Presented paper focuses on the problems concerning some connections between politics and eschatology and the idea of political eschatology. My goal is to characterize main features of this idea and point out its sources in gnosis and Judaism. I discuss ontological, epistemological and axiological suppositions related with distinction between transcendent and immanent history. I also show essential aspect of political eschatology called by Voegelin “immanentising of Eschaton” which is crucial idea of political gnosis means trying to create heaven here on Earth.

In the paper I discuss the recently widely postulated transformation of the epistemology status from the normative to descriptive one. I argue that the thesis on the transformation cannot be retained for two reasons. Firstly, purely normative nor purely descriptive explorations of cognition are not possible. Secondly, the epistemology task – consistent with the philosophy status, and, in fact, realized already in modern times – transgresses the pair norm-description. It is an elucidating insight into the nature of cognition, based on abduction inference, with necessary normative components.

In 1947 Tadeusz Kroński, posterior eminent Polish Marxist and master of Leszek Kołakowski and Andrzej Walicki, in his article attacked famous Russian emigrant philosopher Nicolas Berdyaev. Kroński clearly expounded twelve propositions of Berdyaev’s anthropology. In the light of Kroński’s polemics the thought of Berdyaev can be understand in the following way: (A) Each civilization contains two elements: creative and destructive. (B) In our science-technical civilization the faith in God is a creative factor while the faith in Progress (in humanity: ‘humanistic faith’) is a destructive one. (C) All people of the West belong to one of these two faiths (in their different forms); therefore some of them serve civilization while others act to the detriment of it. (D) As Christian community is the only community of faith in God which influences the Western world, some of us (even unconsciously) are allies of Christianity while others are its enemies. This logic underlies irrationalistic non-naturalism of Berdyaev. Opposing argumentation of Kroński revalues faith in Progress in thesis B, substituting Christianity and faith in God by communism and faith in Progress in thesis D.

The author analyses and discusses the main thesis presented by Leszek Kołakowski in his article “Men a morally good”. Approving of the Kołakowski’s thesis, the author tries to give some explanation of its proper meaning and some arguments in its favour. He gives also some critical arguments against certain doctrine which negate Kołakowski’s thesis: the so-called “peiorism” of Bogusław Wolniewicz and a kind of hedonism as represented e.g. by Hobbes. The author also stresses some ethical consequences of accepting Kołakowski’s thesis.

The relativistic and subjectivistic approach can be met in the domain of aesthetics much more frequently than in the domain of ethics. The paper points the following reasons for this fact. Firstly, objects of aesthetical evaluation are more ontologically diversified and usually more complicated than objects of ethical evaluation. Secondly, the aesthetical situation (i.e. a situation in which one evaluates something with respect to its aesthetic value) seems to be more complicated than the ethical situation. Thirdly, the ethical value of actions may be measured by (to some degree) naturalized criteria; on the other hand - aesthetical values seem to be resistant to naturalization. Fourthly, aesthetical experience (often treated as the criterion of possessing the aesthetic value by its object) is much more complex and multidimensional than the ethical experience (considered as the criterion of possessing the ethical value by its object). Fifthly, artistic values interfere in aesthetic evaluation but are not taken into consideration in ethical ones. Sixthly, ethical values are available to everybody; some objects of aesthetic values - may be appropriately evaluated only by experts. Seventhly, an important role in aesthetic evaluation is played by interpretation – which is not so important in ethical ones.

The article presents an issue of Władysław Tatarkiewicz’s affiliation to Lvov-Warsaw School. This question has recently aroused many controversies among historians of Polish philosophy. For many decades this philosopher was unanimously considered a representative of Twardowski’s School. Yet now, the problem of Władysław Tatarkiewicz’s affiliation to Lvov-Warsaw School is aiming more and more in the direction of negation of his connection with the School. Archival, historical and biographical facts, and Tatarkiewicz himself in his Remembrances speak for reasonableness and validity of this position.

I reflect if sophists exist today and why they resemble the ancient Greek sophists. My answer is as follows: today sophist is mostly the politician who promise people “gold mountains” in order to gain their political support. After election he forgets his electors and devotes himself to business and corruption.

The paper is devoted to the problem of an evaluation of so-called Bradley’s regress. For a simplicity of the discussion, I assume that the only vicious regresses are the regresses of explication (so, in a certain case, also the regresses of definition). I start with a review of an original version of this argument, published by F.H. Bradley in “Appearance and reality”, then I show its contemporary interpretations on the basis of ontology of situations. I attempt to demonstrate the viciousness of Bradley's regress on an example of certain theories and also to define what conditions have to be met by them. In order to do that, I consider the role of a notion of exemplification in generating Bradley’s regress and I show its logical structure. I also discuss the evaluation of Bradley’s argument done by Anna Wojtowicz, and especially a chosen criterion for the viciousness and relation between exemplification and a set-theoretical relation of membership. In conclusion I give examples of theories that avoid the problems connected with Bradley’s regress.

The paper begins with a discussion of the significance of the notion of lie from the logical and epistemological point of view. Then it is argued that none of the standard definitions identify all necessary conditions for lying. To wit, I claim that saying what one believes to be false is not such a condition; nor does lying always involve an attempt to expand the hearer's set of beliefs, e.g. to lie is sometimes to say something one believes to be true with a view to reducing the hearer's state of beliefs. Finally, I propose the following definition: person x lies to person y by uttering sentence a iff, due to the semantic content of α and the context of that utterance, x intends (or x acts as if she intended) y either to adopt a belief whose content speaker x believes to be false, or to withdraw from a belief held by x. I argue that this definition handles all of the counter-examples to the existing definitions.

In the paper, Karl Popper’s and Imre Lakatos’ theories of science progress are analyzed from the point of view of the demarcation problem. By considering structural properties of the two models I show that they present the demarcation problem ambivalently. In regard to the fallibilism thesis accepted in both models, the problem of the difference between empirically grounded knowledge and metaphysical speculations becomes not in valid. On the other hand, however, normative methodologies proposed by Popper and Lakatos do not allow to account for the role of heuristic principles or conceptual schemata in the process of scientific theories evaluation.

The article portrays ancient philosophers’ concepts of pleasure. Some of them claimed that every kind of pleasure was proper, whereas the others said that only a few of them were valuable. There were also the ancient philosophers who argued that every type of pleasure was evil. Additionally, the article presents the classification of pleasure formulated by ancient philosophers.

The paper is devoted to the two twentieth-century refutations of scepticism. After making basic conceptual distinctions, I consider George Edward Moore’s arguments against sceptic through the prism of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s On certainty. As it comes out, this interpretation does not strengthen these arguments, as sceptic can still indicate doubtful points of Wittgenstein’s perspective.