards looking at human life, especially the author's own life, from the perspective of the subject matter of this essay. The individual character of the axiological vision of the world and human life is reected in the very title of the book by A. Grzegorczyk. He believes in attainability of the proposed vision and summons us to realize it, and this as early as on the cover of the book, where we can read the following words: Let us contribute to that everybody should experience precious states spiritually: learning the truth, respect, justice and understanding shown towards others, and also acceptance of human fate and belief in its sense. A signicant element of the challenge, which life brings along, is to A. Grzegorczyk  at the same time  meeting every man, [. . . ] so as to invest the contact with this man with a certain vital sense, [. . . ] I accept that being put on my way, he poses a challenge to me to create, just with him, a certain new quality, as we can read in the nal part of the book. Professor Grzegorczyk, through his indefatigable intellectual creativity, proves somehow the attainability (at least to some extent) of the vision of the repairing  oriented change of the world. In the light of the transformations which took place at the end of the previous century and at the beginning of the present one, A. Grzegorczyk draws attention to new challenges of contemporary times. He continues his considerations on the challenges and social problems in other publications too. In the paper entitled Czasy i wyzwania [5] (Times and challenges), as a keen and penetrating observer of changes connected with, on the one hand, new techniques, on the other one  new forms of human activity, he perceives also new threats in the countries of this part of Europe and  primarily  in the very Poland itself. He draws attention to deviational actions in achievements of the civilization, intensied development of consumption  oriented attitudes and also exempting oneself from the inner discipline of the truth and eort for the benet of shaping universal values. Analyzing well  known cases of violence (occurring not only in the past) and the experience of history, he concludes that the created or established tools in which we often place our trust, do not lead to social good on their own, but require long  lasting effort, consciousness, constant control from the viewpoint of values [5, p. 10]. On life according to logic of gift, toil and challenges 11 Broadly understood violence is the subject matter of challenges for contemporary young generation, young intelligentsia. The moral challenge posed to the young intelligence of the 21st century is one to cross over what in the Marxist vision was called determinism, and thus  a challenge towards non  determining our will. In another work, A. Grzegorczyk presents certain guidelines concerning challenges of globalization, commonwealth of humanity and development of dispositions towards forming it, beginning with small communities within the framework of larger ones, not resigning from the ght for common education of moral values, a ght for a commonwealth with moral principles.7 A. Grzegorczyk ties the concern for repairing humanity to underlining the role of logic and philosophy in educating begun on the lowest levels. He opposes all forms of freeing human mind from the correct logical thinking. In the paper Naprawianie ±wiata. Po»ytki lozoi (Mending of the world. The advantages of philosophy) [8], he writes: There is a need, in the present condition of mankind, to rehabilitate the natural mind which is sincerely searching for the truth about the whole of our human fate. He highlights also that Thanks to words, grammar and logic, human being is able to deliver general convictions which make the basis of feeling the sense of life. We owe the gift of logical thinking and broadening of knowledge to the development, perfecting and using language which is a special gift and drawing from which invests our existence with a sense. The role of logic consists in, among others, fullling by language the cognitive  communicative function. Human speech is a tool to realize the project of all  human solidarity, perseverant realization of accord and cooperation. Challenges of the last decade have been connected with the growing consumerism  oriented lifestyle initiated by the progress of civilization and desisting from making an intellectual eort to the advantage of pleasure and comfort of living. These challenges are also in opposition to the `logic' of ght and hatred. For the further intellectual development of each human commonwealth, not only the European one, it is of paramount importance to apply correct argumentation, logical argumentation for the benet of truth in discourses and public debates. In the times of commercialization, aecting also the intellectual life, one should defend the basic conditions of truth, 7I mean here the paper Globalizacja i jej wyzwania (Globalization and its challenges) [7]. 12 Urszula Wybraniec-Skardowska A. Grzegorczyk writes in his work Dekalog rozumu (The Decalogue of the mind). He formulates in it 10 norms relating to the culture of social debate.8 Respecting them is the fundamental basis of the culture of each real intellectual discussion, whose aim is to strive for truth or  at least  for working out a unanimous standpoint on a given issue. They expose critical aspects of social life and make a peculiar challenge posed to people responsible for the life of a given community or pretending to a dominance of the commonwealth. They refer also to people displaying the adaptive group characteristic based on the current economic situation. A. Grzegorczyk's deontological `commandments' play a peculiar educative function, and this not only with reference to the young generation. They teach respect for other people's beliefs, respect for those who think dierently. Professor Grzegorczyk, in his course  book of logic9 and in some texts available to the author of this essay, formulates certain suggestions concerning shaping intellectual and moral attitudes of human beings, as well as further challenges for the human condition. I am going to quote, highlight or summarize a few utterances or texts by A. Grzegorczyk. Knowledge means that we are capable of presenting our arguments in a clear and precise manner, and that we can understand others' arguments when they are clearly and precisely laid out; this knowledge oers all of us a hope for a more agreeable life, for removing conicts and eliminating quarrels on the basis on mutual recognition of basic values" [. . . ] In order that justication of one's views should play this socially  useful role within mankind, the culture of justifying and the very searching for reasonable justications and care for their quality must be propagated within the framework of regular school  based education of next generations. A substantial argumentation must be supported not only by knowledge in the elds which it covers, but should rest on a foundation provided by logic  the basis of the structure of knowledge. Logic  in the opinion of A. Grzegorczyk  should be placed in the very centre of man's life as: Basic intellectual discipline of steering the whole of one's life. This view of A. Grzegorczyk is exposed already in the title of his earlier book Logic  a Human Aair,10 in which he opts for turning philosophy of logic towards a certain kind of psychologism. The very logic itself is conceived in it as the most general ontology; the laws of logic are about the world, providing 8The work is included in the yearbook of the PTU [6]. 9The course-book has not been published yet. 10Op. cit. On life according to logic of gift, toil and challenges 13 knowledge about the world described here in the reistic style. Knowledge is an ingredient of formed human ability to adapt, and adaptation of human individuals which is understood in a broader way, within the philosophical perspective, means  as A. Grzegorczyk concludes  Adapting of our abilities to conduct ourselves to CONDITIONS AND CHALLENGES OF THE WHOLE HUMAN CONDITION. Logic is, at the same time, one of the signicant trends of the cultural development of mankind, and contributes  as far as Professor Grzegorczyk sees it  to Perfecting the skill of language  based describing of the fragment of the reality which is being studied, that is perfecting collective knowledge formed and consolidated by means of the language. Through this logic contributes to enrichment of knowledge and intellectual development of world populations. The whole of the deductive formal logic makes a natural stage in the development of human intellectualism and is a transition from spontaneous steps of the natural development of cognition to conscious creation of methods of conduct which imitate and consciously perfect the same steps that the nature of our life keeps oering us. Logic orders simple and trivial steps of the thought and imagination, and allows achieving an intellectual construction, whose sense, signicance, as well as applications, unexpectedly step beyond triviality  adds A. Grzegorczyk. Logic is, at rst sight, a mine of simple obvious tautological truths, yet  in the full system of logic  out of tautological truths and with the help of obvious procedures of proving one can obtain very intricate theorems which are far from being obvious. This happens so on the basis  A. Grzegorczyk claims  of the fact that man is capable  by means of simple tools of thoughts  of building very complicated constructions. So as to obtain tautological truths, which are  at the same time  not that obvious and which render something signicant (though they derive from obvious truths), one needs to repeat the procedures and arrange them in a very complicated and revealing manner.11 The applied logic makes an important way of utilizing the possessed cognitive, hence practical abilities, 11I would like to observe that Andrzej Grzegorczyk, through his psychologistic approach to semantics, applying formal-logical tools, solved in his Logic  a Human Aair the problem of semantic paradoxes and proposed the system of universal formal syntax, on the ground of which he gave a proof of the Adequacy Theorem for the classical conception of truth (the proof of this theorem was given in the famous Tarski's work on the notion of truth, which was translated into many languages). N.b. Grzegorczyk, in his essay 14 Urszula Wybraniec-Skardowska since  as A. Grzegorczyk states  logic oers a certain useful set of tools of reasoning, that is: Logic is tools of enlarging our cognition of the world by means of thinking and knowledge already in possession. Logic has played and still does its service  rendering role as a tool applied in dierent disciplines of knowledge. Today  as Professor Grzegorczyk underlines  almost the whole of collective communication is based on direct transfer and information technology, whose foundation is a description of situations established by basic laws of logic relating to conjunction, alternation and negation. He states that Today, one can say that the whole civilization of the world is taking part in an experiment of ordering logical behaviours which regulate our conscious conduct. The thought can develop towards dierent directions. Logic takes care solely of its correctness. Everybody marks out the direction of their mental searching for themselves in dependence on their own interests. [. . . ] Nevertheless, some substantial coherence of the thought being developed can count into logical values of human knowledge. There is a need, then, for a logical mental discipline as well. The knowledge alone of principles of thinking does not suce to manage the thought and good activity. There is a need for toil, an eort directed towards the development of intellect, logical thinking so that they should have a proper eect, an inuence on the whole of the life of an individual and a community. The whole eort aimed at understanding the surrounding reality, inquisitiveness of the truth of the world  the road to reach the truth  do not run along commonly accepted paths, but it requires toil of moving step after step towards discovering the construction of the World. From the above  cited quotations or summaries of Professor A. Grzegorczyk's works which have been presented during a few recent months or expressed on dierent occasions there emerges a certain general view advanced by the Professor, which I can formulate below, using his own words that I found in a letter sent to me; Prawdziwo±¢ cecha wa»na, aatwa do okre±lenia, trudniejsza do osi¡gni¦cia (Truthfulness  an important feature, easy to dene, more dicult to attain) published in Felieton lozoczny, most likely in 2010 (to which, unfortunately, I have had no access) somehow `removes the spell' from Tarski's denition of truth, showing that it does not go beyond the triviality of Aristotle's explication. On life according to logic of gift, toil and challenges 15 In the present situation created by the civilization of the species of homo sapiens it becomes indispensable to have a very rigorous logical discipline of thought, without which the whole social life will fall into a complete chaos. ? New times are bringing along still new and new technical possibilities, new forms of activity, but also new threats to the intellectual life of each of us, to the life of the community in which we live, and even  to the whole mankind. Hence, there are new tasks and new challenges posed to us, especially to the young intelligentsia. A young man, the young generation, generally, need thus a master, a mentor, a guide, somebody who is wiser than we are, somebody who is able to create a relevant intellectual atmosphere and  at the same time  encourage us to ponder over the philosophy of life. The scientic knowledge and knowledge about life, its sense, about morality, are inseparable components of the intellectual development of man and good life. Competent passing of fundamental values of life, logical and righteous conduct to new generations, educating, wise and beautiful reference to the ideals of Paidea, they all make a peculiar challenge of life  worthy, lled with creative intellectual toil  the life of Andrzej Grzegorczyk. BIBLIOGRAPHY [1] M. Aureliusz. Rozmy±lania (Meditations). PWN, Warszawa, 1984. [2] A. Grzegorczyk. Filozoa czasu próby. Edition du Dialogue, Paris, 1 edition, 1979. Second ed. by PAX, Warsaw 1984. [3] A. Grzegorczyk. ycie jako wyzwanie. Wprowadzenie w lozo¦ racjonalistyczn¡. IFiS PAN, 1995. [4] A. Grzegorczyk. Logic  a Human Aair. Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar, Warsaw, 1997. [5] A. Grzegorczyk. Czasy i wyzwania. Wspólnotowo±¢ i postawa uniwersalna. Roczniki Polskiego Towarzystwa Uniwersalizmu, 3:520, 2002/2003. [6] A. Grzegorczyk. Dekalog rozumu. Wspólnotowo±¢ i postawa uniwersalistyczna, (5):181186, 2006/2007. [7] A. Grzegorczyk. Globalizacja i jej wyzwania. In J. aszczyk, editor, Uniwersalizm i twórczo±¢, pages 13. Wydawnictwo Universatis Rediviva, Warszawa, 2009. [8] A. Grzegorczyk. Naprawianie ±wiata. Po»ytki lozoi. BUNT Maodych Duchem, 6(58):46, 2010. [9] M. Kowalewski. Logika (Logic). Pallottinum, Pozna«, 1959. [10] S. Krajewski and J. Wole«ski. Andrzej Grzegorczyk: Logic and philosophy. Fundamenta Informaticae, 81(13):117, May 2008. Special Issue: Topics in Logic, Philosophy and Foundations of Mathematics and Computer Sciences. In Recognition of Professor Andrzej Grzegorczyk. Urszula Wybraniec-Skardowska Group of Logic, Language and Information 16 Urszula Wybraniec-Skardowska Opole University Matejki 5/21, 45-055 Opole, Poland uws@uni.opole.pl