The paper addresses the relation between transcendental-phenomenological reduction and neutral modification in Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology. According to Husserl, there is both essential kinship and fundamental difference between them. What makes them akin is that they both are characterised as disconnection or bracketing judgement about natural world. What differs them, however, is that neutral modification is a kind of transformation of conviction of existence of the world into neutral consciousness, which does not constitute the world, whereas the transcendental-phenomenological reduction disconnects the world in a way which leads to uncovering the subjectivity that does constitute the world (and subjectivity that constitutes the world is not the neutral consciousness, but a thetic consciousness — positionales Bewusstsein). Hence, the transcendental-phenomenological disconnection of the world does not mean its neutralisation, but rather recognition of being of the world as a result of constitutive performances of transcendental subjectivity.

The paper discusses Tischner’s interpretation of Husserl’s conception of consciousness in two aspects: egologic and subjective. In his notion of transcendental consciousness Husserl equates the transcendental ego with the subject of consciousness. However, in the course of development of his theory, he supplements the theory of ego with so-called habitual properties theory. Tischner stresses and characterises the difference between the transcendental ego and the subject of consciousness in his doctoral thesis Ja transcendentalne w filozofii E. Husserla (Transcendental ego in E. Husserl’s philosophy). According to Tischner, Husserl, by recognising the habitual properties of transcendental ego blurs the difference between the transcendental ego and a person. Hence, Tischner claims, two levels of consciousness (not recognise by Husserl himself) need to be recognised: the subjective level, which determines the subject as indispensable element of consciousness, and the egologic level, which refers to self-contained element of consciousness, which function as the transcendental ego. Setting apart heterogenic levels of analysis, as emphasised by Tischner, appears to be the key factor of development of his own work.

The  author  of  the  paper  discusses  three  of  contemporary  interpretations  ofFreud’s psychoanalysis. Most recent interpretations go beyond one-sidedness of pre-vious ones (that is, biologism and hermeneutics) which took theory and practice sep-arately.  Thanks  to  reconstruction  of  some  of  philosophical  consequences  of  Freud’sthought — ontological (anthropological), epistemological and ethical — psychoanaly-sis  might  be  taken  as  metaphysical  concept  (Andrzej  Leder),  moral  philosophy(Alfred  I.  Tauber)  or  it  might  be  interpreted  dialectically  (Jon  Mills).  The  authorpoints  out  some  key  elements  of  Freud’s  theory,  which  make  these  interpretationspossible, and in this way she highlights validity of Freud and vivid reception of histhought in philosophy.

The aim of the paper is to analyse relation between Jan Patočka and Tomáš G.Masaryk. The former was referring to the latter’s concepts throughout his work, inmost  cases  from  the  perspective  of  Edmund  Husserl’s  phenomenology.  According  toPatočka, both in Masaryk and Husserl the most important symptom of crisis is thepositivist  hypostising  of  the  scientific  method  and  the  loss  of  religion.  The  commonstarting  point  of  both  theories  was  the  thesis  according  to  which  Europe  is  goingthrough  a  spiritual  crisis  which  arises  from  subjectivism.  The  difference  betweenthem,  however,  was  in  the  concepts  of  the  ways  to  resolve  the  crisis.  According  toMasaryk, the solution is to be found in restoration of religion, whereas Husserl seesit in transcendental phenomenology. Patočka was wrong when he stressed how muchout of date were Masaryk’s views. For they might be taken as topical in their moraland  religious  aspects,  value  of  which  was  proved  during  the  hard  times  for  Czechand Slovak nations.

The aim of presented paper is to place the work of Xenophanes of Colophon in the history of Greek philosophy. His discovery of subjectivity of cognition might be taken as the next step in emancipation of logos from pre-philosophical way of understanding the world. The author broadens John Burnet’s interpretation of Xenophanes’ fragments, taking the general critique of earlier Greek thought — both mythological and philosophical (philosophy of physis) as its basis. Exemplification of Xenophanes’ modernisation of philosophical discourse is his understanding of truth, which he divides into two notions referring to the problem of subjectivity of cognition.

The paper is devoted to an analysis of the epistemology of Johannes Volkelt, its main arguments and the relation of Volkelt’s theory of certainty to Kant and other contemporary philosophers, such as Edmund Husserl. Volkelt’s problem of scepticism is closely related to the positivist principle, which aimed at limiting all knowledge to our individual sphere of representations. This principle in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason means the unknowableness of the thing in itself. Volkelt seeks for answer to the question about the trans-subjective knowledge. He finds a basis for the certainty in the dispresuppositional theory of the transsubjective minimum. The acceptance of the trans-subjective minimum determines too the possibility of metaphysics.

The paper discusses the relation of philosophy and meta-philosophy. With the use of Jerzy Perzanowski’s notion of characteristics of science and Jan Woleński’s meta-methodological typology, the author aims at presenting meta-philosophy as part of philosophy itself. Seen along such lines, meta-philosophy is part of methodology of philosophy which relates classical problems of epistemology to philosophy, just as philosophy of science does it for science. The author argues that the problems of meta-philosophy are in fact philosophical problems and sketches possible meta-philosophical positions analogous to the standpoints in methodology already given. Obviously, this way of presenting meta-philosophy is only one of its possible programs. Yet, the benefit of it is an already given conceptual framework taken from philosophy of science.

The paper offers a tentative analysis of some possible forms of the experience of world fading and impermanence of one’s existence as contemporary agent, immersed in world of everyday life. The starting point of the analysis is Jan Patočka’s model of “the natural man”. The author of the paper modifies it to make is suitable for description of civilization of the 21st-century human whose “natural world” is much more dense, more saturated with both technological artefacts and information, which he or she is able to assimilate only partially. The author claims that a man living in the environment suffused with items and information, spontaneously generates a strategy of evading important problems of life, and if it fails, found themself hopeless and lost. In some cases this feelings are generated by unexpected confrontation of their self-consciousness with the experience of inevitable fading, when — as Patočka rightly observes — the agent faces “spiritual shock”. The author outlines some of the consequences of this shock in the last part of the paper.

During Brzozowski’s lifetime, individualism, taken as philosophical standpoint, was one of typical theoretical tools. After the “standing on the edge of a precipice” period in 1901—1903 he was struggling with the cultural crisis, in this time a common experience, hence, the activity of the agent taken as an individual, showed up as a way beyond contemplation, opening the possibility of individual and unlimited acting, which could transform the passive subject into a real creator. Brzozowski’s individualism includes axiological and cultural relativization, which enabled him to link different aspects of Nietzsche’s, Kant’s and Fichte’s theories. This syncretism remained open to some logical difficulties, however, with which Brzozowski struggled to the end of his work. With a critique of naturalism, which he found to be scientific justification of relativism, he drew upon Kant and Fichte and formulated anew the primal standpoint of radical individualism by granting a value-creative character to subjective human thought. This way the individual self makes the world behind it the space of consolidating values.

The paper deals with the problem which seems to be one of dominant features of postmodern discourse, that is, the problem of identity. The author supplements the philosophical and sociological attitude towards this issue with aesthetical context, which, as it shows up, defines some important elements that co-determine the process of postmodern auto-creation. The trans-categorial notion of “aesthetic identity”, emerging from this process, which exceeds and at the same time gathers different aspects of “identity” discourse, emphasises first of all the bodily aspect and its surprising, especially from the point of view of traditional philosophy, role in creating liquid, performative postmodern identity.

Pascal’s Wager is one of those philosophical issues which keep provoke reflection and searching for their new interpretations. It might be claimed that the argument from the well-known fragment of Pensées draws the reader’s attention first of all thanks to radicalism of its ultimate conclusion (“The faith in God is the only rational human attitude”). For more than 300 years new arguments for and against the premises, the argument and the conclusion of the wager have been formulated. Recently a strong trend towards formulating new arguments for or against God’s existence or rationality of theism, which make a reference to Pascal’s Wager, might be observed. One of the arguments made is the Atheist’s Wager, usually ascribed to Michael Martin, although its sources might be found in some of ancient philosophers. This argument, just as the one by Pascal, analyses the consequences of two opposite attitudes towards God’s existence. However, the conclusion of Atheist’s Wager (“Atheism is more rational than theism”) is just opposite to the one of Pascal’s argument. It is important to notice that there are various variants of Atheist’s Wager in which different aspects of the problem of rationality of theism and atheism are emphasized.

The paper aims at revealing theoretical basis of studies in mysticism conducted by Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal. It is focused on the key issue of unification of man and God. This problem has its precisely defined, anthropological and existential context which in Maréchal’s work comes down to the question on the nature of the substantial centre of the soul in which this unification shall take place. The paper argues that in Maréchal’s analysis the centre of the soul, or substantial ego, equates with the possible intellect and in some cases it might be taken as not only the ontic basis for acts of cognition, but also for mystical phenomena.

Between testimony of life and philosophical thought

In defence of cohesion of James’ thought

Understanding of the judicious

Review: How can I be?

My ontology

Kant und das 20.Jahrhundert