The article presents a critical analysis of Yeshayahu Leibowitz’s thesis that Judaism and Kant’s practical philosophy represent antagonistic tendencies of thought. This opposition, according to Leibowitz, consists in the claim that Kantian ethics sees the supreme value in human being, while in Judaism such a view can amount only to a usurpation of God’s sovereignty by man. The aim of the article is to show that after an investigation into its substance, Kant’s moral theory turns out to resemble in the essential respects Leibowitz’s view concerning Judaism.
Freedom and Resentment (1962) – reflecting the method and profoundness of descriptive metaphysics – has become perhaps the most commented and famous work by Peter F. Strawson. In this article I try to reconstruct the concept of responsibility, blame and punishment outlined in his essay. The text consists of three main parts: exhibition (subsections 2, 3), interpretation (4) and criticism (5). In the last part I argue that even if Strawson managed to repulse the pessimistic argumentation against compatibilism, his naturalistic position, as well as the traditional optimism, does not provide the right kind of ethical justification for reactive emotions and attitudes. The nerve of his reasoning is the premise that from the human point of view it is practically inconceivable to abandon them. Therefore, the succes of such argumentation depends on the meaning of practical inconceivability. One can distinguish its naturalistic (referring to the type- or token-naturalism) and transcendental interpretation. The latter, as I try to show, is unable to formally distinguish between the metaphysical and ethical content of Strawson’s position. On the other hand, the logical separation of both views is the main advantage of the interpretation in the spirit of type-naturalism. Consequently, its acceptance reveals both metaethical and anthropological allegations to which Strawson’s concept is exposed, without injuring the main part of his compatibilism.
Joseph Ratzinger binds together the triptych “theology – the university – science” by the common issue of a search for the truth and the service to the truth. Theology is being done “in the Church and with the Church”, it belongs to the Church and depends upon her. Thus, theology is ecclesial in its essence, it teaches not in its own name but on behalf of the Church.
The ethos of the university – particularly of a Catholic university – consists in the common witness to the truth and in forming the transcendent dimension of man. Thus, the service to the human person is expressed by the university in developing “a new humanism” as a response to cultural and spiritual desires of the humankind. The mission of the university is not only its service to knowledge but also to the education, which means bearing witness to the truth that has been found.
According to Benedict XVI both theology and the university with science should know how to unite the two ways of knowing – faith and reason into one common tone, with its unique enhancing of reason. In a characteristic way Ratzinger gives special attention to rationality which leads to the ultimate Truth.
This article contains a bilingual, Latin-Polish, edition of a letter written by Erasmus to John Sixtin (Ioannes Sixtinus), a Frisian student he met in England. In it Erasmus describes a dinner party at Oxford to which he was invited as an acclaimed poet. In the presence of John Colet, leader of English humanists, table talk turned into learned conversation. Erasmus’s contribution to the debate was an improvised fable (fabula) about Cain who, in order to become farmer, persuades the angel guarding Paradise to bring him some seeds from the Garden of Eden. His speech, a showpiece of rhetorical artfulness disguising a string of lies and spurious argument, is so effective that the angel decides to steal the seeds and thus betray God’s trust. Seen in the context of contemporary surge of interest in the art of rhetoric, Erasmus’ apocryphal spoof is an eloquent demonstration of the heuristic value of mythopoeia and the irresistible power of rhetoric.