The eminent 20th-century Polish philosopher Tadeusz Kotarbiński (1886–1981) is the author of a novatory philosophy of combating global suffering. Kotarbiński’s theory states that although humans are by nature rational, and additionally endowed with goodwill, human life nonetheless offers an endless stream of pain and suffering. Some of this suffering results from the essence of the human condition and can not be helped, mostly, however, it is the effect of the meanderings of the human mind and can be eliminated by education. (...) More than by anything else, the human mind is brought to err by so-called phantasmats, or emotion-laden intellectual mirages, mainly of a religious, national and political nature. Such phantasmats are the source and fundament of humanity’s divisions into hostile cultures, nations and political systems, which in turn gives rise to conflict between civilizations, countries and ideologies, inadvertently accompaniedby mounting mistrust, suspiciousness, xenophobia, hatred, armaments—and ultimately war. All this means an ocean of suffering for countless individuals. Both in philosophy and praxis Kotarbiński strove to eliminate all sources of suffering, including that stemming from differences in culture, development, nationality, and politics. He believed in the motivating powers of reason and the creative powers of persuasion, and consequently sought to attain his goal by rationalization, or focusing solely on the logic-driven and common experiencing of the human fate in a bid to eradicate cultural, national and political difference. Thus united, humanity would melt into one big human state devoted to lingering inevitable suffering. Today similar views are promoted as “global humanism”—which makes Kotarbiński a pioneer of the Humanistic Manifesto 2000. An Appeal for New Global Humanism brochure. (shrink)

Henryk Elzenberg is one of the most prominent Polish philosophers of this century. His main publications are: the brilliant Foundations of Leibniz’s Metaphysics of 1917; a philosophical diary published in 1963 as Trouble with Being; and a collection of papers Man and Value. Elzenberg’s principal field of inquiry was axiology, in which he put forward a deep and original conception of his own. That, however, remains still mostly in the form of manuscripts and lecture notes, of which we publish two (...) pieces above: a critique of the utilitarian concept of value, and an analysis of Meinong’s position on the same topic. (shrink)

Sie halten gerade ein Buch in Ihren H¨anden. Vielleicht liegt es auch auf dem Tisch vor Ihnen, w¨ahrend Sie diese Worte lesen. Aber woher wissen Sie, dass Sie ein Buch vor sich haben? Nun, Sie sehen es nat¨urlich mit eigenen Augen. Vermutlich f¨uhlen Sie auch das Gewicht des Buches, das gegen Ihre Haut dr¨uckt, w¨ahrend sie es in H¨anden halten, und h¨oren das Rascheln der Seiten, wenn Sie umbl¨attern. Dar¨uber hinaus sind Sie wach und (so vermuten wir mal) einigermaßen (...) n¨uchtern, also in einem Zustand, in dem Sie f¨ur gew¨ohnlich Ihren Sinnen vertrauen. Da Sie von diesen zuverl¨assigen Quellen, die Sie st¨andig ¨uber Sie und Ihre Umgebung auf dem Laufenden halten, mit diesen Informationen ¨ubersch¨uttet werden und da diese zuverl¨assigen Quellen Ihnen nun mitteilen, dass Sie ein Buch in H¨anden halten, hegen Sie dar¨uber nicht den geringsten Zweifel. (shrink)

Ernst Haeckel’s popular book Nat¨urliche Sch¨opfungs- geschichte (Natural history of creation, 1868) represents human species in a hierarchy, from lowest (Papuan and Hottentot) to highest (Caucasian, including the Indo-German and Semitic races). His stem-tree (see Figure 1) of human descent and the racial theories that accompany it have been the focus of several recent books—histories arguing that Haeckel had a unique position in the rise of Nazi biology during the first part of the 20th century. In 1971, Daniel Gasman brought (...) the initial bill of particulars; he portrayed Haeckel as having specific responsibility for Nazi racial programs. He argued that Darwin’s champion had a distinctive authority at the end of the 19th century, throwing into the shadows the myriads of others with similar racial attitudes.1 But it was not simply a general racism that Haeckel expressed; he was, according to Gasman (1971: 157–159), a virulent anti-Semite. Since its original publication, Gasman’s thesis has caught on with a large number of historians, so that in the present period it is usually taken as a truism, an obvious fact of the sordid history of biological thought in the first half of the 20th century.2 Perhaps the most prominent scholar—at least among historians of biology—to adopt and advance Gasman’s contention was Stephen Jay Gould. In his first book, Ontogeny and Phy- logeny (1977), Gould took as his subject Haeckel’s principle of recapitulation, the proposal that during ontogeny the developing embryo went through the same morphological stages as the phylum passed through in its evolutionary descent. So according to this conception, the human embryo begins as a one-celled creature, then takes on the form of an ancient invertebrate (e.g., a gastraea), then of a primitive vertebrate, then of an early mammal, then of a primate, and finally of a distinct.. (shrink)

Hermann Glockner, von W. Ritzel.--Hermann Glockners Ethikvorlesung, von M. Trapp.--Folgenreiche Begegnung mit einem Lexikon, von J. Günther.--Das Einzelne, das Allgemeine und das Individuelle, von E. Heintel.--Philosophisches und mathematisches Kontinuum, von F. Kaulbach.--Fall, Norm, Typus, von K. Larenz.--"... als allein ein guter Wille," von O. F. Bollnow.--Kants Begründung der Gemeinschaft durch die Idee der Menschheit, von D.-J. Löwisch.--Dilthey und das Problem der Geschichtlichkeit, von J. Derbolav.--Gleichzeitigkeit--oder: Platon übersetzen, von A. Hübscher.--Zur Theorie des menschlichen Spiels, von H. Zdarzil.-Anlässlich eines Stillebens von Kalff (...) und eines Figurenbildes von Vermeer, von H. Schrade.--Pessimismus und Fortschrittsglaube, von W. Hof.--Orwells dialektischer Roman "Nineteen Eighty-Four, von H.-J. Lang.--Reisen mit Goethes Auge, von M. Weinhandl.--Incipit vita nova, von J. Overhoff.--Verzeichnis sämtlicher Veröffentlichungen von Hermann Glockner (p. 375-388)--Anschriften der Mitarbeiter. (shrink)

The following modern editions are referred to: Sillig ; Jan ; Mayhoff ; Bailey , The Elder Pliny's Chapters on Chemical Subjects ; Loeb editions ; Budé editions . Abbreviations include: Urlichs1 = K. L. Urlichs, Chrestomathia Pliniana ; Urlichs2 = K. L. Urlichs, Vindiciae Plinianae ii.

The following modern editions are referred to: Sillig ; Jan ; Mayhoff ; Bailey, The Elder Pliny's Chapters on Chemical Subjects ; Loeb editions ; Budé editions. Abbreviations include: Urlichs1 = K. L. Urlichs, Chrestomathia Pliniana ; Urlichs2 = K. L. Urlichs, Vindiciae Plinianae ii.