Within the context of women’s studies, Thomas Aquinas is probably best known for his paraphrase of Aristotle’s view, which describes woman as a “deformed man”. While the Philosopher indeed adopts the empirically dubious premise of woman’s value being intrinsically inferior to man, which he consistently implements throughout the pages of his many works, in Thomas’s case the issue of gender is not addressed so clearly and definitively. Above all, Aquinas does not call woman “something deformed”, but “only” occasional and misbegotten. This is a reference to his ontological theory, in which woman is an occasional entity on the individual level, but a necessary one on the general level. He also distinguishes two relations of equality and affirms one of them to exist between woman and man. Although he accepts some of Aristotle’s beliefs (such as the impaired rationality of woman and her natural submission to man), he rejects others which show her as a being devoid of dignity. If one accepts the superiority of the spiritual sphere over the bodily one, it is ultimately possible to interpret Aquinas’s thought in a quasi-feminist way, as evidenced by the existence of Catholic NeoThomistic feminism, among others. Its achievements include recognising the divorce of marriages in which there is no friendship, abandoning Aristotelian biology in favour of modern scientific knowledge, and indicating the possibility of a feminist interpretation of the concept of natural law, which should include the welfare of women and minorities.
The purpose of this study is to investigate the concept of being in the Eleatic philosophy. Special analysis has been devoted to the doctrine developed by Parmenides of Elea, in his poem On Nature. From its very beginning, the Eleatic philosophy has stirred controversy, even today’s scholars are not unanimous in their interpretation of the school. Therefore, the research has been done to answer the question whether immateriality can be attributed to the Eleatic concept of being, and if predicative monism interpretation proposed by Patrica Curd is valid.
The article presents Alexis de Tocqueville’s approach to the problem of materialism as well as potential reactions to that phenomenon. The concept of materialism is understood in the article as the urge towards material wellbeing. The work explains the context of materialism’s appearance and its negative consequences, including individualism and conformism. Upbringing, which is treated as a countermeasure against materialism, is connected with formal education, development of personal virtues and also with religion. The author provides pessimistic conclusions regarding the possibility of avoiding the state in which materialism prevails in modern societies.
In this article, I aim to reconstruct the views of Tatarkiewicz in the field of general methodology using the creative interpretation method of Kazimierz Twardowski, supplementing it with the reconstruction of his views on the methodology of history and the history of philosophy, in order to give these views an organic character which it has lacked till now. Ultimately, I will argue for the thesis put forward, about the descriptive and eclectic nature of Tatarkiewicz’s historiographic views and about some shortcomings in his methodology of history and the history of philosophy.
The problem of evil is one of the most frequently discussed in philosophy. Paul Ricœur addresses it in many texts, but the publication which interests us the most in this article is Evil. Ricœur’s book constitutes a starting point for the reflection about the status of classical metaphysics and about the problem of violence. Our inquiries concern the relation of the French thinker’s concept with other contemporary theories, especially those of: Marquard, Sloterdijk, and Vattimo.
The article analyzes the philosophical assumptions regarding the concept of selfrealization in Osho’s thought. The main thesis of the study is the statement that the theory is based on the evolutionary vision of human nature accepted by the author. As a result, self-realization is expressed independently and consciously by the subject as a directed and intended process of complete formation of the humanity. Considering Osho’s assumption about the holistic structure of the world, according to which the coexistence of human beings on certain levels is connected with interaction, self-realization has not only an ontological sense, but also gains an ethical meaning because it tends to shape a conscious and responsible attitude for the personal development, in the subject’s and others’ best interest.
This paper takes a look at belonging as potentially one of the most important values of home. The author discusses selected philosophical concepts, psychological research and intuitions manifested in everyday language to find an answer to the question whether belonging is indeed one of the most important values associated with the concept of home.
Feeling of guilt in the context moral values is a very complex and typically human phenomenon. This emotion became a subject of interest in various subdisciplines of philosophy, such as ethics, philosophical anthropology, and science, including psychology, sociology, neuroscience. A comprehensive model, which would combine research results from various disciplines and philosophical reflections on guilty feelings, has not yet been created. In the article, I’m traying to give an outline of a model of moral guilt. I combine inspirations from philosophy, logotheory and nootheory with data from cognitive psychology, social psychology, sociology of emotions and neuroscience. I don’t forget about the linguistic image of guilty feelings. As an additional goal, I am trying to design experiments that can be used to test the feelings of moral guilt, in all their complexity, in everyday situations. The core category of the model is the category of value.
In contemporary world people do not think about hope too often, but philosophers and scientists have pointed out that hope is a very important element in every person life. In the article, Gabriel Marcel’s, Ernest Bloch’s and Józef Tischner’s philosophies of hope are presented. These theories are compared with Józef Kozielecki’s psychology of hope. In conclusions it is claimed there are similarities in theories of hope between philosophy and psychology, therefore these two disciplines are complementary.
The author analyses the Podręcznik mądrości tego świata [Handbook of Wisdom of the Ordinary World] written by Józef Maria Bocheński, or Tractatus ethico-praxeologicus, as he calls it. He places the recommendations given in the Handbook against a broader background. To this end, he creates a “praxeological square”. One of the square’s vertices is autohedonism, an attitude praised by Bocheński. Three others are perfectionism, altruism and creativism. The author subsequently considers Bocheński’s instructions regarding a) fate, b) other people, c) self-control. In his opinion, their reasonable use allows for avoiding many mistakes in life. In fact, the recommendations given are the foundation of individual wisdom. This, however, is contrary to social wisdom, expressed in morality and customs. That is the controversy of Bocheński’s proposal.
This article is an attempt to present the potential benefits of studying philosophy, based on the information about the situation of graduates of this field on the contemporary Polish labor market. Basically, the utilitarian perspective was chosen, exposing the practical positives of studying philosophy, given especially the general nature of this field, which may be an undoubted advantage in the dynamically changing professional realities.