Co pragmatyzm ma do zaoferowania w obliczu „problemów współczesnego świata”? Pragmatyzm jest jedną z dominujących dziś ideologii humanistycznych. Mimo pozorów nowości, w istocie jest to – jak stwierdził James – jedynie nowa nazwa dla starych pomysłów. Omawiając główne założenia pragmatycznej ideologii odwołuję się do dwóch dziewiętnastowiecznych ruchów myślowych – pozytywizmu Comte’a i marksizmu. Moim zdaniem pragmatyzm, a raczej ideologia pragmatyczna, jest współczesnym wariantem tych eschatologicznych ruchów, a jako taki nie jest w stanie poradzić sobie z „problemami współczesnego świata”.
The article analyses physicists’ attitudes towards philosophy on the examples of the positions of eminent theorists. There are two physicists’ philosophical attitudes towards philosophy: pro-philosophical (Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, von Weizsäcker, Penrose, Rovelli) and anti-philosophical (Weinberg, Hawking, Feynman). I analyse some physicists' arguments for or against philosophy. It is demonstrated that physicists are most critical of all philosophical conceptions that accept a priori factors in cognition, while those who recognize the significance of philosophy for science most often refer to the Pythagorean-Platonic tradition as the proper basis for understanding modern physics.
This article examines Bolesław Prus's use of futurology and utopia in his short story Phantoms (Widziadła). A closer look at the story's images and their sequence not only gives us an insight into the author's philosophy of history but also reveals a utopian vision which can hardly be squared with the realism of his previous work. Thus ‘Widziadła’, written in 1911, can be seen as an important piece of evidence of a change in the writer's beliefs and worldview. It was at that late stage of his life that Prus, a hard-nosed realist and critic of the Romantics, turned into an impassioned idealist who, disillusioned with the world around him, sought refuge in literature. It was to be, however, a fiction like ‘Widziadła’, looking beyond the conventions of realism, unashamedly eclectic and visionary.
Positivism is a family of philosophical views characterized by a highly favorable account of science. The characteristic theses of positivism are that science is the only valid knowledge and that philosophy does not possess a method different from science (scientism). Positivists attempted to eliminate all metaphysical components in the area of philosophy. Wolniewicz was one of the most original Polish analytical philosophers of second part of 20th century and he was a strong opponent of anti-metaphysical tendencies. The author discusses the problem of the relationship between science and philosophy and presents Wolniewicz’s arguments against positivism and scientism.
Maria Hagen-Schwerin was a 19th-century novelist and poet. She was a prolific author of popular romances with aristocratic heroes and plots that revolve around love and marriage in high society. However, what kept Mrs Hagen in the public eye was her unconventional life style, her debts and an unending string of affairs whose sensational twists eclipsed anything that could be found her polite fiction. Her feuds, especially with another controversial woman of the fin-de- siècle Cracow, the playwright and novelist Gabriela Zapolska, were the talk of the town. Maria Hagen descended, on her father's side from a long line of nobles (Łoś) and on her mother's side from one of Cracow's wealthiest merchant families (Kirchmayer). Her elder brother Wincenty Łoś was an acclaimed writer and art collector. It is no exaggeration to say that Maria Hagen was heir to a family legacy of great achievements and of great scandals, too, in politics as well as in economic and social life. Some of her ancestors also ventured into literature thus building a family tradition which continued for three centuries. Maria Hagen picked up that thread and became a successful writer in her day. Now she belongs to that large category of writers once famous, but quickly forgotten. The problem lies not in the fact that nobody reads her books, but that her work has attracted virtually no attention from students of nineteenth-century literature and culture, and, astonishingly enough, no critical study of her work has been written for over 150 years since her death.
This article examines the occasional verse published by the daily Czas [Time] in 1864–1879, i.e. over a decade and a half after the suppression of the January Rising. These texts, which feature both solemn occasions and local ephemera, present us with a unique chronicle of life of Cracow and its environs. In addition to listing all the relevant texts, the article attempts to identify their authors, i.e. unlock their initials or pseudonyms, to outline the conventions and genological peculiarities of that verse, and to gauge the attitudes of the Cracovians towards the question of Poland’s independence, Romanticism, patriotism as well as some well-known authority figures.