Amongst the entities making up social reality, are there necessary relations whose necessity is not a mere reflection of the logical connections between corresponding concepts? We distinguish three main groups of answers to this question, associated with Hume and Adolf Reinach at opposite extremes, and with Searle who occupies a position somewhere in the middle. We first set forth Reinach’s views on what he calls ‘material necessities’ in the realm of social entities. We then attempt to show that Searle has (...) not identified a sustainable position somewhere between the Humean and the Reinachian extremes. This is because Searle’s position is threatened by circularity, and to steer clear of that danger it must incorporate at least some elements of Reinach’s essentialism. (shrink)

Are there things that we must never do, no matter how untypical the circumstances and “unorthodox” our deontic ideas might be? In this essay I try to make evident that acts I call “pure sadist acts” satisfy this description. I discuss several examples of such acts and alert to their being not always easy to distinguish from certain others. Norms prohibiting such acts I call “true”, and I suggest that other, less suggestive, norms might also be (derivatively) true, if the (...) pertinent acts stand in certain relations with the former ones. I incorporate some ideas from Hume, as well as from elementary model theory, to make mine clearer. (shrink)

G.E.M. Anscombe znalazła w Etyce nikomachejskiej Arystotelesa pewną niekonsekwencję: Arystoteles zdaje się twierdzić, że cokolwiek wynika z namysłu, jest wyborem, i że słaby wolą może się skutecznie namyślać, ale i że — z drugiej strony — on nie wybiera. Anscombe znajduje rozwiązanie tej sprzeczności: Arystoteles powinien był, jej zdaniem, zaznaczyć, że by z namysłu wynikał wybór, to, ze względu na co się namyślamy, musiałby sam być przedmiotem uprzedniego wyboru. Badam to rozwiązanie i znajduję jego słabe strony, jak niebezpieczeństwo nieskończonego regresu, (...) trudność prześledzenia genealogii wyborów i nieosiągalność pierwotnego celu. Pomimo to próbuję je ulepszyć, poddając pod dyskusję, czy tego rodzaju pierwotne wybory, jakich wymaga rozwiązanie Anscombe, nie są jednak czasem naprawdę podejmowane i czy ich cele nie są rozkładalne na takie, które można realistycznie mieć nadzieję osiągnąć. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that for sentences of form “A is B” there isa distinction between identity and “mere” predication to be made, and thatLeśniewski’s Ontology puts us in a better position to make this distinctionthan first-order predicate logic. I also gesture at how Ontology could helpus to decide questions of identity. The nub of the matter seems to be a“primordial” sense of the copula that Ontology has at its basis.

In this article the author argues that the 'Liar' Paradox sentence: "This sentence is false" is neither true nor false because it does not express any proposition or "Satz" in the sense of Bernard Bolzano. The difficulty left open is that by a similar line of reasoning also the sentence "This sentence is true" would not express any proposition, yet it is sometimes taken to be true (on the strength of a theorem by Loewe).

This essay attempts to define a value (not «the» value) of what, in it, comes to be called an «eccentric». In a largely standardized and stereotyped society like ours of the present times, a society where a human being can be creative but only within certain predefined limits, diverse groups exert all kinds of pressure on an individual, and with growing geographical as well as social mobility these kinds of pressure, intertwined and superimposed, give rise to overdue stress and situations (...) of psychological and maybe even metaphysical impossibility. One solution is a «no notice» attitude, in which all rules but a few selected ones are more or less dignifiedly flouted. Another solution is an attitude of an eccentric, close to, but not identical with, that of John Henry Newman’s «gentleman». I try to define this attitude and show one of its values: enabling us to evade too much social pressure without estranging us from society. (shrink)

With the meaning of trust, good faith and respect for promises made, protection, or assistance, fides in the non-exclusively religious sense of the word comes from the demand for ethical perfection: as such, it is omnipresent in human relations and in the dynamic of societies in the Middle Ages.

Qu'est-ce que l'homme? En se basant sur l'anthropologie à la fois d'Aristote et de Saint Thomas d'Aquin, Maritain propose une conception de l'homme dans laquelle la morale est étroitement liée aux composantes ontologiques dans l'être humain. Le personnalisme de Maritain met l'accent sur le caractère communautaire de l'humanisme. L'homme s'accomplit au moment où il se donne à soi-même et aux autres. Ces deux dimensions du don sont constitutives pour que l'homme s'épanouisse intégralement et pleinement : le don à l'égard de (...) soi-même (la surexistence en connaissance et en amour) et le don à l'égard des autres (le service du bien commun). (shrink)

Kazimierz Twardowski attributed high cognitive value to introspection because he believed it plays a fundamental role in psychology, the primary philosophical discipline. He believed that basing philosophy on inner experience would allow it to obtain universal and justified results. Internal experience consists of perceiving one’s own mental facts; it is non-sensual and selfevident. Twardowski referred to introspection in his investigations in various ways, which is presented in the article.

This is a completely revised and updated second edition of Rights Before Courts (2005, paper edition 2008). This book carefully examines the most recent wave of the emergence and case law of activist constitutional courts: those that were set up after the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe. In contrast to most other analysts and scholars, the study does not take for granted that they are a "force for good" but rather subjects them to critical scrutiny against a (...) background of wide-ranging comparative and theoretical analysis of constitutional judicial review in the modern world. The new edition takes in new case law and constitutional developments in the decade since the first edition, including considering the recent disturbing disempowerment of the Hungarian Constitutional Court (which previously was probably the most powerful constitutional court in the world) resulting from the fundamental constitutional changes brought about by the Fidesz government. (shrink)

The thesis that legal norms are rooted in theology is not new. It is worth considering, however, to what extent not only singular norms, but also models of normativity are the structural representation of theological concepts. In this article, I consider transubstantiation as one of such ideas. I analyse its place in two political theologies published at the same time (in 1922): Carl Schmitt’s Political Theology and James Joyce’s Ulysses. I argue that both thinkers used the idea of transubstantiation as (...) a normative mechanism to deal with anomie that encompassed European societies after the First World War. (shrink)