In 2020, we marked the 25th anniversary of Józef Maria Bocheński’s death. Year 2021 witnesses the 60th anniversary of the first issue of Studies in Soviet Thought, the journal he founded in 1961, the natural continuation of which is Studies in East European Thought. We find both these jubilees a perfect opportunity for recalling Bocheński’s personality and work.

Józef Maria Bocheński (religious name: Innocent) was a Dominican monk, logician, philosopher, independence activist, one of the founders of philosophical Sovietology and an avid pilot!. He was born on August 3, 1902, in Czuszów (Lesser Poland), the son of Adolf Bocheński and Maria née Dunin-Borkowska. After graduating from gymnasium in Lwów, he took part in the Polish-Bolshevik war (1920) as a recruit. He hesitated about his future profession. In 1920, he first entered the faculty of law at the Jan Kazimierz University in Lwów. Two years later, he moved to Poznań University where he took up economics. Finally, he entered the Dominican order and was sent to Fribourg (Switzerland) to study philosophy, receiving the PhD in 1931. He went on to obtain a PhD in theology at the Angelicum (Rome) where he lectured in logic between 1934 and 1940.

Although living mostly outside Poland beginning in 1926, Bocheński nevertheless maintained contacts with Polish thinkers. He became acquainted with the works of Polish logicians and philosophers, mostly members of the Lvov-Warsaw School, the Polish branch of analytic philosophy. In 1936, Bocheński took part in the Polish Congress of Philosophy in Cracow. During this congress, a discussion took place over the reform of Catholic thought with the use of modern logical tools. Bocheński was prominent among the discussants who also included Fr. Jan Salamucha, Jan F. Drewnowski, and Bolesław Sobociński, together with the support of Jan Łukasiewicz. This event marked the beginning of the so-called Cracow Circle, the Catholic branch of the Lvov-Warsaw School. In 1938, Bocheński obtained the habilitation in philosophy at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow.

During World War II, Bocheński served as a chaplain of the Polish forces fighting during the 1939 September Campaign in Poland, later as chaplain of the Polish army in France, Scotland, and Italy, where he took part in, among others, the Battle of Monte Cassino in Italy.

After the war, he returned to scholarly activity at the University of Fribourg, where he was appointed to the newly created chair of the History of Modern and Contemporary Philosophy. In 1964–1966 he was the rector of this University. Bocheński founded and directed the Institute of East European Studies in Fribourg as a research centre for the study of Soviet Marxist-Leninist philosophy and ideology. From 1961, he edited the journal Studies in Soviet Thought as well as the monograph series Sovietica. He was also the founder and rector of the Polish Catholic Mission in Switzerland. He served as an advisor on Communist affairs to the governments of Argentina, the Federal Republic of Germany, South Africa, Switzerland, and the USA.

In 1987, Bocheński was awarded the Polonia Restituta medal by the Polish authorities in exile. The same year he visited Poland for the first time since 1939. In 1990, after the fall of communism, he was awarded honorary doctorates by the Jagiellonian University and the Academy of Catholic Theology (now the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw). He died in Fribourg on February 8, 1995, at the age of 93.

Bocheński’s main philosophical interests included the history of logic, philosophical logic, and analytic philosophy developed with contemporary logical tools. As to the latter, he is considered one of the leading precursors of its current counterpart: formal philosophy. Bocheński achieved significant results in all these areas. The synthesis of research in the field of the history of logic is the globally unique compendium Formale Logik (1956). In the field of philosophical logic and formal philosophy, Bocheński proposed an original conception of the logic of religion. He is also the author of the formal analysis of the concept of analogy and the formalization of Thomistic arguments for the existence and nature of God. In applied logic (methodology), he also developed the theory of contemporary philosophical methods. As an analytic philosopher, he proposed influential analyses of the concept of authority and enterprise. He also used logical tools to study selected issues in the field of political philosophy and, in particular, in philosophical Sovietology. Here he undertook, among others, critical analyses of dialectical materialism and the relationship of Marxism to Leninism-Stalinism.Footnote 1 His philosophical mottos were that the task of a philosopher is not to moralize but to analyze, and that a philosopher should combat superstitions. His Short Dictionary of Superstitions (1987) serves both these tasks. Toward the end of his life, Bochenski turned to examine what it means to live a long and good life in accord with precepts long recognized in the sapiential tradition.

Nowadays, Bocheński is recognized in contemporary Poland as one of the most interesting and influential philosophers of the 20th century. This was evidenced by, among others, the fact that the Senate of the Republic of Poland decreed 2020 as “the year of Józef Maria Bocheński”, “to pay tribute to this outstanding scholar, priest, and patriot on the 25th anniversary of his death”. A series of events took place in Poland in connection with this anniversary.

The present issue of the Studies in East European Thought is one among the contributions to the celebration of Bocheński’s anniversary in Poland. The papers included in this volume are original peer-reviewed texts, the core ideas of which were presented by their authors at the international conference “Logical Structure of the World. Axiological Vision of Patriotism” held on October 15–16, 2020, in Warsaw. The event was organized by Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw in cooperation with University of Warsaw.

These are texts concerning history, formal philosophy, and axiological issues, all relating to the work of Bocheński.

Paul Weingartner, in his text “Problems of Axiomatizing Religion”, pursues the issues raised by Bocheński within the frame of his logic of religion, proposing an analysis of the criteria of credibility of religious belief systems by comparing them with the credibility of scientific belief systems.

Marcin Tkaczyk’s contribution “Bocheński’s Model of the Development of Logic” concentrates on Bocheński’s achievements in the history of logic and reveals the structure as well as the origin and the value of his model of the development of this discipline.

Jan Woleński, in his paper “Beyond Logic there is Only Nonsense”, explores the interpretations of the title which is often recognized as Bocheński’s philosophical motto.

The article by Gabriela Besler entitled “The Correspondence between Józef M. Bocheński and Heinrich Scholz (1946–1954)” is a historical study containing a presentation and commentary on the unpublished correspondence between Józef M. Bocheński and Heinrich Scholz (a German logician, philosopher, and theologian) in the years directly after the Second World War.

In her paper “Józef M. Bocheński and the Categorial Reconstruction of Concepts in the Lvov-Warsaw School”, Anna Brożek highlights two original components of Bocheński’s method of reconstructing philosophical concepts, namely, establishing the ontic categories of the instantiations of concepts and the appropriate selection of the language of analysis.

The paper by Tomasz Kubalica, “The relation of master and disciple against the background of Józef M. Bocheński’s logic of authority”, presents a comparison between Bocheński’s concepts of epistemic and deontic authority and the author’s concept of axiological authority.

The volume ends with Jacek Jadacki’s “Patriotism: from Twardowski to Bocheński” in which the author reconstructs the concept of patriotism as understood by Bocheński and compares it with the concepts of the founder of the Lvov-Warsaw School and other representatives of the Lvov-Warsaw School.

We hereby submit these papers to the reader, being convinced that they show the importance of Bocheński’s philosophical ideas and justify the claim that his results inspire new analyses and constructions within the frame of analytic philosophy.