Przegląd Filozoficzny. Nowa Seria

Elizabeth Anscombe enjoys a unique reputation among philosophers of action. Her Intention is said to have shaped contemporary action theory more often than any other 20th‑century treatise. Indeed, the central claim of Intention – the thesis of intentionalism – is widely accepted today. This thesis asserts that, by necessity, every action is intentional when described in terms of the agent’s intention. In the article, I argue that the widespread interpretation of the thesis of intentionalism differs from Elizabeth Anscombe kontra filozofia działania 17 Anscombe’s interpretation. Intentionalism is typically understood as a metaphysical belief about the structure of action, which differs from what seems to be Anscombe’s real position regarding our default way of understanding agency. According to the interpretation proposed in the text, Anscombe claims that we cannot conceptualize action in any different way than in terms of the agent’s goals.

In the fifties of the previous century G.E.M. Anscombe produced a philosophical theory, which challenged ethical consequentialism, interpreted as a philosophy that comprises all forms of utilitarianism plus those ethical views that reduce the function of moral norms to evaluation of consequences disregarding thereby intentions, fidelity to commitments, moral feelings, noble resolutions and demanding life styles. An outstanding representative of consequentialism was in her mind Henry Sidgwick. Against his position, a reliable version of ethics was to be found in traditional normativism and pure theory of moral commitments. An essential interpretative problem for her ethics was therefore finding a way to justify absolute norms. Anscombe met this requirement by Intencje według G.E.M. Anscombe 45 stating that the role of ethics was to organize the lives of various individuals into a society. A well‑ordered society assigns various roles to various individuals. Each role is executed by performing intentional activities. The roles are combined into a functional system by commitments assigned to individuals who work together by fulfilling appropriate intentional acts and roles. This theory had been strongly inspired by the concept of language games invented by Ludwig Wittgenstein. It opens a strange possibility of saving Saint Peter from the dilemma of either betraying Jesus (once or three times), or losing his moral stature. We may assume that his betrayal was not an abandonment of his formerly professed faith but a choice of the only available appropriate intention in the circumstances – safeguarding divine prophecy.

The aim of this article is to critically analyze G.E.M. Anscombe’s claim that knowledge of intentional actions has a unique character, namely, it is non‑observational and practical. The analysis begins with a presentation of Anscombe’s account of intentional actions. I then reconstruct the thesis that both the position of one’s limbs and intentional actions are known to the agent without observation. I outline the difficulties associated with the acceptance of the non‑observational nature of such knowledge, discuss various unsatisfactory interpretations of this claim, and present potential objections. I explicate the concept of practical knowledge, emphasizing its connections to the notion of practical reasoning, the direction of fit, and the Thomistic idea of God’s knowledge as the cause of all beings. Finally, I examine Anscombe’s claim that the agent’s knowledge of what he is doing provides the description under which an action constitutes the realization of an intention.

In this article, I deal with Henri Bergson’s concept of memory and consciousness, examining the relationship between these two concepts. Although Bergson often seems to identify them with each other, this analysis leads me to the conclusion that consciousness is only a possibility invoked by memory. Bergson assumes the existence of unconscious memory, which is, according to him, already spiritual and potentially conscious. It is illustrated in Bergson’s metaphor of the cone, which I analyze. There is also a corporeal memory‑habit, conscious to a limited extent. I show how these memories are connected with each other and what is the share of consciousness in each of them. I also consider the relationship between memory, both corporeal and spiritual, and sensory perception. I am led to believe that the relationship between them is in some way dialectical. Ultimately, Bergson’s entire conception of the relationship between matter and spirit, oscillating between the poles of dualism and monism, is a version of dialectical metaphysics. This metaphysics, as I try to show, is in many ways contemporary, inspiring in particular the so‑called new materialism. What seems especially up‑to‑date is Bergson’s analysis of consciousness which I compare with the phenomenological conception and with the non‑reductionist analytic philosophy of mind.

Our thinking about the world presupposes certain unconscious suppositions or assumptions that frame what exists and what can be known. In order to locate and bracket these assumptions, a certain exercise can be carried out by reading philosophical and scientific treatises that make different assumptions. Examples that illustrate this exercise are the works of St. Augustine or H. Bergson.

Historians of philosophy largely agree that in the eighties of the 19^th century, an antipositivist breakthrough takes place. They often refer in that context to two major events that would symbolize the arrival of revolutionary ideas. On the one hand, it would be the publication in 1889 of the first book by H. Bergson: Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience. In this work, the philosopher severely criticises application of the methods of the natural sciences to the description of consciousness. On the other hand, in 1887, H. Poincaré publishes the article Sur les hypothèses fondamentales de la géométrie, initiating the conventionalist approach. Both Bergson and conventionalists strike against the positivist model of scientific approach, their attention, however, is focused on different matters. In the article, I analyse the standpoint of one of the major French conventionalists, P. Duhem, concerning the status of scientific knowledge. In fact, French conventionalists are among the first thinkers who acknowledge the tension occurring between the sphere of facts and the subjective input of the scholar. In this connection, the basic question appears to be whether the theories formulated within natural sciences allow us to get to know the reality in its true colours. Usually, one can encounter here a realist and an antirealist orientation. Thus, I shall argue that all attempts at squeezing Duhem’s ideas into one of these two philosophical positions lead to significant simplifications. For that reason, I argue that it would be more appropriate to call Duhem’s position methodological phenomenalism rather than anything else.

In his last work The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology Edmund Husserl stresses the significance of a certain constitutional layer. In Husserl’s language it is called Lebenswelt, which can be translated as the lifeworld. Every theory, no matter whether scientific or philosophical, is bound to start at this level. It is pregiven to each of us as an indispensable foundation for our entire theoretical and practical life. This conception is often compared to the Heideggerian idea of being in the world, and the affinities are strengthened by the fact that the language used by the late Husserl in order to describe the acting of transcendental consciousness within the lifeworld sometimes resembles Heidegger’s formulations. However in this paper I show that these analogies are rather superficial. When we take a closer look on the Husserlian and Heideggerian being in the world, we realize that we have here quite different theoretical structures integrated into different patterns of philosophical explanation.

This article explores Edmund Husserl’s stance on psychology, particularly in regard to the claim that empirical psychology is rooted in naturalistic philosophy. Husserl’s numerous references to psychology throughout his works indicate that it served as a significant point of reference in the development of his phenomenological philosophy. I argue that Husserl’s views on psychology underwent a progression – from initially being predominantly critical to envisioning its reform through the establishment of a new discipline he termed ‘eidetic’ or ‘phenomenological’ 156 Marek Pokropski psychology. In The Crisis of European Sciences Husserl ultimately suggests that a reformed psychology could serve as one of the routes toward transcendental phenomenology.

The Polish edition of Heinrich Rickert’s work Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis (1892) is an important event. It highlights the concept of cognition and the role of values contained therein, even if this approach may seem to be ‘out of date’ today. On the one hand, Rickert finds out that thinking is fated to ‘clash with nothingness’, thus creating a temptation to reject all rigors and to yield to complete arbitrariness. On the other hand, he attributes to nothingness an axiological status which subjects thinking to a particular kind of ‘ought’ (values). In his view the cognizing subject is faced with an axiological choice: we must choose either arbitrariness or truth, and Rickert argues that it is worth one’s effort to opt for the truth. His argumentation could be an interesting point of reference for the contemporary culture which gradually moves away from any type of thinking rooted in objectively valid principles.

This article analyses Heinrich Rickert’s philosophy, focusing on the primacy of practical reason and the concept of an open philosophical system. Rickert criticizes closed philosophical systems for their rigidity and inability to adapt to changing realities. Instead, he proposes an open system characterized by flexibility, adaptability and the ability to integrate new ideas and cultural values. The primacy of practical reason is central to Rickert’s thought, which prioritizes theoretical values and links theory and practice. Rickert also emphasizes the subject’s autonomy in cognition and valuation, allowing for the formulation of a dynamic philosophical system that better responds to contemporary intellectual and cultural challenges.

The article aims to validate the historical‑philosophical significance of Heinrich Rickert’s considerations of several important themes present in the history of 20th‑century philosophy. This is achieved by interpreting selected excerpts from Rickert’s argument – contained in his major work entitled Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis (“The Object of Knowledge”) – in order to critically expose and describe the problems and tensions presented there, as well as perspectives that make it possible to bring to light the hitherto unknown interpretations of the essential philosophical questions. The latter include, in the first place, issues that make up the triunity discovered by Parmenides – speech, thought, and being (fr. B 6). I call them collectively the fundamental subject‑matter of philosophy. The development of the Parmenidean idea of unity of speech, thought, and being in Rickert’s philosophy is associated with a triple shift in research paradigms in relation to philosophical tradition, especially the pre‑critical one: firstly, the visible pronouncement of the sense and the role of non‑propositional utterances; secondly, the emphasized meaning of the epistemic action or performance (Leistung). The former leads ultimately to the undermining of the centuries‑old hegemony of judgement in logic and epistemology, whereas the latter challenges the traditional, passive‑contemplative understanding of knowledge. Thirdly, to this we must add Rickert’s clear detachment from the traditional understanding of philosophy as a definitive, or perhaps just isolated, range of objects, conceptualised as a collection of something that exists, or even must exist in the positive sense – really or unreally. It seems that all the above‑mentioned „shifts” are crucial for contemporary thought.

The paper attempts to interpret A.N. Whitehead’s philosophy in terms of late modernity. For this era, the most important challenge is to preserve continuity and harmony in the world of constant changes. Late modernity manifests a peculiar tension in the realm of science: on the one hand, discoveries make us aware of the fluidity of reality; on the other hand, this fluidity poses a threat to the ability to formulate scientific laws, and thus to science itself. In the paper, I demonstrate that Whitehead responded to this problem by introducing into his philosophy eternal objects that are realised and limited by actual occurrences. I also show that in Whitehead’s metaphysics God is the ultimate principle of ‘creativity and limitation’. In the paper I analyse Whitehead’s theism and I try to assess his response to the challenge of late modernity.

The aim of the paper is to reconstruct the fundamental assumptions underlying Alfred N. Whitehead’s process philosophy. The impetus for these reflections is the recent publication of Adventures of Ideas, translated into Polish by Marek Piwowarczyk, as part of the prestigious series: Library of Contemporary Philosophers by the Polish Scientific Publishers PWN. Adventures of Ideas is the final installment of Whitehead’s metaphysical trilogy, which includes Science and the Modern World as well as Process and Reality. The book, first published in 1933, contains the author’s original theory of civilization, based on the principles of process philosophy developed over the preceding several years. However, this theory of civilization seems to be the weakest link in Whitehead’s metaphysical system. Today, it holds primarily biographical significance, and serves as an illustration of the historical optimism that the author adhered to even on the eve of the Second World War.

In the article I try to present the main theses of A.N. Whitehead’s metaphysics. I focus on what I consider to be ‘the central nerve’ of this theory. First, I outline Whitehead’s critique of substantialism and I show why he was dissatisfied with his early theory of events. Then I present his three basic concepts: the atomic character of becoming, ‘prehension’, and the subjective character of becoming. In the succeeding sections I explain what, according to Whitehead, the becoming of actual occasions consists in. Finally, I show the role of God in this system and indicate the fundamental reasons why God cannot fulfil the function assigned to him. For these reasons the entire system seems to be marked by irremediable difficulties.