Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962) was a seminal figure in contemporary French philosophy. Together with Michel Foucault, Georges Canguilhem and Jean Cavailles, he shaped the 'French epistemological' school of philosophy of science. In France, Bachelard is a towering presence; in the English-speaking world, he is little known. Now, Zbigniew Kotowicz gives us the first English language, in-depth presentation of the entire spectrum of Bachelard's work: epistemology, poetic imagination and temporality. And he explores an old philosophical tradition that Bachelard's thought opens up (...) - atomism - a doctrine that has been almost forgotten and is much misunderstood ". (shrink)

The author of this book speaks out again in regard to the Enlightenment. His inspiration comes not only from new observations occasioned by own studies, but also from the recently read material as well as opinions and appraisals of the era articulated lately at academic conferences. Although they have not led the author to perform a fundamental revision of his views in regard to the nature of Enlightenment and its crucial contributions to the Western culture, they did afford a better (...) understanding of its complexity. They also made him more aware that his interpretation and presentation of that era depends considerably on what its prominent representatives had to say, as well as on the worldview-based assumptions and methods of appraisal adopted by its later observers and interpreters. (shrink)

Classical Political Philosophy in Popular Discourse combines two scientific paradigms-classical political philosophy and contemporary, empirical sociology. The chief aim of this unique scientific project is to explore, operationalize, and reconstruct a political doctrine appearing in social discourse, exemplified by Polish society.

The treatment of Descartes' philosophy within this book takes it to be a specific instance of rationalism. Descartes gave the human intellect the central role in this system; thus, it is considered a variant of an intellectual rationalism.

Izydora Da˛mbska was one of the most outstanding representatives of the Lvov-Warsaw School and a disciple of both the School’s founder Kazimierz Twardowski and Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz. Interest in the School was the result of Twardowski’s program of scientific philosophy, which was adopted by the vast majority of his students. This program assumed that the basic condition for practicing philosophy in a scientific manner is the precise use of language by a philosopher. One of the scholars who devoted most attention to (...) language was Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz. Da˛mbska accepted that the philosophical program of the School was opposed to the trend shared by many contemporary schools at the time which belonged to the so called current of linguistic philosophy. According to this trend, language is the only object of philosophical investigation. The analysis of Ajdukiewicz’s concept of language is one of her most interesting achievements in the domain of philosophy of language. This concept, called by Da˛mbska ‘the immanent concept of language’, is the basis of Ajdukiewicz’s well-known radical conventionalism. (shrink)

W artykule tym autor wskazuje zarówno na określone luki pojęciowe w systemie kartezjańskim, jak i wyjaśnia potrzebę wypełnienia tych luk – w przekonaniu autora może się to przyczynić zarówno do większej jasności wypowiedzi Kartezjusza, jak i do ich większej spójności logicznej. Szczegółowo analizuje jedynie dwa z takich pojęć, tj. metodyki i metodologii. Oba mają charakter kategorialny, ale pierwsze z nich jest ogólniejsze niż drugie. Krótko rzecz ujmując, metodyka dotyczyć może zarówno zasad poznawczych, jak i moralnych, wyznaniowych i innych jeszcze, natomiast (...) metodologia tych reguł, które są zalecane i stosowane w którymś z tych obszarów problemowych. Autor przyjmuje również, że z metodyką mamy do czynienia wówczas, gdy mowa jest o czynnościach przygotowawczych do intelektualnego wkroczenia na każdy z tych obszarów myślenia i praktycznego postępowania i poszukujemy tych racji, które sprawiają, że to myślenie i postępowanie staje się racjonalne. Natomiast z metodologią mamy do czynienia wówczas, gdy już znajdujemy się na którymś z tych obszarów i zmierzamy – w sposób racjonalnie zaplanowany – do wytyczonych na nim celów. (shrink)

This book focuses on the standards of philosophical rationality, corresponding to a philosophy that aspires to be more than the wisdom that stems from and addresses everyday human needs. It is a search for standards that would, as it were, show the way to philosophical wisdom for anyone who is willing and able to assess it. One of the problems is that people have had a different understanding of the basic concept of rationality, which is the rationale. (Series: Development in (...) Humanities - Vol. 1). (shrink)

There is not much disagreement that the recent spectacular establishment of parliamentary democracies and market economies in Eastern Europe and the even more breathtaking events in most Soviet republics – which should culminate in the reemergence of the Baltic nations as independent states – may be convincingly conceived of as the triumph of civil society over the Marxist-Leninist system. Both the collapse of the Marxist-Leninist system and the reemergence of civil society may be discussed in terms of theories which deal (...) with the relationship between human nature and sociopolitical systems. (shrink)

This book presents Tocqueville’s vision of the European continent, exploring his ideas of liberty, virtue, religion, patriotism, civic participation and democracy. Although Tocqueville is often revered as a classic writer on the subject of American democracy, this book focuses on the multifaceted importance of his ideas within a European context.

Brzezinski predicts that the interface between ethics and science will be the new frontier of politics, and it will place on the shoulders of democratic leaders and those concerned with human rights, the obligation to be at least part-time scientists and philosophers.

The author aims at evaluating the activities on the Facebook profiles of three regional media editorials – namely the ‘TVP 3 Łódź’ TV channel, the ‘Radio Łódź’ radio channel, and the Express Ilustrowany daily – particularly in terms of including local and regional information in their posts. Another objective was to attempt to quantify and compare these activities. The used research method is the analysis of profile content on Facebook, and the study was conducted within the period of one month.

Jednym z elementów współczesnej kultury są seriale telewizyjne, w przeważającej mierze charakteryzujące się brakiem jakichkolwiek wartości artystycznych oraz intelektualnych. Do nielicznych pod tym względem należy serial pt. Dr House. Centralną kwestią w tym serialu jest postawa moralna głównego bohatera. Krytycy dostrzegli w niej wiele analogii do moralności Nietzscheańskiego nadczłowieka. W artykule podjęto próbę ukazania, że w moralności dr House'a odzwierciedla się Nietzscheański model estetyzacji moralności, polegający na tym, że kryterium etycznej słuszności czynów jest wolność jednostki i jej autonomiczność w kształtowaniu (...) swego życia jako dzieła sztuki. (shrink)

Philosophical interests of Joseph Życiński in the domain of the philosophy of science were focused on the debate concerning the nature of science and philosophy of science that followed the Einstein-Planck revolution in science. The unexpected discovery of the philosophical, extra-scientific presuppositions in science, as well as of the extra-rational factors determining the way these presuppositions are accepted in science were to be explained within the meta-scientific framework. It is the aim of this paper to present ˙ Życiński’s diagnosis of (...) this post-revolutionary situation in the philosophy of science as well as his critique of the metascientific answers to this challenge. The reasons will be given why all those answers are put under two dichotomous rubrics of _internalism_ and _externalism_. It will be also explained how Życiński intends to supersede this false in his opinion opposition with a new concept of the doxatic rationality. However, the details of the metascientific proposal of Życiński will be given only in the subsequent paper. In order to perform the aim of the paper the metatheoretic tools set out by Popper will be used. (shrink)

The paper introduces an approach to privacy enhancing technologies that sees privacy not merely as an individual right, but as a public good. This idea finds its correspondence in our approach to privacy protection through obfuscation, where everybody in a group takes a small privacy risk to protect the anonymity of fellow group members. We show how these ideas can be computationally realised in an Investigative Data Acquisition Platform. IDAP is an efficient symmetric Private Information Retrieval protocol optimised for the (...) specific purpose of facilitating public authorities’ enquiries for evidence. (shrink)