The text refers to an interesting, since ancient and important, epistemological problem of justification of our beliefs, and in particular, the so-called final justification. To the recent methodological and epistemological literature, for example, the so-called Münchhausen trilemma of Hans Albert is known. The author argues that this trilemma can be found already in the ancient philosophy, with which the question of the effectiveness of a dispute with skepticism is connected. The most interesting and original is the view of the relationship between idealism and skepticism from the perspective of history of philosophy, philosophy of science and transcendental philosophy.

The present article concentrates on depicting the main elements of Emil Lask’s philosophy, a distinguished Neo-Kantianist who, simultaneously, may be regarded as Heidegger’s teacher. The meaning of Lask’s work comes down to several issues, although in this article two of them have been emphasised: first, Kant should not be read in the light of Fichte’s philosophy; second, in Lask’s philosophy the primacy of practical reason in logic, characteristic for the Baden Neo-Kantianism, is questioned. In Lask’s understanding, the logic of philosophy which is the critical theory of cognition derives from the critical consideration over the Baden Neo-Kantianism.

The theme of the text is the interpretation of the philosophy of Leonard Nelson (1882—1927) and his place in the history of philosophy. The author asks whether his philosophy should be classified as Neo-Kantianism or outside its borders? In response to this question the author has developed his own instruments. On the one hand, he tried to determine the concept of Neo-Kantianism and thus, Fries’s reference to Kant; on the other hand, he applied the four-point scale for the classification of different philosophy communities and, in particular, the concept of philosophical school. In the light of these assumptions he has classified Nelson’s philosophy as psychological Neo-Kantianism.

The article aims at illustrating an outline of Proclus’s argumentation leading to the rejection of a thesis about the evil of matter in the context of relevance of objections raised against Plotinus by Diadochus. Proclus, disposing of aporia which Plotinus’s stance is embedded in, creates difficulties instead, which the author of "Enneads" has managed to avoid. An attempt to avert the danger of dualism implies aporetic solutions and, additionally, it generates certain explanatory limitations. These difficulties seem to be the price that Diadochus pays for the axiological neutralization of the matter and apeiron, which happens together with the rejection of parallelism of relation between Good-One and plurality-evil. The existence of relative evil in the forms of parhypostases causes difficulties with the inexplicable presence of irrational elements in the universe, which remain beyond the system of causal influence. Plotinus, in turn, despite the dualistic way of explaining being as a relation of One and Indefinite Dyad (evil-matter) may maintain, which even the polemic with gnostics illustrates, that the whole reality is turned towards Good and that everything, including material universe, is essentially good due to unity. Acknowledging evil per se does not lead in "Enneads" to the devaluation of any form of entitativity, even that clearly marked by the influence of the matter.

The paper discusses one of the key notions concerning the basic constituents of the universe, which for Democritus are atoms and vacuum. The primary aim of this article is to show that the complexity of the applied category does not allow for the interpretation of philosophy of atomists as that of naïve materialism. At the same time, it is pointed out that the notion of ‘vacuum’ as used by Democritus suggests a high level of abstraction of his considerations. It is also shown that the category of kenon places Democritus’s philosophy in a wider context of historical-philosophical evolution of such key notions as ‘infinite’ and ‘undefined’.

The aim of the article is to question the Cartesian interpretation of Husserl’s philosophy. In that interpretation Husserl is regarded as a representative of epistemological fundamentalism characterized by searching for the foundations of cognition in the transcendental consciousness given in the absolute and adequate evidence. The thesis of this article states that the essential anonymity which Husserl ascribes to consciousness is the crucial argument for his questioning of the Cartesian myth of the self-transparency of consciousness and thus allows for regarding him as the master of suspicion in a meaning which Paul Ricoeur has endowed this concept with. According to Husserl, consciousness, at the beginning of philosophical thinking, appears to be unknown, hidden, since a human being living in a natural disposition, is immersed in anonymity and forgets about his own subjectivity. Though this anonymity may be overcome by means of phenomenological reduction, the transcendental consciousness, uncovered due to that reduction, in its deepest layers will remain anonymous and will not present itself adequately in self-reflection.

In "Politeia", making a distinction between three basic types of good: good only for its own sake, good for its own sake and the additional benefits it may bring, and good only with regard to the benefits it brings (Rep. 357b—d) — Plato is in favour of the second option, thus emphasizing the dual (absolute-relative) nature of the good, which turns out to be essential for the proper understanding of its nature. Hence, the supremacy of the Good over other ideas (its location ‑πέκεινα τ‑ς ο‑σίας), presented in books VI and VII may not be understood as the absolute transcendence of being, but it indicates its borderline status which is the result of its dual nature. As a consequence, the Good also appears as a breaking point of the dialectic cognition — on the one hand, as its final aim, on the other hand, as its each time assumed foundation. The Good cannot be the subject of dialectic’s cognition in the sense that being (idea) is, since it is itself a principle which enables all cognition of the idea. In this context dialectics turns out to be a certain type of catharsis, a method of gradual purification of hypothetical logos, which leads to the discovering of truth that is hidden behind it. In accordance with Plato’s metaphor, it should present Good as the clearest spot of white which does not have any additional elements in it.

Cognition assumes difference between the subject and the object and their unity at the same time; gnoseological monism is a thesis about extra-subjective and extra-objective grounds for this unity; aporia of gnoseological monism prompts one to choose: either is the subject-object difference contained in One or One is „an empty X” resembling nothingness. On the basis of Plotinus’s philosophy the subject-object difference is the first form of relativity; the difference is then established together with the Mind’s knowledge about the subject (the second part of the article).
The relativity of the subject and the object becomes expressed in the aporia of self-knowledge which may be presented in a form of a question: how is multitude (subject and objects) a unity (self-knowlegde)? A solution to this problem comes down to demonstrating that without self-knowledge, there is no knowledge: self-knowledge is essential to recognize knowledge about one’s attitude towards their own cognition as true or false — and more broadly, “noetic self-knowledge” is essential to recognize knowledge of the Mind about the approach towards being as truth.
In the third part of the article the act of noetic perception (and, more precisely “noetic clarity”) is analysed in the light of two conceptions of principles: principle as a sufficient rationale, and principle as a source of value of something. “Noetic clarity” is simultaneously a direct and rational cognition (unity of things-reasons and things-contents); “clear” is everything that is given together with its rationale; but, at the same time, every being — in noetic depiction — evinces the power of completing scarcities with some defined good (realizing the second sense of the principle — that every being appears as a certain self-consolidating power, that constitutes a value in and of itself). Both these aspects of noetic clarity indicate One as its basis (the thesis of gnoseological monism) and, simultaneously — by means of axiological characteristic of perception itself — allow for regarding One as “something more” than “an empty X”, that is, as Good.

The aim of the article is to present the originality of Frank Ankersmit’s depiction of historical experience. The author of the article emphasises that the structure of historical experience in Ankersmit’s understanding and the structure of mystical experience in James’s study have many common elements. Then, the author makes a comparison between the conception of historical experience with that of mystical experience, in a way W. James understood them. She raises a question whether, in regard to these similarities, it may be stated that historical experience is a variety of a mystical one. If so, then to what extent the category of truth is valid in historical texts, since the historical experience and historical knowledge are questions which should be put in parenthesis with regard to their untranslatability into language and their intersubjective incommunicability which may be observed in the case of a mystical expeirence.

The deliberations presented in the article are concentrated around a thesis that the unchanging framework of Husserl’s philosophical thinking is based on the simultaneous occurrence of theoretical and practical-ethical motive. This thesis, together with considerations presented in the text, are the result of reflection on the aim and tasks of phenomenology as transcendental philosophy, philosophy understood as science striving for the consolidating of cognition and revealing findings that are relevant to one’s life. The practical-ethical motivation that accompanies deliberations of epistemological nature influences the specificity of phenomenological philosophy, phenomenological inquiries and the change of approach. Phenomenology considered in terms of theoretical and practical motives, in the rational and critical thinking, includes the relation between the sphere of cognition and the sphere of life, between the theoretical-scientific sphere and the practical-ethical one.

The paper addresses some of the aspects of the neo-Aristotelian concept of good on the basis of Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach. The author’s general thesis is that the idea of good organizes its normativity along two vectors pointed towards nature and emancipation, which are interlinked, that is — the normativity of the good is always organized by both of them and it is inappropriate to refer to one of them only. This fault is made, the author believes, by Nussbaum who does not offer enough resources to establish a sound naturalistic evaluative standard in her theory. To address this issue the author starts by discussing the capabilities approach as a form of the concept of good and proceeds by analysing Nussbaum’s view on family as an exemplar of the inadequacies of the approach.

The article presents an interpretation of Homeric psyche alternative to the one existing in literature on the subject, where it used to be presented as a soul-breath which gives life to a human being. The interpretation presented here, depicts psyche as a common, pre-reflexive idea of a phantom-spirit, popular in the European culture, being the medium of the universal anthropological convictions. This understanding of psyche, ignored by the examiners of Homer, is in the author’s opinion the basic meaning of psyche arising directly from the texts of Homer’s poems.

The article is an attempt to present in Plato’s thought traits of mourning philosophy, as the one oriented towards continuous referring of subject (in its structural and ontological heterogeneity) to (his/her own) death. To that end the author follows the deconstruction of Plato’s text conducted by Jacques Derrida, mainly in "La pharmacie de Platon", and continued in "La carte postale". Simultaneously, she intends to prove how the text of the dialogues itself shows the incoherence of Plato’s metaphysics, with the special consideration of immortality of soul, relation of writing to life speech and the role of myth in the discourse on immortality. Such a presented project of Plato’s thought as a philosophy of camouflaged mourning, the author combines with the fundamental, from the perspective of Derrida’s mourning thought, problem of postponement, auto-immunological reaction, appropriating and idealization of the death as well as his/her return by means of his/her name.

The present article focuses on the ethos of philosophical way of life occuring in Plato’s "Fedon", the essence of which is depicted in the phrase “a day without tomorrow.” This expression suggests that character of a philosopher’s existenece which allows for a significant redefinition of life, death and immortality. Their traditional understanding could imply certain chronological consequence which, in a philosopher’s life, becomes obliterated. A philosopher — due to the specificity of his work — “already” exists in the dimension of eternity of “things themselves”, no longer waiting for any final fulfillment in immortality that ends one’s life. The borders between life and death are being crossed. The beauty and good of just actions, based on the experience of stability of “things themselves”, moves the enthusiast for wisdom to the sphere where existence, undisturbed by the spectrum of deadly end dominates.

Contemporary interpretations of psychoanalysis (among others A. Leder’s, A. Tauber’s) treat Freud’s thought as a philosophical one (anthropological model). Freud’s adoption of Kant’s transcendental assumption allows for such — unnaturalistic interpretation of psychoanalysis. Reconstructing the ontological and epistemological assumptions of the Viennese psychiatrist it may be proven that: first, psychoanalysis is congruent with queer theory in terms of significance of sexuality in the process of subject creation (“a crack in the subject”); second, at the starting point of both theories the instability of identity, including sexual identity, may be stated. It provides the ground for the comparison of these two conceptions. The queer theory is usually criticized for not presenting any unambiguous ethical conclusions with regard to limitations of human sexuality. In the present work, the author would like to illustrate that in a psychoanalytical model the aims of development, which queer theory is lacking, may be indicated and, as a result, also certain moral restrictions on various forms of sexual “self-expression” may be observed. The specific tools of Freud’s therapy allow for ethical interpretation of the message that psychoanalysis offers and that may be reduced to the individual’s understanding of the necessity for self-restriction of his/her sexuality — the self restriction which is more or less consistent with the solutions of contemporary psychiatry and sexology expressed in a partnership norm formula.

The term “idolatry of politics” occurs in Leszek Kołakowski’s deliberations when individuals turn their political engagement into moral rules, that is, they create their gods ad hoc for their individual aims in politics. The thinker sees the reasons for the crisis of European culture and civilization in the intellectual legacy of the
Enlightenment, and with it, the need for the beginning of the “idolatry of politics”. The first reason is the abandonment of the “absolute values” in the post-modern times, which has led to relativism in culture. The second issue is the distinction between the collective and personal problems of human nature and, consequently, the problem of responsibility for one’s actions. The third area which exerts destructive influence on civilization is the erosion of historical consciousness. In Kołakowski’s works, a cure for the “idolatry of politics” may be found in his conception of “philosophy of a jester” and “inconsistent inconsistency”.