The Moral Personality of the Russian Revolutionary
From the second half of the 19th century in Tsarist Russia, due to turbulent politics and social changes, revolutionary groups (Narodnik, socialist, and anarchist) developed rapidly. To fully capture this period in the history of Russian revolutionary thought, it seems crucial to understand the ethos of a revolutionary and the moral personality that should define them. Therefore, the following article presents the personality of the Russian revolutionary. First, the concept of moral personality is briefly presented, followed by a presentation of the “Catechism of the Revolutionary” by Sergei Nechayev as a work containing premises as to the nature of the moral personality of the (anarchist) revolutionary. What follows is a reconstruction of the moral personality of a (socialist) revolutionary based on Russian revolutionary literature. The article ends with a summary underlying the conclusions from the analysis of the texts, indicating the character of the moral personality of the Russian revolutionary.
Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Mirror – Landscape – Swedenborg. On the Secret of Reflections in Selected Poems by Leopold Staff
The article analyzes selected works of Leopold Staff through the lens of Emanuel Swedenborg’s philosophy, focusing on the motif of mirror reflections as a cognitive medium. The mirror – both literal and metaphorical – serves in Staff’s poetry as a symbol of transition between the sacred and the profane and as an epistemological tool for revealing the boundaries of human perception. The author highlights Swedenborg’s role as a key interpreter of these relations, drawing analogies between his vision of reality and Staff’s poetic imagery. The analysis also considers concepts such as synesthesia, correspondence, and sacrofanalization, offering a novel research perspective.
Traumatic History and its Psychological and Moral Consequences
The article addresses the issue of traumatic historical events, collective methods of commemorating them, and their long-term psychological and moral consequences. It takes as its starting point Michał Bilewicz’s book Traumaland, which explores the impact of historical violence – war, persecution, genocide – on collective identity and cognitive attitudes. The article juxtaposes psychological diagnoses with selected philosophical categories drawn from Friedrich Nietzsche, particularly his typology of history and the concept of ressentiment. On this basis, it introduces the notion of “traumatic history” as a cultural form of commemorating collective injury, which may both sustain memory and identity and perpetuate reactive attitudes leading to ressentiment. It identifies the link between historical trauma and a morality shaped by fear, rancor and impotence, while also exploring the possibility of critically working them through. As an alternative to ressentimental fixation, the article proposes critical reflection on collective historical experience as a path toward self-knowledge and the transformation of collective identity.
Today Through the Lens of the Ancient Debate on the Value of Mētis
In Today Through the Lens of the Ancient Debate on the Value of Mētis, the author examines contemporary challenges to freedom of speech in art, science, and politics through the ancient Greek concept of mētis—practical wisdom enabling success in life. He argues that mētis, rooted in the common sense of non-experts, faces suppression by those in power, termed the “anointed,” amid growing censorship and moralistic polarization. Drawing on Greek drama, particularly tragedies like Antigone and Prometheus Bound, the author highlights the role of mētis in exploring human complexity and fostering moral reflection, supported by insights from neuroscience and philosophy. The text contrasts mētis with hybris—excessive pride—illustrating how drama avoids simplistic judgments, promoting epistemic humility. The author connects these ideas to modern issues, suggesting that the erosion of liberal values and the marginalization of practical knowledge threaten individual agency. He concludes that mētis, alongside the moderation of sōphrosynē, offers a counterbalance to authoritarian tendencies. This interdisciplinary study underscores drama’s enduring relevance as a tool for understanding ethical dilemmas and resisting the overreach of power, urging a renewed appreciation for experiential wisdom in today’s world.
The Metaphysics of Touch: Remarks on the Margins of Richard Kearney’s Touch
This paper examines Richard Kearney’s book Touch: Recovering our most vital sense, analysing how Kearney positions touch as our most fundamental sense in an increasingly digital and disembodied world. The author first contextualizes Kearney’s work within recent empirical and philosophical research on touch, comparing it with approaches by Fulkerson, Linden, Banissy, and Classen. The paper then explores Kearney’s central concept of tact, which represents a special bodily intelligence that precedes abstract knowledge and serves as the foundation for all sensory experience. Through philosophical analysis drawing on Aristotle and phenomenological traditions, Kearney challenges the dominant Western opto-centric tradition that privileges sight over touch. The author highlights Kearney’s argument that touch has healing potential through the archetype of the “wounded healer” and discusses how Kearney proposes a balanced integration of physical and virtual experiences to counter the modern process of excarnation (i.e. disembodiment). The paper concludes that Kearney’s rehabilitation of touch represents not just a philosophical project but an urgent cultural imperative for reintegrating our individualized selves and communities through embodied contact.
Lech Witkowski wobec dziedzictwa Alfreda Northa Whiteheada. Recenzja książki Whitehead. Naddania i (w)zrosty dla humanistyki i edukacji
The text is a review of the book The Philosophy of Pleasure by Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek. The author considers the book from a cultural perspective.
The Rejection of Sterility. A Contribution to the Identification of Hedonic and Vital Values in the Gender Dispute
The article adopts a perspective in which relations between values are examined on a basis of cultural products and practices. The object of analysis is the gender dispute, which is treated as an axiotic space, which is a place of differing realizations of the same response to a value, or of divergent stances regarding the same tension between values. The tension central to the text is that between hedonic and vital values – a distinction drawn from Max Scheler’s axiology. This distinction reveals that while the prioritization of hedonic values clearly differentiates the opposing sides of the debate, both anti-gender rhetoric and feminist-queer thought (considered as a whole) perceive “disembodied” ideas of the subject as a threat to the vitality of individuals and societies. This differentiation also proves useful in framing the question of how images of vaginas and, more broadly, women’s bodies—used in confrontation with patriarchy – relate to the sphere of pleasure.
Nitro matcha from Copenhagen, Avobagiel from San Francisco, kimchi bowl from Berlin. A pleasure analysis of the Global Brooklyn phenomenon
The article explores the Global Brooklyn phenomenon described by Mateusz Halawa and Fabio Parasecoli, as a cultural formation that is transforming urban gastronomic spaces, making them centralized zones of consumer pleasure and aesthetic experience. Among other things, the author refers to the reflections of Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, pointing out that the practices associated with the production and consumption of food form the foundation of social life, revealing the cultural structures on which everyday life is based. Spaces designed for pleasure become places where locality and individualism are subordinated to global patterns, promoting uniformity of experience and perception. The article analyzes how these spaces, despite their claimed authenticity and pursuit of sensory fulfillment, function within market mechanisms, becoming a tool for controlling how society experiences urban space.
The Right to Happiness and its Constitutionalization
The paper addresses how happiness, traditionally a subjective and philosophical concept, has increasingly become an objective of constitutional frameworks. Through historical, philosophical, and legal analyses, it explores the concept of happiness from its ancient roots in Socratic, Aristotelian, and Kantian philosophy to modern-day implications in constitutional law. The author reviews attempts to juridicize happiness by incorporating it into constitutional preambles and legal principles. Notable case studies include the United States Declaration of Independence, Japan's post-war Constitution, and Korea's Constitution, each of which emphasizes the “pursuit of happiness” as an aspirational rather than a guaranteed right. This distinction underscores ongoing challenges: defining happiness in legal terms and addressing its universal versus individualistic dimensions, particularly in the context of Western democratic frameworks. The analysis suggests a tension between the idealistic aspirations of happiness as a right and the pragmatic limitations of law in fulfilling such abstract ideals.
Between the pleasure of the text and the image. The case of Alberto Fuguet
In 1988, a referendum was held in which Chileans decided to remove General Pinochet’s regime from power. A year later, the first free elections since 1970 were held and the political transition began, making room for new cultural currents to manifest themselves more freely in the changed reality. One of the first high-profile proposals at the time was made by the Chilean writer and director Alberto Fuguet, who made his debut in 1990, sharply attacking magical realism in Latin American literature (which he saw as an outdated) and proclaiming the need for a culture better suited to a Chile at the time of globalization. The aim of the paper is to show how Fuguet fills his literary works with popular culture, above all with film, which is transcribed or perhaps rather transformed into text, but also how he places text in his films – not through adaptation strategies, not only in dialogues or songs, but also in a typographic sense. Investigating the tension between the pleasure of the text and the pleasure of the image in the work of Fuguet, who is active in both fields, should also allow for a better understanding of the cultural changes taking place in the Chilean landscape (and beyond) in recent decades.
Architecture, body, climate. The pleasure of pursuing change
Does the quest to reduce architectures negative impact on the climate have to involve “designing for discomfort”? In this text, I consider whether a turn toward pleasurable experiences in the realm of everyday life can also be a tool for pursuing change. As I argue, this is possible through meaningful architecture that perpetuates a sense of local identity andoffers a multi-sensory experience. These can affect the well-being and health of a society – aspects that I believe are necessary to address the health of the environment and the planet. I base my reflections on research in the fields of everyday aesthetics and somaesthetics, and demonstrate their practical dimension through the analysis and interpretation of a selected project. The case in question is a house in São Paulo, which serves as an inspiration to look for similar but more generally accessible architectural forms. In the end, the examples described turn out to have not only features that affect multisensory perception and well-being, but use natural materials and can affect a favorable microclimate.
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Upominając się o zwierzęta poza-ludzkie. Recenzja książki Oscara Horty pt. Po stronie zwierząt
GILLES DELEUZE – LIFE-WORK. INTELLECTUAL BIOGRAPHY
The text is an intellectual biography of the contemporary French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze. It includes his philosophical inspirations, friendships and, above all, all publications and their issues. However, first of all, it shows the profile of a man who, unable for health reasons to do what he dedicated his life to (think, write and teach), committed suicide. Finally, the text notes the reception of this act in French philosophical circles. All in all, it is a memory of the great philosopher and a tribute to his life-work.
CASIMIR LEWY: A FORGOTTEN POLISH ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHER FROM CAMBRIDGE
Casimir Lewy (1919 – 1991) was an analytical philosopher born and raised in Poland, who worked and taught at the University of Cambridge. He left behind one book, Meaning and Modality published in 1976, as well as more than a dozen articles and reviews. He was remembered by his students as an exceptional teacher. This article is a reflection on whether Lewy should be called a forgotten philosopher, who perhaps deserves to be considered more widely as a Polish contributor to the advancements in analytic philosophy. To this end, the author presents and analyses 15 articles by Lewy published between 1937 and 1964, which are divided into four thematic categories: topics related to the justification of empirical propositions, epistemological topics other than justification, semiotics, and problems in the area of logic or set theory.
SLAVERY, NEOLIBERALISM, NECROPOLITICS. THE SOLAR AND NOCTURNAL BODIES OF DEMOCRACY
The article explores the contemporary crisis of liberal democracy, framing it within the colonial heritage and ongoing economic dominance of Western countries. It traces the rise of the idea of human rights and free trade, linking it with the practices of slavery and exploitation of conquered territories. The author examines Enlightenment philosophers' views on slavery and colonialism and outlines the economic consequences of these historical phenomena to analyze how they contributed to the democratization and economic development of European countries. The text proceeds to examine current international economic relations to show how the imbalance of power between rich and developing countries leads to exploitation of the latter. The article argues that both colonial roots and contemporary unequal trade relations underpin the current rise of populism and xenophobia in Western countries faced. The main guiding theme of the work is Mbembe's proposed idea of the solar and nocturnal body of democracy: the constant intertwining of internal economic and cultural flourishing with the rise of inequality, populism and undemocratic practices.
IGNACE MEYERSON’S HISTORICAL METHOD IN PSYCHOLOGY. A LESSON OF PHILOLOGY (IN THE NIETZSCHEAN SENSE) FOR STUDYING HUMAN DIVERSITY ACROSS TIME AND CULTURE IN ITS PLURALITY
By contrast to the contemporary dominant schools in psychology, Ignace Meyerson’s outlook is situated at the level of culture and brings a historical approach to psychology, thus offering an alternative prism for understanding human psyche. Following Nietzsche’s definition of philology as the art and method of interpreting well, I will show that Meyerson undertakes a philological and critical reading of several sociologists who, while adopting a historical and cultural approach, have left psychology outside of their research. Thus, a confrontation with Durkheim, Lévy-Bruhl and Nietzsche will allow us to underline the specificities of Meyerson’s historical method as well as to highlight his conception of psychology, in opposition to sociology and genealogy. Meyerson concludes that acknowledging both the cultural and historical dimension of psychology and the psychological dimension of culture leads towards interdisciplinarity because all our concepts and notions are culturally and historically situated and should be put into context to be effective and enlightening. Meyerson’s emphasis on the plurality, wealth and diversity of human mental categories through culture also opens a whole continent of divergent or complementary interpretations that could lead us, if we put the ethnocentric stance to the side, to radically modify our findings, prisms and questions.
Women and Femininity in D.A.F. de Sade’s Thought
In Sade’s thought we find two archetypes of woman: a virtuous woman, who is identified with the victim and vicious woman who is identified with the libertine. The virtuous woman has all the features of femininity’s construct — she is gentle, caring, and tries to protect her virginity at all costs. Sade despises all these features and his ideal of woman is prostitute. Sade especially disdained mothers and motherhood, because it is contrary to the laws of nature which desires only destruction, not reproduction. Libertines usually have ambivalent attitude towards their mothers — desire them and want to kill them at the same time. Also, the image of the mother in Sade’s works is not unambiguous — apart from virtuous mothers who are despised he described vicious mothers, who kill their infants. The second part of article is an attempt to defend the thesis that Sade’s works contain a feminist message. Above all, Sade wanted to liberate women from the construct of femininity, which dictates them virtue and modesty. For this reason women portrayed by him might seem masculine — because they lack features typically considered feminine. Therefore the vision of women in Sade’s work is emancipatory — both compared to his contemporaries and some of his interpreters.
Copyright (c) 2024 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The Practice of Christian Life in “Ojcze nasz” by August Cieszkowski
In the paper I show the ethical and religious dimension of the treatise Ojcze nasz (Eng. Our Father) by August Cieszkowski. First, practice was considered as the basic criterion for accepting or rejecting faith (its impact on human life). Then, the definition of faith was developed as three relationships (to God; to oneself; to others) in the context of Cieszkowski’s critical comments on the lifestyle of Christians of that time. Finally, I bring out the religious motivation of Cieszkowski’s philosophy, his deep concern for the implementation of the Christian principle of following Jesus in life trough social act.
Axiology of the “Wild Typography” (about the Specific Type of Łódź Street Art)
The subject of the article is a new phenomenon of urban art known as “wild typography” (in Polish an abbreviated form “dzikie typo”). It has a specific local, Łódź character, but at the same time it allows to capture the complex issues of the post-industrial experience of the city. And in that sense, it is universal. The term is puzzling because it seems self-contradictory. Although the notion of wildness has its tradition in contemporary art theory, it does not fit the issue of typography. The very manifestations of “wild typography” in the city space are entangled in several dependencies that undermine the status of authorship, exposing artists to imitation and instrumental use of their works. When it comes to the physical space of the city and its values of wildness and authenticity, the “wild typography” lends it ambiguity and takes over its ambiguity also, which, together with the interfering nature and neglect, makes the resident doesn’t know what he’s dealing with. It is interesting why and with what intentions or hopes artists get involved in this tangle of art, vandalism, and landscape degradation. Treating these spaces and practices as heterotopias makes it possible to go beyond the schematic evaluation of legal/illegal, aesthetic/anti-aesthetic, cultural/wild.
Polemically around Rousseau. Defensive Remarks to the Critical Remarks of Michał Kruszelnicki
The text is a polemic against the polemical-critical remarks by Michał Kruszelnicki to my book entitled Individual, evil, history in Rousseau’s thought (Łódź 2022). It deals with key issues and problems in Rousseau’s thought that have long plagued the minds of commentators on his work. In my discussion with the Polemist, I maintain the main theses and interpretative solutions presented in the book, starting from a different view of Rousseau’s work, that is, emphasising its evolution and rejecting the Polemist’s conciliatory-humanist, though not always consistent, interpretation, which generally attempts to reconcile most of the strands of Rousseau’s thought. Nevertheless, his legitimate, interesting and unconventional and sometimes, I think, somewhat provocative remarks have forced me to renew my conceptual and interpretative efforts and, as a result, to develop and deepen the arguments and analyses in the book, which are not always clear and may give rise to misunderstanding. Thus, in particular, I develop my understanding of the relationship between experimental logic and systemic logic, showing their common complementary dynamics, defend the thesis of the failure of Rousseau’s work attempting to synthesise the communitarian and individualist perspectives of his thought to show the abandonment of these attempts in the solitary-contemplative Strolls of a Lonely Dreamer, and, finally, highlight argumentatively the authoritarian implications of Rousseau’s political and pedagogical ideas.
On the philosophy of martial arts once again
Crime without reason. Foucault and the problem of criminal responsibility in nineteenth century psychiatry and judiciary
The article refers to the problem of crime without reason described by Michel Foucault. The author presents two cases from the first half of the 19th century – Pierre Rivière and Henriette Cornier. These cases are analyzed in terms of strategies of power adopted by psychiatry and the legal system towards the Other who had committed an inexplicable crime and who could not be described by any of the recognized forms of madness. The impasse between medical and legal discourses is presented as an example of problematization — a method used by Foucault in the last years of his work. One of the consequences of psychiatry’s efforts to solve the problem of crime without motive was the creation of instincts and drives as scientific objects, which shows that such objects can arise at the junction of various power relations and can even be created merely as instruments to exercise power.
Copyright (c) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
God as truth-maker – about Peter Thomas Geach’s conception
This text examines the topic of truthmakers in the philosophy of Peter Thomas Geach, presenting a reconstruction of Geach’s concept and critically analyzing it. The focus is on the connection between mental representations of perceived objects, their linguistic reflection and reality. Additionally, the text explores the concept of God’s causality in St. Thomas Aquinas’ philosophy and compares it with Geach’s approach, highlighting their distinctive features. A formal representation of this relationship is then provided. The central thesis of this theory posits the identification of God with Truth, which allows for the understanding of the verification relationship through the term “voluntaristic causation”. Consequently, following Thomas Aquinas’ proposed terminology, God is categorized as one of the entia actu intelligibilia. However, Geach’s concept lacks in-depth analysis of the matter of person. Another problematic aspect of this concept pertains to the clarification of the ontological category serving as the foundation for verification relations. Difficulties arise when attempting to adapt Geach’s theory to contemporary perspectives that consider states of affairs as the ontological basis for the semantics under consideration. The epistemology employed by the British philosopher relies on the subject-object relationship, akin to God’s causal connection to reality, rather than states of affairs.
The Return to Rousseau: the “Failure” of Emancipation and “Breakdown of the Work”? Some Critical Remarks on Paweł Pieniążek’s “The Individual, Evil and History in Rousseau’s Thought”
The paper presents polemical remarks on Paweł Pieniążek’s study entitled Jednostka, zło, historia w myśli Rousseau (The Individual, Evil, History in Rousseau’s Thought, Łódź 2022). An attempt is made to discuss with the Author the interpretation of Rousseau’s main works, his most important concepts and theoretical problems. In particular, Social Contract, Emile, Reveries of the Solitary Walker, Julie, or The New Heloise are analyzed, but there also appear key references to the so-called first and second Discourses, Dialogues and Letters to Malesherbes. Where Pieniążek sees only evidence of the “failure” of Rousseau’s emancipatory ideals and signs of the “breakdown” of his work, the author of the polemic tries to defend the “citizen of Geneva”, showing that there are alternative ways of reading Rousseau’s texts, which allow him to be protected from the traditional allegations that he failed completely to reconcile the communal and individualist plan of his thought and remained dramatically torn between the two contradictory and self-excluding ideals: the citizen and the solitary.
Postmodernism and Postmodernity (In the Light of the Development of Digital Technologies and the Processes of Individualization)
The aim of the article is to confront postmodernism understood as a philosophical doctrine, or, more broadly, a certain type of cultural awareness with postmodernity as an epoch expressing the changes of late capitalism. The relationships between postmodernism and postmodernity are analysed from a philosophical and sociological perspective by comparing the diagnoses of postmodern changes presented by sociologists and the diagnoses presented by representatives of postmodernism. In the first part, I discuss the importance of digital technologies, in which postmodernists hoped to unleash the potential of human creativity, and in the second, the postmodern processes of individualization related to the idea of ​​self-realisation. Finally, I reach the conclusion that postmodernity has betrayed the ideas of freedom, creativity, self-realisation and solidarity proclaimed by postmodernists which, according to their hopes, postmodernity was supposed to realise.
Metaphysical issues in contemporary biological sciences