I argue that on Aristotle’s account practical thinking is thinking whose origin (archē) is a desire that has as its object the very thing that one reasons about how to promote. This feature distinguishes practical from productive reasoning since in the latter the desire that initiates it is not (unless incidentally) a desire for the object that one productively reasons about. The feature has several interesting consequences: (a) there is only a contingent relationship between the desire that one practically reasons (...) about how to satisfy and the action one decides on; (b) practical thinking and action cannot be separated from the agent, whereas productive thinking and production can be outsourced to someone else. The view has consequences also for the distinction between action and production. Finally, I illustrate the usefulness and correctness of my account of practical thinking by using it to shed new light on Aristotle’s claim that the virtuous agent must decide on her virtuous actions ‘for themselves’. (shrink)

The paper addresses the following question: why do human beings, on Aristotle’s view, have an innate tendency to badness, that is, to developing desires that go beyond, and often against, their natural needs? Given Aristotle’s teleological assumptions (including the thesis that nature does nothing in vain), such tendency should not be present. I argue that the culprit is to be found in the workings of rationality. In particular, it is the presence of theoretical reason that necessitates the limitless nature of (...) human non-rational desires. (shrink)

The article reviews the book Śmierć, nieśmiertelność, sens życia. Egzystencjalny wymiar filozofii Ludwiga Wittgensteina [Death, Immortality, the Meaning of Life: The Existential Dimension of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophy], by Ireneusz Ziemiński.

After the unexpected death of Professor Józef Kałuża at the age of 74 on the 26th of July 2003, not only Polish neuropathology but also Polish philosophy of medical investigations lost one of its most renowned minds. Beginning in 1949, Professor Kałuża studied medical sciences for five years at the Medical Faculty of the Jagiellonian University in Cracow. He did his Ph.D. thesis in neuropathology in the Department of Neuropathology of the Polish Academy of Science. In 1962 he received a (...) Rockefeller Foundation scholarship and spent one year at the National Institutes of Health. In 1981 Professor Kaluza was promoted to a tenured professorship in neuropathology. He is the author of more than 110 articles published in medical periodicals and coauthor of many chapters in medical handbooks. (shrink)

Where you have freedom, the meaning of the word increases, where the word is meaningful, you presuppose freedom." Józef Tischner.

After the unexpected death of Professor Józef Kałuża at the age of 74 on the 26th of July 2003, not only Polish neuropathology but also Polish philosophy of medical investigations lost one of its most renowned minds. Beginning in 1949, Professor Kałuża studied medical sciences for five years at the Medical Faculty of the Jagiellonian University in Cracow. He did his Ph.D. thesis in neuropathology in the Department of Neuropathology of the Polish Academy of Science. In 1962 he received a (...) Rockefeller Foundation scholarship and spent one year at the National Institutes of Health. In 1981 Professor Kaluza was promoted to a tenured professorship in neuropathology. He is the author of more than 110 articles published in medical periodicals and coauthor of many chapters in medical handbooks. (shrink)

I argue that, for Aristotle, virtue of character is a state of the non-rational part of the soul that makes one prone to making and acting on decisions in virtue of that part’s standing in the right relation to (correct) reason, namely, a relation that qualifies the agent as a true self-lover. In effect, this central feature of virtue of character is nothing else than love of practical wisdom. As I argue, it not only explains how reason can hold direct (...) authority over non-rational desires but also why Aristotle defines virtue of character as hexis prohairetikē. (shrink)

The unique value of Mickiewicz’s “Vision” is its included image of the structure of the supernatural order. The poet described is as an infinite, continually spreading space, spherical in shape and filled with a luminous divine element penetrating everything most easily, in the middle of which there is an eternally sinking well that emits out that element. The well emitting the luminous transparent matter is God Himself. Contrary to Christian dogmas He is obviously de-anthropomorphised but not de-animated, as also in (...) that form He means the source of life and love. In ecstasy, the experiencing individual adopted godly attributes: he united with the material-spiritual being that continually came out of God, and he found himself in the centre of the universe where he was given the ability of receiving all its movements and signals, and at the same time — the privilege of being everywhere. According to Mickiewicz’s “Vision”, eternal life has an active and creative nature - it is characterised by supply of the animating love element, endless development and growth, the grace of eternal watching the transcendental reality, excellent contact with Creator, and the gift of creation. The second fragment of the “Vision” reveals valuable information on the nature of extrasensory perception. It is absolute, free from any difficulties, prompt and insensible; it is perfect perception. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the widely held view that Aristotle's vicious agent is a principled follower of a wrong conception of the good whose soul, just like the soul of the virtuous agent, is marked by harmony between his reason and non-rational desires is an exegetical mistake. Rather, Aristotle holds – consistently and throughout the Nicomachean Ethics – that the vicious agent lacks any real principles of action and that his soul lacks unity and harmony even more than (...) the soul of the uncontrolled agent. (shrink)

Codes of governance have mushroomed in contexts operating under a single, dominant institutional logic, such as publicly listed corporations. These codes act as institutional prescriptions that help spread best practices throughout industries. More recently, in some countries, specific codes have been developed for hybrid organizations that integrate multiple, conflicting institutional logics simultaneously, such as cooperative enterprises. Drawing on an extensive set of qualitative data, we ask how such institutional prescriptions may (fail to) address governance challenges in organizations with multiple, conflicting (...) institutional demands. In doing so, we extend current literature on governance of hybrid organizations, which has so far focused on individual and organizational levels, to include institutional-level strategies. While governance codes are often inspired by deontological ethics to solve issues in a single institutional logic, we find that governance codes for hybrid organizations should not prioritize a single institutional logic, nor follow a deontological approach to improving governance, but should, on a more pragmatist take, remain open to continuous learning. (shrink)

Karin Peter and Nikolaus Wandinger, James G. Williams, and Mathias Moosbrugger give in their essays in this volume of Contagion some basic information about the correspondence between these two “beautiful minds”: René Girard and Raymund Schwager. I would now like to go “step-by-step” along the way of some selected letters, and this only insofar as they discussed the question of sacrifice.1 Going this way the reader can get an idea how these two men were dealing with each other. These excerpts (...) show on the one hand the dynamic of their correspondence, on the other hand the different positions of the partners. Girard is not a theologian, so he shows uncertainty with regard to theological questions. Schwager is firmly .. (shrink)

Part One of the ERDs addresses the balance Catholic health care institutions must strike between their mission to carry out the healing ministry of Christ and the demands of the US health care system. Divided into two sections, the commentary begins by proposing revisions to the Part One introduction focusing on enhanced application of Catholic social teaching principles and a renewed call for robust conscience and religious liberty protections. It then proposes additions to the Part One directives designed to help (...) Catholic health care respond with integrity to the many contemporarychallenges it faces, and to more full live out its mission and identity. (shrink)

I argue that Aristotelian decisions (προαιρέσεις) cannot be conceived of as based solely on wish (βούλησις) and deliberation (βούλευσις), as the standard picture (most influentially argued for in Anscombe's "Thought and Action in Aristotle", in R. Bambrough ed. New Essays on Plato and Aristotle. London: Routledge, 1965) suggests. Although some features of the standard view are correct (such as that decisions have essential connection to deliberation and that wish always plays a crucial role in the formation of a decision), Aristotelian (...) decisions sometimes must include non-rational desires such as appetite. Consequently, any exegetical account of Aristotle’s notion of decision must be able to accommodate this feature. (shrink)

Większość analiz i wątków niniejszego artykułu była inspirowana lekturą książki Kena Goldberga The Robot in the Garden… (KenGoldberg (red.), Robot in the Garden. Telerobotics and Telepistemology in the Age of Internet, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 2001). Dotyczy to zwłaszcza rozmaitych rozszerzeń systemu poznawczego człowieka, możliwości i faktu poznawania na odległość oraz nowej filozoficznej subdyscypliny, jaką jest dzisiaj teleepistemologia. Główny motyw jest jednak starszy, bardziej podstawowy i niezależny od koncepcji Goldberga oraz opisanego przezeń eksperymentu Telegarden. Stanowi go obawa przed nastaniem epoki (...) powszechnej, interaktywnej halucynacji – lęk przed ucieczką od świata realnego w stronę rozmaitych środowisk wirtualnych, obawa przed pełnym zanurzeniem się (imersją) w świat Matrixa. To z tego powodu od kilku dekad poszukuję coraz lepszych określeń poznania źródłowego, a problematyka źródłowości i granic wiedzy źródłowej, nieodmiennie, jest według mnie największy wyzwaniem każdej epistemologii: w każdej jej odmianie i na każdym etapie jej rozwoju. (shrink)

Decisions regarding the end-of-life of minor patients are amongst the most difficult areas of decision-making in pediatric health care. In this field of medicine, such decisions inevitably occur early in human life, which makes one aware of the fact that any life—young or old—cannot escape its temporal nature. Belgium and the Netherlands have adopted domestic regulations, which conditionally permit euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide in minors who experience hopeless and unbearable suffering. One of these conditions states that the minor involved must (...) be legally competent and able to express an authentic and lasting wish to die. This contribution is different from other legal texts on end-of-life decisions in modern health care. Foremost, it deals with the role time-bound components play in our views on the permissibility of such decisions with regard to minor patients. While other disciplines provide profound reflections on this issue, from a legal point of view this side has hardly been explored, let alone examined with regard to its relevance for the legal permissibility of end-of-life decisions in pediatrics. Therefore, the manuscript inquires whether there are legal lessons to be learned if we look more closely to temporality-related aspects of these end-of-life decisions, particularly in connection to a minor patient’s assumable ability to choose death over an agonizing existence. (shrink)

Charity, the core of the Gospel ethos, became one of the founding ideas of European civilization and distinguished it from others. In Polish territories, as in other Western European countries, charity work was conducted primarily by the Church, which together with its sense of Gospel duty, defended the weak by concerning itself with economic development. For this purpose, charitable credit institutions, so-called mounts of piety (montes pietatis), were established. They were continued by reformers, in a somewhat changed form, until the (...) decline of the Polish Commonwealth (Republic). The most original institution of this kind was Rev. Stanisław Staszic’s foundation: the Hrubieszów Agricultural Society, which survived until the days of the Polish People’s Republic. (shrink)

The genesic philosophy of Juliusz Słowacki, sometimes called his mysticism, is structured and constituted around four basic historiographic concepts as regards mankind. They are: the idea of spiritual progressive development, the concept of spiritual leadership, influence of the world of spirits on human doings, and the aggregation (that is collective) form of the spirit. Progress is the fundamental element of the genesic work of spirits who have been appointed by God to do it. Those form-creating efforts are the nature and (...) the task of the spirits of the “World”. The principle of progress is sacrifice. It means that a spirit has to sacrifice something of its present form in order to receive a more perfect one from God. And thus, on the border of organic forms, a spirit sacrificed its immortality, it sacrificed itself to death. In the genesic system, death is only a break dividing two lives; just like a dream is a break between work of the two days. The spirit that first rose the highest is benefactor to all creation because it shows the way up to everything else. Such a spirit, progressing ahead of others, is the natural guide of the creation, King Spirit. The most fundamental statement of Stowacki’s genesic philosophy is “Everything has been created for the spirit and by the spirit, and there is nothing to exist for the material purpose”. This seems to be most beautifully expressed tribute to the spiritual element of the human nature. (shrink)

I defend two main theses. First, I argue that Aristotle’s account of voluntary action focuses on the conditions under which one is the cause of one’s actions in virtue of being (qua) the individual one is. Aristotle contrasts voluntary action not only with involuntary action but also with cases in which one acts (or does something) due to one’s nature (for example, in virtue of being a member of a certain species) rather than due to one’s own desires (i.e. qua (...) individual). An action can be attributed to one qua individual in two distinct ways depending on whether one is a rational or a non-rational animal. One is responsible for one’s action in both cases, but only in the former case is one also responsible for being the sort of individual that performs it. Aristotle also distinguishes two ways in which an action can be compelled while still being an action of the agent. In the first case, one is compelled by (physically) external forces or circumstances to act against one’s internal impulse. In the second case, one is compelled to act on (internal) impulses that are fixed by one’s nature against one’s own individual impulse. This latter kind of compelled action is only possible in the case of rational agents. Secondly, I argue that Aristotle’s conception of what it is to be a cause of an action inevitably brings in certain normative features which support evaluative judgments and the practice of praise and blame. On Aristotle’s view, any goal-directed behavior that is properly attributable to an individual is (normally) subject to standards that pertain to behavior of that sort. At the most basic level, these standards establish what counts as a successful realization of the goal that one aims at. Thus even in the case of non-rational animals (or children), one can judge the success of what they are doing and encourage (or discourage) similar behavior by praise or blame. These standards are applicable to one’s conduct simply insofar as one is the controlling origin (or efficient cause) of one’s action qua individual. In the case of rational agents the practice of praise and blame can involve a further normative layer since they can be praised or blamed not only for acting in a certain way so as to encourage or discourage them with a view to the future, but also for being – and having become – individuals of a certain sort. Nevertheless, the applicability of such evaluative judgments and of praise and blame is still warranted by one’s being the controlling origin of one’s actions qua the individual one is (in this case, qua rational individual). (shrink)

The paper defends three claims about Aristotle’s theory of uncontrolled actions (akrasia) in NE 7.3. First, I argue that the first part of NE 7.3 contains the description of the overall state of mind of the agent while she acts without control. Aristotle’s solution to the problem of uncontrolled action lies in the analogy between the uncontrolled agent and people who are drunk, mad, or asleep. This analogy is interpreted as meaning that the uncontrolled agent, while acting without control, is (...) still in possession of her knowledge but she is unable to use it as knowledge due to the temporary disablement of her reason by appetite. Due to this disablement, the uncontrolled agent is temporarily unable to be motivated to act by her knowledge and acts merely on her appetite. Second, I argue that the second part of NE 7.3 provides an analysis of the particular mental state from which the uncontrolled action issues. Its central passage is a description of the uncontrolled agent’s state of mind before the uncontrolled action and not, as it has been traditionally understood, a description of her state of mind during the uncontrolled action. Third, I argue that, on Aristotle’s view, the transition from the state before the uncontrolled action to the state in which the agent already acts without control does not involve any psychological state that would constitute the agent’s choice to abandon her decision and give in to her desires but proceeds on a purely physiological level. (shrink)

The collection of papers assesses the impact of the reception of Averroist ideas on philosophy between the 15th and 17th century in the Latin West. Most of the articles in the volume were presented at the conference "Averroism between the 15th and 17th century", which was held on 9th-10th November, 2016 by the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts at Palacký University, Olomouc, the Czech Republic. The contributors explore the influence of Averroes, identify the difficulties in the interpretation of his (...) works, and study his followers and critics in the Latin, Hebrew, and Byzantine traditions"--Back cover. (shrink)

deel 1. De zedelijkheid als menselijk fenomeen.

: This paper provides an analysis of the first decade of bioethics development in Slovakia (1990-1999), together with an overview of the most important bioethical issues entering the scene of public debate and scholarly ethical analysis.

The author reflects on the peculiarity of European integration suggesting that its unique characteristics calls for a completely new approach which demands a great deal of creativity in our thinking. Such creativity is needed, first of all, in a very discourse applied to the European integration. Conceptual creativity must help us to depart from the centuries old ideas which do not allow us to see the specificity of the new political reality in Europe. Next, there is a need to overcome (...) two dilemmas that limit our imagination in building new conceptual framework of integrating Europe. These are: the dilemma of liberal or social Europe and the dilemma of federal or intergovernmental Europe. Neither of these two oppositions takes into consideration the unprecedented nature of European Union. In conclusion the author suggests that the way out of the mentioned dilemmas is also through a radical rebuilding of a European integration discourse which must concentrate rather on “solidarity” than on “democracy” as its organizing concept. (shrink)