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.