The article is dedicated to professor Mieczysław Boczar. It concerns the issues of nothingness and philosophical horror (religious, metaphysical), as well as relating these issues to the thoughts of Skeptics and Stoics, especially to the philosophy of Plotinus. Ancient philosophy – especially in its early and classical period – was able to successfully avoid the threat of horror due to its cognitive optimism, the dominance of the concept of nature (along with such related concepts as: cosmos, necessity, fate), and beliefs about the eternity of existence. Even the Hellenistic philosophy of life, although it grew out of a crisis situation, its subject was not that crisis, but overcoming, bypassing, and most precisely – reducing this crisis. It is only the philosophy of Plotinus that, at least to some extent, opens up to the problems of horror and nothingness. The crisis, the rupture of the world is not overcome here in some vision of a permanent, substantial being, but developed into nothingness, or more precisely: into a concept containing a moment of nothingness (or non-being).

The ancient Greeks believed that language can speak the truth, understood as reality. This view was refined by Parmenides when he formulated the first monistic concept of Being – Truth – as the only object of mind. The conviction of their identity upheld by Plato, but he accepted the existence of many beings – ideal truths. Aristotle has marginalized the question of truth. He connected it with the mind and true cognition, not with being. He formulated, probably on the basis of Plato’s intuition, the definition of a true judgment, according to the state of things. Since then, the problem of true knowledge took on a fundamental importance in philosophy, although the theme of truth as such appeared in the thought of St. Augustine, in connection with the question of eternal reasons and Logos. St. Anselm of Canterbury defined it as a rightness perceptible only to the mind; he also identified the essentially truth with God – the First Being. Thus he approached the essence of Parmenides’ position. The only difference is that St. Anselm accepted pluralism of what is true in the domain of creatures. A significant turn in the development of these issues was made by St. Thomas Aquinas, who formulated the concept of knowing the truth, whose essence is present in the human intellect, when we make judgments in correspondence with reality, that is, true. Thus, over several centuries, reflections on truth have gone from the conviction that the object of thought and expressions is truth as reality, to the distinction between what is true and truth itself. The question of knowing the truth and true knowing are clearly demarcated. The latter became more important, although there were also interesting concepts of knowing the truth as such. This is also an important hint for contemporary philosophy, because talking about true judgments or sentences without identifying the truth as such seems unfounded.

The notion of separation is one of the most important and yet most contested notions describing Plato’s theory of ideas. Aristotle points to separation as the feature of ideas that distinguishes them from immanent universals. Despite the importance of this notion, there is little consensus among contemporary scholars on how to understand it: the two main proposals are ontological independence and numerical distinctness. There is also disagreement about whether separation of ideas can actually be found in Plato’s dialogues. In my paper, I describe some of the contemporary positions in the debate about the separation of ideas, and then I offer my own account of separation and its presence in Plato’s dialogues. In particular, Gail Fine’s position on separation is a point of reference for my reading. On my account, separation is indeed associated with ontological independence, but this feature of ideas is due to the fact that they have a specific mode of existence, namely, they are perfect paradigms that are never fully realized in the world of sensible objects. In the paper I show that an interesting argument in Plato’s dialogues for a separate existence of ideas is the usually overlooked argument from the nature of tools in the Cratylus. In the final sections of my paper, I try to show that we can extend this argument to other ideas if we take into account the fact that in Plato’s theory ideas are final causes that determine the goal and direction of the development of sensible objects.

I begin this article by looking at the contemporary discussion on the ambiguous form of Augustine’s Confessions and by referring to the understanding of philosophy as a spiritual exercise. Then I draw my attention to the fundamental role played in Augustine’s text by the theme of self-knowledge and by the reflection on memory contained in Book X. To this end, I begin by outlining the specifically subjective character of Augustinian philosophy and by pointing to the philosophical meaning of the autobiographical part of Confessions. Next, comparing the three philosophical stages and three breakthroughs in self-understanding which we can find in Augustine’s text, I interpret book X as the central point of conversio and transformation of the subject, which combines the autobiographical and exegetical parts into one uniform whole. Moreover, the goal of this ambiguously autobiographical story turns out to be to inspire the reader who, according to Augustine’s views on the nature of our cognition, discovers in himself the truth about the source and purpose of human temporal life. In this sense, the text of Confessions plays the role of a carrier for a timeless spiritual exercise leading to the recognition of oneself as existentially and cognitively dependent on God.

Augustine’s explanations of the nature of the human soul are aimed at showing its activity. Augustine has no doubts that the activities themselves are identified with the soul, since this identity allows for the occurrence of actual activities to be ascertained. The soul works perfectly as long as it functions fully, and therefore in the way that every action constitutes it. In the area of intellectual activities, the soul is fulfilled in intellectual action, the action that reflects God’s nature. The aim of this article is to try to determine the meanings of the various terms that define the soul (anima, animus, spiritus, intellectus, mens, ratio) in the philosophical thought of Saint Augustine. This will make possible a better understanding of the Augustinian concept of intellectual cognition, especially the idea of illumination that the soul experiences in knowing reality.

The paper compares two Augustinian texts devoted to teaching: the dialogue De magistro and the treatise De doctrina christiana. The first work confronts us with a paradoxical statement that no men shall be called teacher (cf. Mat 23, 8). A closer look into the whole text shows that, according to Augustine, human teaching is both possible and necessary, though subject to some important restrictions. The second text provides additional argumentation in favour of the legitimacy of the practice of human teaching, based on a critical attitude towards hopes of a direct illumination without the assistance of faith and the sacraments. Analyzing both works, the article „disenchants” the often too superficial interpretation of Augustine’s „doctrine of illumination”, putting into relief the status of St. Augustine’s realism of thinking about human knowledge and life.

In this paper, we turn our attention to the existential perspective of the al-Farabi’s metaphysical thought, which is considered to represent a transcendence of aristotelian essentialism toward a more existential approach. Nonetheless, it does not mean that al-Farabi distances himself from platonism and neoplatonism: neoplatonism of his works is present in a shape of plotinian emanationism even it is joined with the solar system of Ptolemy and the aristotelian causal theory. Next, there are platonic inspirations in the Farabian perfect state. Anthropology of the Second Teacher is more aristotelian, but his theory of knowledge is distinctly rooted in the interpretation of Alexander of Aphrodisias. This alexandrianism is clearly developed in the thought of the Second Teacher and implemented in its anthropology and eschatology. All the ennumerated elements of the al-Farabi thought create, according to him, a coherent system he calls a „harmonisation”. The aforementioned system has also a neo-platonic construction: it starts with the first cause and continues through emanation of subsequent hypostases to finally reach a lunar sphere in which compositions of matter and form create the world we know, of possible beings which remain constantly on the border of existence and non-existence. The culmination of this scheme and a specific reditio in it, is the postulate of moral perfection of man – „rational animal”– deriving directly from the Farabian noetics. A moment of conjunction with active intellect enables human being to continue to exist in the shape of immaterial detached intelligence (intellect) after disintegration of human vehicle of matter and form. Towards this goal citizens are to be guided by the perfect society described by al-Farabi as the state of virtue (the Perfect State).

The essay presents a characteristic of Bernard of Clairvaux’s nuptial mysticism. It addresses especially its audacity and resulting transgressiveness, a feature rarely exposed by scholars. It is for the sake of her Bridegroom that he bride in the Song of Songs transgresses social norms that separate her from the Bridegroom, the soul in its pursuit of unity with God transcends the boundaries of her created nature, and the mystic defies the principles of classical metaphysics.

In this article, I argue that in his Hexaëmeron (a commentary to the six days of creation), Robert Grosseteste presented his exegesis as a kind of knowledge, or more precisely: wisdom, which has much in common with the Aristotelian concepts of scientia and sapientia, and which is intended to be taught. Thus, his exegesis plays the role of a doctrine. In order to grasp this aspect of exegesis, I propose to call it its “doctrinal dimension” or “doctrinal character”. Grosseteste clearly states that he will deal with sacratissima sapientia (the most sacred wisdom) and identifies it with theology. I show that by comparing it with sciences, he reveals a sort of isomorphism between them. He also outlines a methodological framework for the exposition of the sacred scripture, including the internal order of the whole project of the exegesis with its focal point (for which I call it Christocentric) and its goal/end-point. Furthermore, Robert takes into account the didactic aspect of such an exegesis understood as theology (or vice versa), showing that it requires experienced instructors. Finally, his exposition is threaded with the most important theological theses, as well as portions of text which can be perceived as little treatises (e.g., on the Trinity, on the incarnation, on God’s quietude), and thus he provides a serious doctrinal load. In conclusion, I recall Mieczysław Boczar’s account revealing that Grosseteste really wanted theology to be taught in the context of biblical reading.

The goal of this article is to offer an initial account of the problem of the relationship between philosophical anthropology, ethics and pedagogy. The referential point for these considerations is John of Stobnica’s Commentary on the „Leonardo Aretino, Introduction in moral science”. This text is a typical example of medieval Cracovian practicism. Such conception is confronted with philosophical pedagogy.