This article investigates the structures of an identifiably Buddhist philosophy of religion, understood as the philosophical exposition and exploration of Buddhist religiosity. I thus theorize what forms a philosophy of religion structured according to Buddhist principles and paradigms might take, address various theoretical and methodological considerations, and survey a range of candidate schemas, which latter are arranged under textual, sectarian, and doctrinal rubrics. Overall, this project is undertaken on the understanding that the study of Buddhism, among other global traditions, need (...) not and should not replicate conceptual structures imposed upon it from without, and that philosophy of religion is enriched by attention to the resolutely plural philosophies of religions worldwide. (shrink)

Abstract:This article is concerned with the role of Buddhist philosophy, and more broadly of non-Western philosophies, within the discipline of philosophy as this is professed and practiced today. I begin by deliberately engaging in a game of definitions to demonstrate that, whichever of the definitions standardly employed to deny non-Western philosophy the prestigious moniker, Buddhism nevertheless wins: it does count as philosophy. Having made that point, however, I go on to effectively undermine it by pointing out that anyone can win (...) the game if they get to make up the rules. Given that the score is arbitrary, then, I show up the game itself as absurd. On this basis, I ultimately cry foul at the perpetuation of a game still so plainly played on fields far from level, and therefore argue against excusing philosophers engaged in it of the charge of racism. (shrink)

Philosophy of religion has been the object of penetrating critiques concerning its continued near-complete blindness to all but a single religion. The need for philosophy of religion to open up so as to include more than merely occasional and tokenistic treatments of ‘Other’ religions is clearly evident from the slew of recently published titles concerned with diversifying the field. In this light, a book such as Victoria Harrison’s Eastern Philosophy of Religion should surely come as a welcome addition. And yet, (...) unfortunately, this book turns out to be a case study in how not to diversify philosophy of religion in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

This is an essay in comparative philosophy and philosophy of religion building on the ontological claims espoused by two major thinkers in the Buddhist and Christian philosophical traditions: Nāgārjuna (c. 150–250) and Hegel (1770–1831). I use Nāgārjuna’s fourfold tetralemma (catuṣkoṭi) and Hegel’s threefold dialectic (Dialektik) to propose a novel understanding of the ontological status of the self in its relation to itself and to its other, the no-self. Thus, I apply the tetralemma to the self, arguing that, to attain ontic (...) completion, the self must itself reflect the tetralemmic form in the totality of its being – nothing – both-being-and-nothing – neither-being-nor-nothing. These in turn correspond to the Hegelian in-itself, for-another, both-in-itself-and-for-another, and neither-in-itself-nor-for-another. (shrink)

This article seeks to introduce a greater degree of precision into our understanding of Madhyamaka Buddhist ontological non-foundationalism, focussing specifically on the Madhyamaka founder Nāgārjuna (c. 150–250 CE). It distinguishes four senses of what the ‘foundation’ whose existence Mādhyamikas deny means; that is, (1) as ‘something that stands under or grounds things’ (a position known as generic substantialism); (2) as ‘a particular kind of basic entity’ (specific substantialism); (3) as ‘an individual essence (a haecceity or thisness of that object) by (...) means of which it is identical to that very object, to itself’ (modal essentialism); and (4) as ‘an essence in the absence of which an object could be of a radically different kind or sort of object than it in fact is’ (sortal essentialism). It then proceeds to delineate the Madhyamaka refutation of the specific substantialist position in terms of its argued denial of dharma as basic entity; of generic substantialism and modal essentialism in terms of its argued denial of svabhāva as both foundation for and essence of putative entities; and of sortal essentialism in terms of its argued denial of essentialist conceptions of conceptual thought (vikalpa), mental construction (prapañca), and in short the entire domain of ratiocination (kalpanā), by means of its notion of conceptual imputation (prajñaptir upādāya)—a denial strictly speaking ontological, but of what are putative epistemic entities. The final portion of the article explains the relationship of ontological to other forms of non-foundationalism according to Madhyamaka. (shrink)

Nagarjuna is generally accepted by Buddhists and Buddhiologists alike as one of the most important of all Buddhist thinkers. Indeed, his thought has been core to the historical shaping and reshaping of Buddhism throughout South-, Central-, and East-Asia. It continues to fascinate, moreover, as evinced by the plethora of recently published inspirational and intellectual works devoted to him by adherents and academics. Recent scholarly interest in Nagarjuna has been intense, with especial focus on the vexed question of the rationality, or (...) irrationality, of his thought. For understandable reasons, debates in this regard have gravitated toward two points of friction between the arguments Nagarjuna laid out in India almost two millennia ago and those considered acceptable by his philosophically minded interpreters today, trained as these latter have typically been in twentieth-century Western analytical philosophy. Briefly stated, the issues at question relate, firstly, to Nagarjuna's use or tetra lemma, according to which a proposition may be true, false, both true and false, or neither true nor false; and secondly, to Nagarjuna's espousal of the "abandonment of all views". (shrink)

Karol Wojtyła—the future pope John Paul II—chose the human being, especially in its personalistic dimension, as the main point of his philosophical research. Inaccordance with the metaphysical rule agere sequitur esse, he investigated the dynamisms proper to a human being: the reactive dynamism of the human body, the emotive dynamism of the human psyche, and the personalistic dynamism associated with free choice of the will. These allowed him to experience and understand the human being as a complex yet integrated entity. (...) The personal structure of the human being is manifest in terms of selfpossession, self-determination, and self-governance. Thanks to self-possession, human beings experience freedom of the will, which expresses itself in each free act. Being endowed with a free will, the human being is able to grow in freedom but can also lose his freedom. Wojtyła’s philosophical investigations are innovative by way of the use that he made of the philosophy of being according to Thomas Aquinas and the philosophy of consciousness articulated by Husserl. He not only pointed out man’s structure but also presented man as an objective entity in an objective world. Each human being is constituted by his or her inner self, which is absolutely exceptional because it is completely irreducible to anything else in the world. (shrink)

Buddhist Philosophy of Consciousness: Tradition and Dialogue, edited by Mark Siderits, Ching Keng and John Spackman. Brill, 2021. 356pp., €135/$162. Hb ISBN-13: 9789004440890; e-PDF ISBN-13: 9789004440913.

A theory of definitions which places the eliminability and conservativeness requirements on definitions is usually called the standard theory. We examine a persistent myth which credits this theory to Leśniewski, a Polish logician. After a brief survey of its origins, we show that the myth is highly dubious. First, no place in Leśniewski's published or unpublished work is known where the standard conditions are discussed. Second, Leśniewski's own logical theories allow for creative definitions. Third, Leśniewski's celebrated ‘rules of definition’ lay (...) merely syntactical restrictions on the form of definitions: they do not provide definitions with such meta-theoretical requirements as eliminability or conservativeness. On the positive side, we point out that among the Polish logicians, in the 1920s and 1930s, a study of these meta-theoretical conditions is more readily found in the works of Łukasiewicz and Ajdukiewicz. (shrink)

Let $\mathcal {I}$ be an ideal on $\omega $. For $f,\,g\in \omega ^{\omega }$ we write $f \leq _{\mathcal {I}} g$ if $f(n) \leq g(n)$ for all $n\in \omega \setminus A$ with some $A\in \mathcal {I}$. Moreover, we denote $\mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {I}}=\{f\in \omega ^{\omega }: f^{-1}[\{n\}]\in \mathcal {I} \text { for every } n\in \omega \}$ (in particular, $\mathcal {D}_{\mathrm {Fin}}$ denotes the family of all finite-to-one functions).We examine cardinal numbers $\mathfrak {b}(\geq _{\mathcal {I}}\cap (\mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {I}} \times \mathcal {D}_{\mathcal (...) {I}}))$ and $\mathfrak {b}(\geq _{\mathcal {I}}\cap (\mathcal {D}_{\mathrm {Fin}}\times \mathcal {D}_{\mathrm {Fin}}))$ describing the smallest sizes of unbounded from below with respect to the order $\leq _{\mathcal {I}}$ sets in $\mathcal {D}_{\mathrm {Fin}}$ and $\mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {I}}$, respectively. For a maximal ideal $\mathcal {I}$, these cardinals were investigated by M. Canjar in connection with coinitial and cofinal subsets of the ultrapowers.We show that $\mathfrak {b}(\geq _{\mathcal {I}}\cap (\mathcal {D}_{\mathrm {Fin}} \times \mathcal {D}_{\mathrm {Fin}})) =\mathfrak {b}$ for all ideals $\mathcal {I}$ with the Baire property and that $\aleph _1 \leq \mathfrak {b}(\geq _{\mathcal {I}}\cap (\mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {I}} \times \mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {I}})) \leq \mathfrak {b}$ for all coanalytic weak P-ideals (this class contains all $\bf {\Pi ^0_4}$ ideals). What is more, we give examples of Borel (even $\bf {\Sigma ^0_2}$ ) ideals $\mathcal {I}$ with $\mathfrak {b}(\geq _{\mathcal {I}}\cap (\mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {I}} \times \mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {I}}))=\mathfrak {b}$ as well as with $\mathfrak {b}(\geq _{\mathcal {I}}\cap (\mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {I}} \times \mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {I}})) =\aleph _1$.We also study cardinals $\mathfrak {b}(\geq _{\mathcal {I}}\cap (\mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {J}} \times \mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {K}}))$ describing the smallest sizes of sets in $\mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {K}}$ not bounded from below with respect to the preorder $\leq _{\mathcal {I}}$ by any member of $\mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {J}}\!$. Our research is partially motivated by the study of ideal-QN-spaces: those cardinals describe the smallest size of a space which is not ideal-QN. (shrink)

The main goal of this paper is to present the philosophical explanation of the marital relationship according to the Polish philosopher Karol Wojtyła. In our research, our attention was focused mainly on his book Love and Responsibility; the early philosophical work of a young, 37 year old Professor of Philosophy at the Catholic University in Lublin, Poland. In his writings, Karol Wojtyła—the future Pope John Paul II—presents marriage as a monogamous, indissoluble relationship between a man and a woman, which grows (...) out of mutual love for the purpose of procreation. Such a relationship is ruled by the „personalistic norm" which says that a person can never, under any circumstances, be a mere object of enjoyment for another person, but can only be the object of love. Love is a self-giving for the good of one's counterpart, so Marriage as a personalistic unity persists as long as these persons are alive. Because love is fecund from its very essence, so it is fruitful from its nature. Thus, procreation belongs to the principle ends of marriage. Such an attitude—as K. Wojtyła proves—is opposed to the utilitarian point of view of man and Marriage. According to the utilitarian conception, a person can be used as a means for achieving the highest good, i.e., pleasure. (shrink)

The main goal of this paper is to present the philosophical explanation of the marital relationship according to the Polish philosopher Karol Wojtyła. In our research, our attention was focused mainly on his book Love and Responsibility; the early philosophical work of a young, 37 year old Professor of Philosophy at the Catholic University in Lublin, Poland. In his writings, Karol Wojtyła—the future Pope John Paul II—presents marriage as a monogamous, indissoluble relationship between a man and a woman, which grows (...) out of mutual love for the purpose of procreation. Such a relationship is ruled by the „personalistic norm" which says that a person can never, under any circumstances, be a mere object of enjoyment for another person, but can only be the object of love. Love is a self-giving for the good of one's counterpart, so Marriage as a personalistic unity persists as long as these persons are alive. Because love is fecund from its very essence, so it is fruitful from its nature. Thus, procreation belongs to the principle ends of marriage. Such an attitude—as K. Wojtyła proves—is opposed to the utilitarian point of view of man and Marriage. According to the utilitarian conception, a person can be used as a means for achieving the highest good, i.e., pleasure. (shrink)

Buddhist Literature as Philosophy, Buddhist Philosophy as Literature, edited by Rafal K. Stepien. State University of New York Press, 2020. 398pp. Hb. $95.00, ISBN-13: 9781438480718; Pb. $26.95, ISBN-13: 9781438480701.

Deleuze's readings of Hume, Spinoza, Bergson and Nietzsche respond to philosophical critiques of classical and modern empiricism. However, Deleuze's arguments against those critiques - by Kant, Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger - consolidate the philosophy of immanence that can be called 'transcendental empiricism'. Marc Rolli offers us a detailed examination of Gilles Deleuze's philosophy of transcendental empiricism. He demonstrates that Deleuze takes up and radicalises the empiricist school of thought developing a systematic alternative to the mainstreams of modern continental philosophy.

In this article, I discuss parthood status in mereologi- cally interpreted Daoist metaphysics, based on the Daodejing. I depart from the dao and you interrela- tion, which mereologically overlap by sharing parts. I consider the case of a complete overlap, which (a) challenges proper parthood, according to which a part cannot be identical with the whole that it com- poses, and (b) entails the question of identity that, while complying with classical mereology, cannot be consis- tent with Daoist metaphysics. The (...) discussion leads to abandoning proper parthood and antisymmetry axiom from classical axiomatics. It also shows a plausible fur- ther direction for mereological reconstruction. (shrink)

Graham Priest claims that Asian philosophy is going to constitute one of the most important aspects in 21st-century philosophical research. Assuming that this statement is true, it leads to a methodological question whether the dominant comparative and contrastive approaches will be supplanted by a more unifying methodology that works across different philosophical traditions. In this article, I concentrate on the use of empirical evidence from nonphilosophical disciplines, which enjoys popularity among many Western philosophers, and examine the application of this approach (...) to early Chinese philosophy. I specifically focus on Confucian ethics and the study of altruism in experimental psychology. (shrink)

The results of the linguistic interpretation should be verified through systemic and purposive methods of interpretation. That process is especially desirable in the cases where the result of the linguistic interpretation is not unequivocal. Whereas, as practice demonstrates, the quality of tax law is not the best, it is impossible to overestimate the role of the non-linguistic method of interpretation. The object of this paper was to present the role which the linguistic interpretation may play in interpreting the tax law. (...) However it was also important to: place the purposive interpretation among the methods of tax law interpretation and to present static and dynamic elements in tax law interpretation. Within the frames of this paper one can find out about historical interpretation of tax law, economic method of tax law interpretation and purposive interpretation directives. The above considerations allow for posit a thesis according to which purposive interpretation is an indispensable element of the process of interpreting a legal text. Its role in the scope of norms of tax law is, however, peculiar, since it serves only to verify the results of linguistic interpretation. However, it can be indicated that the growth in importance of purposive interpretation is direct proportional to the fall in the quality of tax law regulations. (shrink)

This article departs from a mereological conceptualization of the Daoist metaphysi- cal system in the Daodejing 道德經. I discuss what parthood status applies to dao 道. Whereas it is quite intuitive that you 有—the region of concrete objects—has parthood relationships and compositions (entities made from parts), the other, undif- ferentiated region, dao, poses a considerable problem. This problem can be charac- terized in the following way: (a) dao cannot be characterized as a particular com- position, which entails that it does (...) not include parts. However, (b) dao underpins compositions in you, which entails that it contains compositions or at least parts that make compositions in you. This generates a problem of how compositions are possi- ble with an undifferentiated ontological foundation. I focus on one possible approach to this problem––mereological nihilism, according to which no composition is pos- sible. Assuming nihilism entails dao composed of mereological simples––funda- mental entities, which are not parts. (shrink)

This is the first, out of two papers, devoted to Andrzej Grzegorczyk’s point-free system of topology from Grzegorczyk :228–235, 1960. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00485101). His system was one of the very first fully fledged axiomatizations of topology based on the notions of region, parthood and separation. Its peculiar and interesting feature is the definition of point, whose intention is to grasp our geometrical intuitions of points as systems of shrinking regions of space. In this part we analyze separation structures and Grzegorczyk structures, and (...) establish their properties which will be useful in the sequel. We prove that in the class of Urysohn spaces with countable chain condition, to every topologically interpreted representative of a point in the sense of Grzegorczyk’s corresponds exactly one point of a space. We also demonstrate that Tychonoff first-countable spaces give rise to complete Grzegorczyk structures. The results established below will be used in the second part devoted to points and topological spaces. (shrink)

In the second installment to Gruszczyński and Pietruszczak we carry out an analysis of spaces of points of Grzegorczyk structures. At the outset we introduce notions of a concentric and \-concentric topological space and we recollect some facts proven in the first part which are important for the sequel. Theorem 2.9 is a strengthening of Theorem 5.13, as we obtain stronger conclusion weakening Tychonoff separation axiom to mere regularity. This leads to a stronger version of Theorem 6.10. Further, we show (...) that Grzegorczyk points are maximal contracting filters in the sense of De Vries, but the converse inclusion is not necessarily true. We also compare the notions of a Grzegorczyk point and an ultrafilter, and establish several properties of topological spaces based on Grzegorczyk structures. The main results of the paper are representation and completion theorems for G-structures. We prove both set-theoretical and topological representation theorems for various classes of G-structures. We also present topological object duality theorem for the class of complete G-structures and the class of concentric spaces, both restricted to structures which satisfy countable chain condition. We conclude the paper with proving equivalence of the original Grzegorczyk axiom with the one accepted by us as axiom. (shrink)

In two experiments, we investigated how people interpret and reason with realistic conditionals in the form of inducements (i.e., promises and threats) and advice (i.e., tips and warnings). We found that inducements and advice differed with respect to the degree to which the speaker was perceived to have (a) control over the consequent, (b) a stake in the outcome, and (c) an obligation to ensure that the outcome occurs. Inducements and advice also differed with respect to perceived sufficiency and necessity, (...) as well as the degree to which these statements were perceived to be effective in changing the behaviour described in the antecedent of the conditional. Multiple regression analyses indicated that perceived control over the consequent, necessity, and sufficiency emerged as the best predictors of (a) the degree to which statements were perceived to be effective in changing the behaviour of the addressee, and (b) inference patterns on a conditional arguments task. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to compare the notion of a Grzegorczyk point introduced in [19] (and thoroughly investigated in [3, 14, 16, 18]) to the standard notions of a filter in Boolean algebras and round filter in Boolean contact algebras. In particular, we compare Grzegorczyk points to filters and ultrafilters of atomic and atomless algebras. We also prove how a certain extra axiom influences topological spaces for Grzegorczyk contact algebras. Last but not least, we do not refrain from (...) a philosophical interpretation of the results from the paper. (shrink)

Recent research (e.g., Evans & Over, 2004) has provided support for the hypothesis that people evaluate the probability of conditional statements of the form if p then q as the conditional probability of q given p , P( q / p ). The present paper extends this approach to pragmatic conditionals in the form of inducements (i.e., promises and threats) and advice (i.e., tips and warnings). In so doing, we demonstrate a distinction between the truth status of these conditionals and (...) their effectiveness as speech acts. Specifically, while probability judgements of the truth of conditional inducements and advice are highly correlated with estimates of P( q / p ), their perceived effectiveness in changing behaviour instead varies as a function of the conditional probability of q given not-p , P( q / ∼p ). Finally, we show that the conditional probability approach can be extended to predicting inference rates on a conditional reasoning task. (shrink)

This paper offers a critical reconstruction of the motivations that led to the development of mereology as we know it today, along with a brief description of some problems that define current research in the field.

This article proposes a mereological approach to the dao-you relation in the Daodejing. It is claimed here that dao and you can be conceived of as two integrated subregions, defined in terms of rules of composition and their persistence through time. It is shown that dao is an atemporal object (a fourdimensional unrestricted composition), whereas you is a temporal object (a three-dimensional restricted composition). This particular approach can provide a new understanding of essential issues in Daoist metaphysics.

This article is devoted to the problem of ontological foundations of three-dimensional Euclidean geometry. Starting from Bertrand Russell’s intuitions concerning the sensual world we try to show that it is possible to build a foundation for pure geometry by means of the so called regions of space. It is not our intention to present mathematically developed theory, but rather demonstrate basic assumptions, tools and techniques that are used in construction of systems of point-free geometry and topology by means of mereology (...) and Whitehead-like connection structures. We list and briefly analyze axioms for mereological structures, as well as those for connection structures. We argue that mereology is a good tool to model so called spatial relations. We also try to justify our choice of axioms for connection relation. Finally, we briefly discuss two theories: Grzegorczyk’s point-free topology and Tarski’s geometry of solids. (shrink)

What is a thing? What is an object? Tristan Garcia decisively overturns 100 years of Heideggerian orthodoxy about the supposedly derivative nature of objects to put forward a new theory of ontology that gives us deep insights into the world and our place in it."e.

One of the standard axioms for Boolean contact algebras says that if a region __x__ is in contact with the join of __y__ and __z__, then __x__ is in contact with at least one of the two regions. Our intention is to examine a stronger version of this axiom according to which if __x__ is in contact with the supremum of some family __S__ of regions, then there is a __y__ in __S__ that is in contact with __x__. We study (...) a modal possibility operator which is definable in complete algebras in the presence of the aforementioned axiom, and we prove that the class of complete algebras satisfying the axiom is closely related to the class of modal KTB-algebras. We also demonstrate that in the class of complete extensional contact algebras the axiom is equivalent to the statement: _every region is isolated_. Finally, we present an interpretation of the modal operator in the class of the so-called _resolution contact algebras_. (shrink)

The present paper puts forward a first outline of a possible agonistic theory of adjudication, conceived of as an extension of Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic theory of democracy onto the domain of the juridical, and specifically, judicial decision-making. Mouffe’s concept of the political as the dimension of inherent and unalienable conflicts (antagonisms) which, nonetheless, need to be tamed for a pluralist democracy to function, creates an excellent vantage point for a critical theory of adjudication. The paper argues for perceiving all judicial (...) decisions as having a double nature—juridical and political. Cloaked in legal form, judgments nonetheless decide on individual instances of on-going collective conflicts, opposing workers to employers, consumers to traders, tenants to landlords, moral progressives to traditionalists, minorities to majorities and so forth. Judges, when handing down judgments, enjoy a ‘relative sovereignty’, being always already inscribed into the institutional imperatives of the juridical, on one hand, and ideological influences, on the other, but at the same time called upon to decide in the terrain of the undecidable and contingent (after all, law does not ‘apply itself’ on its own). Indeed the determinacy of legal decisions is only relative: in many cases judges can, by performing a sufficient amount of legal interpretive work, reach a conclusion which will be different from theprima facieinterpretation. The collective conflicts of a various nature (economic, ideological, socio-political), once they are juridified, become the object of judicial decisions which, in light of Mouffe’s theory, can be seen as temporary hegemonic fixations. The goal of critical legal scholarship is to destabilise such hegemonies in the name of justice. This can be done not only through an external critique of the law, but also through an internal one. The methodological approach advanced in the latter part of the paper emphasises the need for a critique of judicial decisions based on the consideration of all possible alternative decisions a court could have reached, and their evaluation in the light of conflicting interests and ideologies. (shrink)

We generalize the Bolzano-Weierstrass theorem on ideal convergence. We show examples of ideals with and without the Bolzano-Weierstrass property, and give characterizations of BW property in terms of submeasures and extendability to a maximal P-ideal. We show applications to Rudin-Keisler and Rudin-Blass orderings of ideals and quotient Boolean algebras. In particular we show that an ideal does not have BW property if and only if its quotient Boolean algebra has a countably splitting family.

Metamorphosis is a sudden change, a ‘becoming-other’ in life or in philosophical perspective. A revelatory event initiates in a double manner the move from Heidegger's futile search for a transcendental IT that delivers perceptible beings to the confident positing of Deleuze's transcendental empiricism, suffused with the IF of incorporeal sense. In the process Deleuze dramatically enacts his personal connection between sense (Sinn) and being (Sein).

The article reflects on the therapeutic and ethical potential of literature, the theme which is often marginalized and overlooked by literary critics, in the novel Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones. Matilda, the main character of the analyzed novel, finds salvation in the times of war and oppression thanks to Charles Dickens’s masterpiece, Great Expectations, and the only white man on the island−her teacher, Mr. Watts. Matilda’s strong identification with Dickensian Pip and imagination make her escape to another world, become a (...) self-conscious person and reunite with her father. The paper also discusses relationships between Matilda, Mr. Watts and her mother, Dolores. I attempt to show the emotional development of the characters, their interactions, changes, sense of identity, and, having analyzed their actions, I compare them to protagonists created by Charles Dickens. Needless to say, drawing the reader’s attention to British culture and traditions, Lloyd Jones avoids focusing on the negative aspects of the postcolonial views, pointing out that “the white man” can be an example of a Dickensian gentleman. (shrink)

I focus on the monastery life in Europe and its predomination of vita contemplativa upon vita activa. It is not hard to distinguish within Christianity its Manichaean component whose characteristic feature is a grudge against matter, body and sexuality. This complexity of ideas brought about the contempt of vital elements of human existence, so that its animal past, still present in Zivilisationsprozess. An alternative anthropology inspired by an evolutionism should based on the presumption that only through the appreciation of an (...) animal dimension of us—instead of monastic desire of becoming an angel—will it be possible to create new perspectives for renegotiation of the human–animal boundaries. (shrink)

This is a spin-off paper to [3, 4] in which we carried out an extensive analysis of Andrzej Grzegorczyk’s point-free topology from [5]. In [1] Loredana Biacino and Giangiacomo Gerla presented an axiomatization which was inspired by the Grzegorczyk’s system, and which is its variation. Our aim is to compare the two approaches and show that they are slightly different. Except for pointing to dissimilarities, we also demonstrate that the theories coincide in presence of axiom stipulating non-existence of atoms.