The subject matter of this article constitutes the semiotic mapping of human of knowledge which results from cognition. Departing from the presentation of human subjects as world-model-builders, it places epistemology among the sciences of science and the sciences of man. As such the understanding of epistemology is referred either to a static state of knowledge or to a dynamic acquisition of knowledge by cognizing subjects. The point of arrival, in the conclusive part of a this article, constitutes the substantiation of the two understandings of epistemology, specified, firstly, as a set of investigative perspectives, which the subject of science has at his/her disposal as a knower on the metascientific level, or, secondly, as a psychophysiological endowment of a cognizing subject who possesses the ability of learning and/or knowing a certain kind of information about cognized reality.

In the first part, ‘Visions’, a pattern of interpreting Western philosophical thought, as an attempt to deal with the problem of axiological catastrophe, is outlined. In the second part, ‘Vastness’, the author tries to show how far human speculative thinking (metaphysical thinking) can be extended, regardless of whether the ‘vastness’ that human metaphysics aims at is realized one way or another. The third part, ‘God’, deals with the relationship between the concept of God and the concept of metaphysical vastness. The fourth part is called ‘Cradle’ and its intention is to show that in comparison with real or only possible metaphysical vastness, the world in which we live is a kind of beginning of an infinite life, and therefore serves as a cradle. In the last part, entitled ‘Fullness’, some ideas are proffered to show how the eternal life of such entities as human persons may appear against the background of metaphysical vastness.

I investigate Husserl’s long-term research on revealing/constructing a proper idea of science. For Husserl this idea was of tremendous importance: it had to be the basis of forming a (the) proper philosophy (phenomenology), that is, a philosophy which was to be an exact science, a new and higher form of science. According to Husserl, the idea of science is not a free project of individual researchers, scientific communities, but the very essence of science—changeless, universal, nontransformable, non-culturally and socially loaded, ahistorical, and non-relativized to scientific praxis. It was attempt to determine a new status of philosophy which led Husserl’s to the consideration of a universal idea of science.

If the characterization of avant-garde proposed once by Henri Saint Simon, and later maintained by Daniel Bell as well as Lidia Burska in the book entitled Awangarda i inne złudzenia. O pokoleniu ‘68 w Polsce (“The avant-garde and other illusions. On the ’68 generation in Poland”) is adopted, the philosophical revisionism inside Polish Marxism (the Warsaw school of the history of ideas) may be considered a phenomenon analogous to the artistic avant-garde which gained prominence in the middle of the 1950s. In Burska’s understanding, the significant trait of avant-garde is effective impact on the state of consciousness, stances and choices of the public. This essential factor highlights the connection between avant-garde and revisionism, due to the fact that, as it was commonly believed in Poland, the Warsaw school played a major role in the formation of the Polish post-war humanities. The purpose of the paper is to propose an understanding of the impact exerted by the Warsaw school of the history of ideas. In relation to this problem, the author refers to the testimonies of people who constituted that milieu, and he focuses on some topics from the hermeneutics of H.-G. Gadamer (the concept of the efficacy of history; the concept of application) and from the philosophy of H.R. Jauss (the concept of the horizon of expectations).

The article aims to prove that the narrative structure of The Stormy Life of Lasik Roitschwantz by Ilya Ehrenburg can be viewed as a starting point for understanding the overriding idea of the novel. In the material for interpretation among other things analysed what follows: the similarity between the narrative of the fi rst few chapters and the skaz narrative (Russian oral form of narrative) based on the defi nition of formal mimesis, the introduction to a “foreign word” narrative (the protagonist using reported speech and free indirect speech), the restriction of the storyteller’s role (which is the overriding element of the skaz narrative) and simultaneously putting the protagonist at the forefront, the language markers used in order to mask the convergence between the storyteller’s and the protagonist’s points of view. As a result, the article implies that the presence of a skaz storyteller allows analysing the fi gure of Lasik Roitschwantz not as a character from a book or of a certain type, but rather as a human being in a universal sense.

The symbolistic poetry of Alexander Blok is connected with the thinking of both philosophers and psychoanalysts about the world and the man inscribed in it by the phenomenon of “I”. When coming into contact with transcendence, the poet crosses the demarcation line dividing the rational and irrational world, consciousness and unconsciousness. In the first period of creativity, the Russian symbolist nourishes his imagination, infl uenced by the philosophy of Vladimir Soloviev, with longing for the ideal of femininity. The driving force of the Blok’s imagination becomes, understood after Freud, the desire to meet the ideal residing in the oneiric space, and then to unite with it at the dual level (physical and spiritual). From the psychoanalytic perspective, the cycle Verses about the Beautiful Lady is both an attempt to go beyond awareness and search for the sense of a poetic image, its original source in the unconscious, as well as entering into the mirror phase described by J. Lacan. Beautiful Lady plays a role of what the French psychiatrist appoints as an objet petit a: this object is essentially unreachable and that is why it raises a great desire in the lyrical subject. The mechanism of the transition from chaos to unity, though only apparent in Blok’s works, is identical to the psycho-physical experience of the child, observing himself in the mirror.

In this article, the imperial idea and civilising missions in the Habsburg Monarchy, mainly of the nineteenth century, are refracted through the prism of the legacy of enlightened absolutism. The article tries to dispel mythologies about its demise around 1800, and about those who could subscribe to its programme throughout the nineteenth century. It questions templates of national history writing which too unanimously connect the Enlightenment to the origins of the various national revivals of the early nineteenth century, and discusses concrete examples of enlightened absolutism’s civilising impulses, among them law, Roman imperial patriotism, and the Catholic religion.

The main aim of the following article is to juxtapose two methodological perspectives, influential in the field of the widely understood history of ideas, that is to say, the Cambridge School with the German tradition of Begriffsgeschichte. Presenting both opportunities and pitfalls that may result from applying these perspectives, I sketch the propositions to overcome possible shallows. In concluding remarks, I draw potential challenges for the history of ideas in Poland.

The chuch dedicated to The Holy Spirit, erected in Wrocław, in housing estate Huby, was created during the communist period, hence it was very difficult to design it, and to build. But it was also the period close to the collapse of this regime, so communist leaders were pressed to be more tolerant towards human rights than before, including the religious freedom and towards building new churches. The author of the church mentioned – a very active political oppositionist – when designing the strongly innovative church building, was simultaneously forced by fate to fight formal difficulties caused by oppressive rulers. Author makes the reader closer to those complicated double troubles: artistic, parallel to the political. Finally, the church building was happily completed, then became widely popular and accepted.

In education, information and Communications Technologies mostly play the role of a medium of communication, as well as a means of imparting knowledge. ICT, however, is used less as a subject for student activity, i.e. a subject for students to learn, where they can operate the technology, as in robotics or mechantronics. Information technologies are also very rarely implemented in education as a way for students to build their identity and shape their attitudes towards their outside and inside worlds. In spite of this, in the history of educational technology there have been a number of researchers and educators who have promoted interesting ideas for implementing technologies as tools for human cognitive, affective, psychomotor and moral empowerment. Today such people are also present in education, however, they play unimportant roles on the periphery of formal education. This paper is a reminder of a number of ideas by theorists and researchers concerning the implementation of ICT, but mainly highlights the empowerment it gives students and its humanizing/humanitarian role.

The linguistic philosophy (Oxford School) is a trend in analytical philosophy, critical about the claims of formal logic. Its followers want to investigate problems using an analysis of ordinary language. Peter F. Strawson is one of the most prominent representatives of this line of thoughts. He is also a philosopher who has done a lot toward a rehabilitation of metaphysics in British philosophy. In my paper I present an analysis of Strawson’s metaphilosophical ideas and I offer a critical discussion of Karl R. Popper’s attitude to linguistic philosophy.