The early philosophical standpoint of Professor Bogusław Wolniewicz alluded mainly to the so-called first philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, as expressed in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Professor Wolniewicz’s views have found their expressions, first, in the book (in Polish) Things and Facts. An introduction to the first philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1968), and finally in his monograph (in Polish) Ontology of Situations. Foundations and Applications (1985). In both cases, Wolniewicz’ standpoint has been expressed by giving a substantive interpretation to semiotical and logical concepts (i.e. by producing hypostases). This practice looks rather dubious to me, in both cases, although I hope that ontology of situations can be usefully treated as a general formal theory of semantical correlates characteristic for sentential statements.
Bogusław Wolniewicz created an original formal system based on his considerations on the ontology and semantics embedded in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. His system – called by Wolniewicz ‘ontology of situations’ – can be complemented by a philosophical interpretation. In this article I identify the implicit and intuitive underpinnings of the system, its formal content and its philosophical implications. I also indicate a few applications of the system to axiology and logical hermeneutics.
Bogusław Wolniewicz’s book Things and facts, although it is essentially devoted to the interpretation of the Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, also has a substantive layer in which Wolniewicz raises very important problems in the fields of methodology, semiotics and metaphysics, such as: (a) the problem of clarity of philosophical texts and its relation to simplicity and brevity, as well as to thoroughness and suggestiveness; (b) the problem of semantic correlation types; (c) the problem of analysis, interpretation and definition; (d) the problems of modality, negative facts, absolute monism and coherentionism; (e) the problem of abstraction and moral-praxeological antinomy. The author of the paper reconstructs Wolniewicz’s views on these matters.