In this article, I present the conception of the first object of human intellect in the thought of the leading representatives of 13th century Scholasticism. The first object of a cognitive faculty is the essence that determines the proper domain of that faculty; thus the first object of human intellect is what defines the possible extension of human epistemic possibilities. The conception of the first object of human intellect presupposes and implies definite solution of important epistemological, metaphysical, and anthropological questions. (...) While one current of scholastic opinion, represented by St. Bonaventure and Henry of Ghent favored God as the first object of human intellect, more empirically minded Aquinas upheld the Aristotelian position that the proper object of human intellectual cognition is the essence of material reality; Duns Scotus evolved an elaborate position that tried to steer the middle course between the solutions of his predecessors and overcome the one-sidedness of their insights. Finally, I proceed to vindicate my opinion, that the epistemology of the 15th century thinker Nicholas of Cusa remained under significant influence of the scholastic debates and solutions. (shrink)

English title: Master Eckhart’s God Confronted with Nietzschean Critique of Christianity. Author tries to demonstrate that the way of thinking about Christian God developed in the late Middle Ages by Master Eckhart goes beyond the interpretation which underlies Nietzsche’s criticism of Christianity as a religion of the other world. In the paper, Author first presents the said criticism, followed by the vision of God outlined by Eckhart. He demonstrates that Christianity, criticized by Nietzsche, uses a commonsense vision of God’s transcendence (...) based on spatial images. The author also demonstrates that Eckhart defines this transcendence in such a way that it does not fall under Nietzsche’s criticism, in particular it cannot lead to the depreciation of worldliness in favour of an invented other world, which Nietzsche observes. Eckhart’s thought makes room for Christianity ‘after Nietzsche.’. (shrink)

Introductory courses dealing with sex, gender and sexuality often assign excerpts from Thomas Aquinas as an exemplar of the naturalist view. Given that most novice students tend to side against such naturalism uncritically, they need to be exposed to a more charitable account of the biological considerations motivating a stance like Aquinas.’ With that in mind, this article presents accessible arguments aimed at restoring deliberative balance in the classroom.

Dostoevskiĭ i ego khristianskoe miroponimanie -- T︠S︡ennostʹ i bytie -- Bog i mirovoe zlo.

: Three major strategies exist for the protection of endangered habitat and species: (1) land acquisition programs, (2) government legislation and regulatory agencies, and (3) "stewardship" programs that are voluntary and community-based. While all of these strategies have merit, we suggest that stewardship holds particular advantages and should be considered more often as a strategy of first choice. In this article, we examine the Municipal Wetland Stewardship program of Newfoundland, a popular and successful Canadian policy for the local protection of (...) wetlands. Important issues are at stake: competing philosophical foundations for managerial ecology, the value of "local ecological knowledge," principles of community-based conservation, the question of whether stewardship empowers local communities or controls them from afar, and ethical conflicts around American colonialism, hunting, and ecotourism. The results suggest that despite some potentially problematic ironies, the Newfoundland program provides a model for a public policy aimed both at the pragmatics of biophysical sustainability and at the ideals of environmental ethics, social justice, and democratic politics. (shrink)

Does God suffer? Some critical remarks on Dariusz Łukasiewicz’s paper ‘The suffering of God and the evil’ (Czy Bóg cierpi? Uwagi polemiczne do artykułu Dariusza Łukasiewicza 'Cierpienie Boga za zło') Author of article argues that Dariusz Łukasiewicz's criticism of Thomas G. Weinandy's book Czy Bóg cierpi?, directed towards three arguments for impassibility of God doesn't defeat Weinandy's theses. There are three reasons of that. First, Łukasiewicz criticism doesn't take into account metaphysical nature of Weinandy's arguments concerning nature of suffering and (...) God. Second, some of assumptions are attributed by Łukasiewicz to author of Does God suffer? mistakenly. Third, Łukasiewicz criticism that Weinandy's thought is too optimistic doesn't realize that philosophy cannot justify or disprove all theological theses, because many of them are beyond the reach of human reason. Article ends with some suggestions about proper use of analogy in attribution of properties to God. (shrink)

Adolf Reinach began his education in phenomenology with the teachings of Theodor Lipps before encountering Edmund Husserl’s Logical Investigations in 1902. What attracted Reinach to the Logical Investigations was the philosophical realism he saw accompanying Husserl’s criticism of psychologism and discussions of the formal structures of meaning therein. However, shortly after Reinach and a number of the Munich Circle members began studying with him in Göttingen, it became clear that the position Husserl espoused was shifting into transcendental idealism. Reinach maintained (...) a theoretical independence from Husserl while embarking on the richest kind of dialogue with his revolutionary texts and teachings. By bringing out the strengths of some of Husserl’s ideas and finding ways to repair the weaknesses of others, Reinach discovered new applications for the realism he found so attractive and significant in the Logical Investigations. I argue that this was how Reinach’s response to Husserl took shape and grew, and set the foundation for the version of phenomenology that Reinach would continue to build upon with his own students until he left for the battlefield of World War I. This article sets forth and explores Reinach’s realist response to Husserl by focusing on his expansion of the a priori, and his ontological work on essence and states of affairs – including his original contributions to jurisprudence. (shrink)

The author of the article discusses the great variety of the visions of the figure of God and the heaven in the revolutionary poetry between 1918 and 1939. God, the religion, the church or the synagogue were the symbols of the social oppression and the injustice or, on the contrary, the figure of God, especially Christ, was created as the most significant revolutionist and the symbol of the new, communist order. The article offers a presentation of many revolutionary, atheistic lyrics, (...) which connect communist ideology with Jewish or Christian religious symbols. It is focused on the former futurists’ poetry (by Aleksander Wat, Bruno Jasieński, Anatol Stern) and the lyrics by the communist propagandists of the inter-war epoch. (shrink)

The article is a tentative analysis of the construction of reality created in Bolesław Leśmian’s lyric poetry; an attempt to specify its most important elements, the relationships between them and the main mechanisms which control the poetical world of the author of Łąka [The Meadow). The discussion centres on the motifs of existence and non-existence, death and nothingness, time and space, as well as the creation of Leśmian’s characters, especially God, who is presented in a variety of images (from the (...) presentation of the poetic consequences of Nietzsche’s conception of God’s death, depriving him of his omnipotence, placing him outside the world and his humanization to his pantheistic diffusion into the reality created in the poems). (shrink)

This article is a short presentation of God existance in Julian Tuwim’s works. In the early period of Julian Tuwim literal output, in juveniles and Czyhanie na Boga (Wailing for God), Sokrates tańczący (Dancing Socrates), Siódma jesień (Seventh Autumn), Słowa we krwi (Words in Blood), God is shown with a passion and nostalgia. But afterwords its position changed and was usually depicted as Jesus Christ. God became a sinonime of lost love, order, consolation in the article of awe existance, justice (...) which lack of them is visible for Tuwim. God is a creation power and women become deified by him. It is hard to talk about transcendental experience in Tuwim’s poetry. There is no way out to the history, society and culture. (shrink)

Można wyróżnić dwa rodzaje powiązań między antyrealizmem semantycznym a teizmem. Pierwsze z nich ma swoje źródło w antyrealistycznym twierdzeniu, że język rozumiemy dzięki naszej znajomości uzasadnień sądów lub zdań. W konsekwencji tego staje się czymś niemożliwym przekazanie wiedzy Boga wierzącemu, jeśli ten ostatni osobiście nie zna uzasadnienia odpowiedniego zdania. Ze szczególnie mocnym przedstawieniem tej doktryny mamy do czynienia na ostatnich stronach Logicznej podstawy metafizyki Michaela Dummetta. Można to rozumieć jako całkowite odrzucenie każdego rodzaju iluminacjonizmu, a także pewnych w jakiś sposób (...) pokrewnych mu stanowisk, takich jak idealizm transcendentalny. Drugie powiązanie ma charakter bardziej pozytywny dla teizmu. Antyrealizm musi przyjąć, że każdy sąd może być poznany, co wydaje się sprzeczne ze zdrowym rozsądkiem. Istnieje jednak prosty sposób na uczynienie tej sugestii czymś prawdziwym, a mianowicie przyjęcie istnienia wszechwiedzącego Boga, który zna każdy sąd. Ten sposób myślenia po raz pierwszy został wyeksponowany trzydzieści lat temu przez Alvina Plantingę i stał się przedmiotem szczegółowych dyskusji różnych filozofów. Należy podkreślić, że po szczegółowym zbadaniu te dwa rodzaje powiązań nie są równie mocno uzasadnione, ponieważ tylko pierwsze z nich jest silnie zakorzenione w antyrealistycznej semantyce, podczas gdy drugie jest jedynie pewną spekulatywną sugestią. (shrink)

Three major strategies exist for the protection of endangered habitat and species: (1) land acquisition programs, (2) government legislation and regulatory agencies, and (3) "stewardship" programs that are voluntary and community-based. While all of these strategies have merit, we suggest that stewardship holds particular advantages and should be considered more often as a strategy of first choice. In this article, we examine the Municipal Wetland Stewardship program of Newfoundland, a popular and successful Canadian policy for the local protection of wetlands. (...) Important issues are at stake: competing philosophical foundations for managerial ecology, the value of "local ecological knowledge," principles of community-based conservation, the question of whether stewardship empowers local communities or controls them from afar, and ethical conflicts around American colonialism, hunting, and ecotourism. The results suggest that despite some potentially problematic ironies, the Newfoundland program provides a model for a public policy aimed both at the pragmatics of biophysical sustainability and at the ideals of environmental ethics, social justice, and democratic politics. (shrink)

Scientists, when they want to understand properties of complex systems, they divide them into simple parts and – knowing the parts and their relations – reconstruct the whole. This approach is effective in the case of simple systems: atomic nuclei, atoms, chemical compounds, stars and so on. In biology it is supplemented by the theory of evolution. However the situation is hopeless when one wants to explain the astonishing properties of the Universe generally known as Anthropic Principle. Discussing that problem, (...) philosophers use the metaphor of God as a Mathematician. The aim of the paper is to prove the inadequacy of this metaphor. (shrink)

V domnevno Platonovem dialogu Alkibiadu I je postavljena trditev, da je del duše, ki skriva naše pravo sebstvo, naš jaz, podoben Bogu: nekdo, ki ga uvidi in je spoznal božansko – boga in razumnost, bo tako najbolje dojemal tudi samega sebe. Vprašanje sebstva v dialogu nastopi kot smiselno nadaljevanje poprejšnjih izpeljav, po katerih se določa, da mi nismo ne telo, ne naše lastne stvari, temveč duša. S tem, ko sebstvo poistovetimo z Bogom, nekako uidemo problemu samonanašanja in postavimo vprašanje samovédenja (...) v novo dimenzijo. Članek obravnava nekatere nejasnosti definicije sebstva , torej vključujočega telo in dušo, ali le kot duše, kot v Alkibiadu Prvem , ki uporablja telo in mu vlada , v odnosu do božanskega.In Alcibiades I, for many interpreters still a spurious dialogue, Plato claims that our true self resembles the divine. Someone who looked at it and grasped everything divine, God and intelligence, would have the best grasp of himself as well. The question of the self comes as the natural consequence of previous claims showing we are neither our possessions nor our bodies, but our souls. By making the self similar to God, we can tackle the problem of reflexivity differently, putting the question of self-knowledge into new perspective. The article discusses some unclear questions concerning the definition of the self, defined as »the whole man« in Charmides , i.e. including body as integral part, or as excluding it in Alcibiades I, where the self is the soul , since the soul uses the body and rules it , and its relations to the divine. (shrink)