The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World “Gaudium et Spes” says, “for man is the source, the center, and the purpose of all economic and social life” (63). Therefore, the man’s dignity has to be considered integrally in both his spiritual and bodily constitution and emphasized alongside his value and supernatural vocation. This enables attributing a special role to his transcendence in economic life. In their own productive activity, the possession and exchange of goods, a man should (...) adhere to proper moral norms. However, what is observed is the incessant deepening of social inequalities in different parts of the earthly globe. Luxury accompanied by the wasting of goods adjoins indigence of people suffering a shortage of necessities. Thus it seems vital that economic institutions be established whose goal will be promoting good living conditions and an individual’s engagement in dignified economic activity and which will not destroy their human, moral and social dimension. (shrink)

According to the Aristotelian definition, politics is a co-formation of social life within human capacity in the conditions of freedom and equality, while under specific authority. In a more narrow sense, it is understood as the art of administration. In a broader sense, it denotes any care for public life. Every citizen, as a member of a community, takes advantage of goods it has produced. Their participation cannot resemble the situation of a person subjected to a transfusion; instead, it must (...) manifest itself in their contribution to the development of society. One of the aspects of the commitment to social life is political activity. It should not limit itself to the activity of politicians themselves, but, to a greater or lesser extent, it should engage all citizens. It is by their participation in political elections that citizens undertake an effort of shaping reality. The formation of the young generation’s attitudes is another manner in which parents and teachers manifest their care for social life. (shrink)

From the very beginning of Christianity personal experience with the problem loans on per cent. Statements of the individual Popes and councils and synods responding to the intensifying periodically problem are attesting to it. It should be noted that the evaluations are different from each other. Currently this issue is firmly present in social life in connection with the global economic crisis. And so an attempt to determine limits of the fair loan for the per cent appears to be important.

The paper discusses the problem of diachronic criteria of identity for historic localities. We argue that such criteria are needed not just for the sake of ontological clarity but also are indispensable for database management and maintenance. Our survey of the current research in database management and engineering ontology literature found no satisfactory candidates thereof. Therefore we attempt to search for such criteria in the historic-geographical scholarship by exposing the ontological assumptions the researchers made there and by stating them explicitly. (...) This attempt consisted of us presenting a number of brief scenarios taken from the historical studies whereby localities are claimed to maintain their identity through certain types of change or to be destroyed due to other types of change. Generalising these cases we provide a tentative formulation of the criterion and discuss its limitations. (shrink)

Celem artykułu jest analiza mobilności Antonia Santa Crocego – tytularnego arcybiskupa Seleucji i nuncjusza apostolskiego w Rzeczypospolitej Obojga Narodów w latach 1627–1630. Autorzy odtworzyli podróż dyplomaty papieskiego z Rzymu do Rzeczypospolitej odbytą w 1627 r., podróż powrotną nad Tyber z 1630 r. oraz dwa wojaże po Polsce – miesięczny wyjazd do Prus z 1627 r., podjęty w związku z trwającą wojną o ujście Wisły oraz polsko-szwedzkimi rokowaniami prowadzonymi przy udziale mediatorów niderlandzkich, a także – dwumiesięczny objazd Mazowsza, będący w rzeczywistości (...) ucieczką przed zarazą, jaka w drugiej połowie 1629 r. nawiedziła ziemie Korony. Podstawą opracowania jest korespondencja Santa Crocego z Sekretariatem Stanu Stolicy Apostolskiej, nad którym pieczę sprawował kardynał nepot Francesco Barberini. Wspomniana korespondencja przechowywana jest w Archivio Apostolico Vaticano oraz w Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Znaczna jej część została wydana w serii Acta Nuntiaturae Polonae (t. XXIII, vol. 1–2). Interesującym źródłem o charakterze uzupełniającym jest _Diario di Roma (1608–1644) _autorstwa Giacinto Gigliego, w którym pamiętnikarz uwiecznił wjazd Santa Crocego do Wiecznego Miasta latem 1630 r. Ponadto autorzy wykorzystali literaturę przedmiotu poświęconą zagadnieniu podróży przedstawicieli papieskich, m.in. prace ks. Henryka Damiana Wojtyski, Teresy Chynczewskiej-Hennel czy Tadeusza Fitycha. Autorzy dokonali analizy rękopiśmiennych materiałów źródłowych pod kątem mobilności nuncjusza Santa Crocego, dzięki czemu udało się uzupełnić jego itinerarium. W publikacji zwrócono uwagę na opisy odwiedzanych przez niego miejsc oraz personalia osób, z którymi przedstawiciel papieski spotykał się podczas swych wojaży. Zarysowano również pewne wątki, które będą kontynuowane w przyszłych badaniach, a dotyczą sfery organizacyjnej nuncjatury w czasie, gdy przedstawiciel papieski przebywał poza dworem. Artykuł może stanowić cenne uzupełnienie do badań nad podróżami w czasach nowożytnych, jak również przyczynek do zagadnienia związanego z mobilnością dyplomatów w czasie realizowania ich misji. (shrink)

Contemporary security has expanded its meaning, content and structure in response to globalization and the emergence of greatly improved world-wide communication. This book addresses how and why the nature of security has changed and what this means for the security actors involved and the wider society. The expert contributors reflect upon new communication methods, post-modern concepts of warfare, technological determinants and cultural preferences to provide new theoretical and analytical insights into a changing security environment and the protocols of war in (...) the 21st century."--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Mark Twain, the great American writer of the South whose characters struggle with difficult choices, famously said: Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other. Taking Twains phrase as a starting point, this book considers how literature and art explore different systems of values and principles of conduct, and how they can teach us to cope at times of trial. Morality remains one of the most contested areas of thought and ethics in the (...) modern world, due to numerous misapprehensions and the move away from solidarity, from what we share and hold in common, particularly our inherent pursuit of virtue and consideration of principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong, good and bad. Featuring essays by scholars from countries which have seen traditions of virtue and character formation perish in the course of tragic social experiments, this book highlights the role of literature and arts in educating about virtues and character, in both a regional and global context. The volume offers philosophical analysis of moral education and engages with the literary canon, discussing the ways in which virtue was taught and can still be taught with Aristotle as one of the regained tools of learning. The essays span countries from England, Spain, Italy and Belgium to the USA, Costa Rica, ancient China and Israel, with Poland, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Central Europe receiving considerable coverage. They address themes of virtue and character formation from the Bronze Age to the present and serve as inspiring reading for educators, literary scholars, historians, ethicists, artists and active readers. (shrink)

Contributed essays on Vedanta philosophy and Sanskrit literature.

v. 1. Translation -- v. 2. Roman and Sanskrit texts.

In his last book René Girard depicts apocalypse as disclosure of mimetic violence that is world-ending. He claims that in times of violent pandemic we are not called to fight for this world, but follow Christ in his withdrawal from the world. However, such an assertion creates serious theoretical and practical issues for the effort to heal interhuman relations from the virus of mimetic hostility. I argue for the importance of restoring a foundational distinction between passionate love and acquisitive mimetic (...) desire from the forgotten regions of Girard’s oeuvre. With Max Scheler’s interpretation of Stendhal’s concept of l’amour passion, I explore in each thinker a fundamental insight about possibilities of transforming violent contagion through empathy and loving commitment to the world. I conclude that respective “passive” and “active” approaches to the contagion of mimetic rivalry and violence are necessary and equally valuable. (shrink)

The article reviews the book Konstytucja wolności [The Constitution of Liberty], by Friedrich August von Hayek.

Compendium of the Mimamsa school in Indic philosophy.

Compendium of the basic tenets of the Mīmāṃsā philosophy.

W artykule omówiono kontakty dwóch znaczących osobistości w Polsce przełomu XVI i XVII wieku – wojewody Mikołaja Zebrzydowskiego i jezuity ks. Piotra Skargi. Pierwsze ich spotkanie nastąpiło, gdy Zebrzydowski rozpoczynał swoją publiczną działalność, a ksiądz Skarga był już doświadczonym kapłanem i jezuitą. Zebrzydowski nosił się wówczas z zamiarem fundacji kolegium jezuickiego w rodowych dobrach w pobliżu Lublina. Kolejna znacząca współpraca związana była z powołanym do istnienia w Krakowie przez ks. Skargę Bractwem Miłosierdzia. Ksiądz Skarga bardzo pozytywnie oceniał postawę i zaangażowanie (...) Zebrzydowskiego w obydwa dzieła. Sytuacja uległa dość znaczącej zmianie, gdy Zebrzydowski, obrażony na Króla Zygmunta III Wazę, przeszedł do opozycji antykrólewskiej i stanął na czele rokoszu. Ksiądz Skarga dwukrotnie udał się do wojewody, aby odwieść go od tego nielegalnego działania. Poselstwa nie przyniosły pozytywnego rezultatu. Wzajemnie relacje obu osobistości uległy oziębieniu, choć można przypuszczać, że Zebrzydowski pod ich wpływem w końcu pogodził się z królem. Pewne relacje z jezuitami dalej podtrzymywał, ale już bez poprzedniego zaangażowania. (shrink)

This paper centers around the notion that internal, mental representations are grounded in structural similarity, i.e., that they are so-called S-representations. We show how S-representations may be causally relevant and argue that they are distinct from mere detectors. First, using the neomechanist theory of explanation and the interventionist account of causal relevance, we provide a precise interpretation of the claim that in S-representations, structural similarity serves as a “fuel of success”, i.e., a relation that is exploitable for the representation using (...) system. Then, we discuss crucial differences between S-representations and indicators or detectors, showing that—contrary to claims made in the literature—there is an important theoretical distinction to be drawn between the two. (shrink)

Perceptual experience usually comes with “phenomenal force”, a strong sense that it reflects reality as it is. Some philosophers have argued that it is in virtue of possessing phenomenal force that perceptual experiences are able to non‐inferentially justify beliefs. In this article, I introduce an alternative, inferentialist take on the epistemic role of phenomenal force. Drawing on Bayesian modeling in cognitive science, I argue that the sense of reality that accompanies conscious vision can be viewed as epistemically appraisable in light (...) of its rational etiology. (shrink)

Despite the fact that the notion of internal representation has - at least according to some - a fundamental role to play in the sciences of the mind, not only has its explanatory utility been under attack for a while now, but it also remains unclear what criteria should an explanation of a given cognitive phenomenon meet to count as a representational explanation in the first place. The aim of this article is to propose a solution to this latter problem. (...) I will assume that representational explanations should be construed as a form of mechanistic explanations and proceed by proposing a general sketch of a functional architecture of a representational cognitive mechanism. According to the view on offer here, representational mechanisms are mechanisms that meet four conditions: the structural resemblance condition, the action-guidance condition, the decouplability condition, and the error-detection condition. (shrink)

This book presents a new approach to semantics based on Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz’s Directival Theory of Meaning, which in effect reduces semantics of the analysed language to the combination of its syntax and pragmatics. The author argues that the DTM was forgotten because for many years philosophers didn’t have conceptual tools to appreciate its innovative nature, and that the theory was far ahead of its time. The book shows how a redesigned and modernised version of the DTM can deliver a new (...) solution to the problem of defining linguistic meaning and that the theory can be understood as a new type of functional role semantics. The defining feature of the DTM is that it presents meaning as a product of constraints on the usage of words. According to the DTM meaning is not use, but the avoidance of misuse. Readers will see how the DTM was shelved for reasons that we don’t find so dramatic anymore, and how it contains enough original ideas and solutions to warrant developing it into a full-blown contemporary account. It is shown how many of the underlying ideas of the theory have been embraced later by philosophers and treated simply as brute facts about natural languages or even as new philosophical discoveries. Philosophers of language and researchers with an interest in how languages and the mind work will find this book a fascinating read. (shrink)

Compendium of the Mimamsa school in Indic philosophy.

Fr. Tomasz Czernik Charles Taylor’s Concept of Self-identitySelf-identity, according to Charles Taylor, comes from the community, especially through intersubjective communication. Self-awareness develops from contact with other people. The subject enters this way a moral dimension and public space. On this basis, he can talk about himself because he can describe himself in a social context. The self-identity is represented and conditioned over time. Its stability is rooted in social cohesion, which is based on culture. In the absence of such consistency, (...) there is a modernist and romantic tendency in society. Keywords: Self-identity, Charles Taylor, society, community. (shrink)

Compendium, with Kr̥ṣṇālaṅkāra commentary of Acyutakr̥ṣṇānandatīrtha, on the fundamentals of Advaita philosophy.

Jeden z kontrargumentów do argumentu z ukrycia Boga, który zyskuje popularność w ostatnich latach, odnosi się do niepojętości Boga. Jeśli Bóg jest transcendentny, twierdzą zwolennicy tego argumentu (tj. Michael Rea i Roger Pouivet), to nie wiemy, czy Boska miłość wyraża się w otwarciu na osobiste relacje ze skończonymi istotami, jak twierdzi pierwsza przesłanka argumentu o ukrytości. Oskarżają J. L. Schellenberga o kształtowanie koncepcji Boga na wzór współczesnych koncepcji człowieka. W odpowiedzi wskazuję na fakt, że chociaż w pismach Schellenberga istnieje niebezpieczeństwo (...) antropomorfizmu, personalistyczny teizm musi zaakceptować pierwszą przesłankę argumentu z ukrycia. Uzasadniam swoją tezę, odwołując się do zasady scholastycznej, która pozwala przypisać Bogu wszystkie doskonałości, i argumentując na rzecz tezy, że osobowość (rozumiana w kategoriach racjonalności i wolności) jest jedną z doskonałości. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Frühmittelalterliche Studien Jahrgang: 50 Heft: 1 Seiten: 129-162.

THE CULTURE OF LANGUAGE VERSUS LOGICAL CULTURE IN JOHN LOCKE’S THOUGHT S u m m a r y ! This article discusses the problems of language in John Locke’s thought. In the present studies the dominating considerations focus on the history of epistemology and philosophy of language. This study takes into account a broader intellectual context of the philosophy of language pursued at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. First and foremost it places the problems of language in (...) the context of changes in the teaching of logic and rhetoric. Locke inspired the then beliefs about the significance of language as the tool of science and public discourse, in the questions of education, morality, politics, and religion. The English philosopher emphasized how important was the duty to shape the activity of the human mind, one of which was to develop linguistic skills; such skills are the condition of the reliability of knowledge and argumentative efficacy in social communication. (shrink)