Andrzej Sapkowski’s fantasy narrative and novel saga, as exemplified by the “The Edge of the World” short story, borrows largely from J. R. R. Tolkien’s depiction of elves in defining most of their traits and the relationship between them and humans. Sapkowski, however, clearly transforms the image of the (predominantly) benevolent elf defined by Tolkien. The aim of this article is to explore the way in which Sapkowski portrays the elven race as sovereign in their exclusion from the world (...) of humanity. Sapkowski’s story allows the group to maintain its unique motivations, resisting morally dualistic stereotyping at the same time. Moreover, because neither humanity nor elfdom may claim moral superiority in their conflict, the colonial experience of the elves is not simply appropriated by the author as an example of Indigenous victimhood. Rather, it serves the purpose of presenting readers with a multifaceted tapestry of colonial conflict contained within a fantasy world. The players of this world, though opposed and prone to othering their enemies, are nevertheless rhetorically equal. (shrink)

From the viewpoint of its Stalinist-era creators, the IKKN/INS could at best be described as a mixed success. Despite heroic efforts, it failed to train the cadres that might have permeated Polish scholarship with Marxism-Leninism. If it was the major channel for transmitting Soviet experience to Polish academia, then Poland's universities would not learn to be Soviet—the Polish historian Jerzy Halbersztadt has made the point that the institute was the only direct conduit of Soviet experience into Polish academic life. It (...) even had a major role in educating some of Poland's most famous critical thinkers, although they, unlike their master Adam Schaff, seem less fond of reminiscing about the institute. Leszek Koŀakowski writes that he does not regard his role in the ideological struggles of the early 1950s as a “source of pride”.90The legacy of the IKKN/INS has also been a mixed one. It was not only a “foundry of revisionists”. For every future critical thinker of world repute, it graduated several cadres who served the PZPR loyally over decades. Adam Schaff recognises this dual legacy. Looking back on a long and active life, he has called the institute a “pearl in my crown”.91 Its members filled top party and government posts throughout the history of People's Poland. Andrzej Werblan served as Central Committee secretary and a member of the Politburo, Sylwester Zawadzki became minister of justice, Stanisŀaw Wroński was minister of culture, Mieczysŀaw Jagielski was the Politburo member who negotiated the Gdańsk accords, Stanisŀaw Kania succeeded Edward Gierek, and Mieczysŀaw Rakowski acted as General Jaruzelski's Party First Secretary.92Undoubtedly much of the institute's strange course is to be attributed to the designs of Adam Schaff. Despite his Moscow training, Schaff retained an attachment to the Polish academic milieu which had formed him. He may have believed in Stalinist doctrine, but he also believed that this doctrine would show its superiority in competition with other views—even if the competition was far from a fair one. Of course, Schaff tried to retain ultimate control, and to play, as he now calls himself, the “grey eminence”. Nevertheless, his was a very unstalinist way of propagating Stalinism, and he must be given credit for helping to keep a spirit of intellectual inquiry alive in Poland during the dark years of the early 1950s.Yet Schaff tends to exaggerate his personal role in educating philosophers, dissidents and critical thinkers. This tendency is itself a legacy of the Stalinist period and its concentration of power. Stalinists view the present as their personal creation and therefore reject all criticisms of the past. At the final meeting of the Crooked Circle Club in 1962, Schaff encountered unwonted criticism from, among others, Andrzej Walicki. Schaff shot back at him: “You are ours, you are our creation, a creation of socialism ... we educated you, and we didn't do such a bad job.” But far from being a “creation” of Schaff's, the non-party member Walicki had been denied admission to graduate studies in philosophy. He felt relieved when those in attendance, who knew him better than Schaff did, burst out laughing.93The point is that the Polish intellectual world maintained its integrity outside the IKKN/INS, and in the end it was the institute which merged into the Polish intelligentsia, rather than the opposite. After 1957 the non-Marxist sociologists and philosophers made their way back to academia, and were joined by many former INS staff members. The basic unity of Polish social science training, and of the Polish intelligentsia, was restored.94Of course in a larger sense the fate of the IKKN/INS had little to do with the designs of its master. Schaff admits as much, proclaiming that “I did this because I did not know what I was doing!” If he had been asked to start such a project five years later, the answer would have been: “No!”95 The fatal flaw of the Institute for Training Scientific Cadres was cadres: Poland did not have them. By 1956, Schaff and the party leadership, and perhaps Soviet advisers as well, had learned that one could not create an elite party scientific institution almost out of nothing. It would either be party or scientific, because apparatchiki could not become scientists, scientists would not become apparatchiki, and students could not produce teachers. In the Stalinist period, Polish intellectual life had stood in the shadow of the party; yet during the Thaw the relationship was reversed—increasingly the tiny party training institute was engulfed by the shadow of the resurgent Polish universities. Talented young people, even those in the party, made their way into the traditional higher educational establishment.The IKKN/INS did not, therefore, fail because of its own failings, nor succeed because of its own successes. It was a failed part of a failed whole. To succeed, “mild” revolution would have required decades, and Poland's Stalinists had only a few years. To make matters worse—or better, depending on viewpoint—they did not use these years in a conventional Stalinist manner. Under Schaff's guidance and at somewhat erratic Soviet bidding, the institute became an awkward series of half-measures, reminiscent of much of Polish Stalinism. When Poland's communists fell back and regrouped in 1956, the IKKN/INS occupied a lonely position they preferred to abandon. (shrink)

Artykuł porusza problem rozumienia w filozofii psychiatrii. Autor koncentruje się na klasycznym już podziale w naukach humanistycznych – na rozumienie/wyjaśnianie oraz nomotetyczne/idiograficzne - i próbuje nakreślić jego konsekwencje dla psychiatrii i problematyki zaburzeń psychicznych. Przegląd wybranych zagadnie metodologicznych filozofii psychiatrii ujawnia antropologiczne aspekty nowożytnej psychiatrii oraz ograniczenia modelu biomedycznego. Ostatnia część artykułu omawia wybrany przypadek kliniczny, aby wskazać na praktyczne konsekwencje indywidualnego i idiograficznego podejścia do psychiatrii.

Zapis rozmowy z dr. Andrzejem Klimczukiem, adiunktem w Kolegium Ekonomiczno-Społecznym Szkoły Głównej Handlowej w Warszawie; ekspertem z zakresu gerontologii, ekonomii pracy, zarządzania publicznego i polityki społecznej.

The article presents an analysis of the ways in which knowledge is displayed, contested and renegotiated in the 2007 French presidential debate between Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy. Knowledge displays can be achieved through a series of ‘neutral’ resources, such as informing, explanation or comment, or through face-damaging resources, such as questioning an unknowledgeable interlocutor to prove his inferior epistemic status and boost one’s own. The article focuses on this latter type of knowledge display where a knowledgeable participant engages in (...) question–answer sequences with an unknowledgeable respondent in front of a third party. The article also undertakes an analysis of the multimodal strategies employed by the participant to discredit the opponent. The article intends to contribute to the existent literature on epistemic stance by offering a prototypical example of incongruence between the epistemic status of the questioner and the epistemic stance he adopts. (shrink)

Metafizyczny kreacjonizm a paradoksy teizmu ewolucyjnego: przyczynek do dyskusji w ramach współczesnego tomizmu Autor artykułu dowodzi, że metafizyczny kreacjonizm, z którym spotykamy się w filozofii św. Tomasza z Akwinu, w odróżnieniu od kreacjonizmu amerykańskiego oraz teologiczno-‑biblijnego, jest teorią, która wyrasta z czysto filozoficznego wyjaśnianie początków świata i człowieka. Nie jest zatem ideą biblijną przeniesioną na teren filozofii. Podobnie jak teizm metafizyki Arystotelesa, a także teizm metafizyki św. Tomasza z Akwinu nie jest teizmem religijnym, lecz teizmem czysto filozoficznym, gdyż wyrasta z (...) metafizycznego wyjaśniania rzeczywistości. Kreacjonizm metafizyczny jest ostatecznym wyjaśnieniem źródła istnienia bytów, które dane są nam w doświadczeniu, jako niekonieczne w istnieniu i zmienne. Natomiast kreacjonizm amerykański, jest interpretacja biologiczno-kosmologiczną biblijnej prawdy o stworzeniu świata w określonym przedziale czasowym i w punkcie wyjścia odwołuje się do danych Objawienia, które chce naukowo potwierdzić Artykuł został podzielony na dwie części. W części pierwszej zostały przedstawione węzłowe elementy metafizycznej teorii stworzenia ex nihilo i jej rozumienie. W drugiej zaś części artykułu zostały przywołane elementy teizmu ewolucyjnego, które z punktu metafizycznego kreacjonizmu są źródłem różnych paradoksów, a niekiedy i absurdów oraz domagają się ponownego przemyślenia. (shrink)

There are inferences from a sentence or a set of sentences to a question. The relation between the premises and conclusions of such inferences is sometimes called arising.

It is commonly held that the rise and development of quantum mechanics forces us to reject the idea of objective knowledge and the notion of truth in science. In the article I critically analyse arguments against possibility of objective knowledge in quantum mechanics, which were formulated by philosophizing physicists (Bhor, Heisenberg, Weizsacker). I point out that the term „objectivity” used by those physicists, in ambiguous. They do not distinguish epistemological and ontological notions of „objectivity”, different meanings of the ontic objectivity (...) itself, and they do not separate the objectivity of cognitive acts from the objectivity of cognitive results. (shrink)

Heidegger’s thinking, according to his own testimony, is rooted in two traditions of philosophy: Platonic-Aristotelian ontology and Husserl’s phe­nomenology. Heidegger’s claim that the original understanding of Being is lost and has to be rediscovered conjoins the phenomenological claim that there is a certain mode of seeing that enables a revelatory philosophical insight. I would like to show how Heidegger combines both these claims in his supposition that the original philosophical conceptuality, as developed by Plato and Aristotle, was lost but can (...) be retrieved by means of applying the phenomenological method to the interpretation of texts. Furthermore, I would like to interpret this retrieval in the context of Heidegger’s project of “overcoming metaphysics” and Nietzsche’s suggestion that “Plato was essentially a pantheist, yet in the guise of a dualist”. (shrink)

Artykuł stanowi syntetyczna próbę spojrzenia na historyczny rozwój filozofii życia z perspektywy pytań o człowieka. W jej dziejowej ewolucji wyodrębniono trzy okresy z uwzględnieniem specyfiki każdego z nich. Spoiwem wszystkich odmian filozofii życia jest otwarta, dynamistyczna koncepcja człowieka, będąca częścią wizji nieustannie stającego się świata. W takim ujęciu pytanie o człowieka odnosi sie do przesłanek rozumienia: naturalnych korzeni, dziejowej egzystencji czy ładu aksjologicznego.

Paul RicoeurFebruary 27, 1913–May 20, 2005It is with great sorrow that I note the death of Paul Ricoeur, Honorary Member of the International Institute for Hermeneutics.

Hermeneutics promotes an awareness of the interpretive character of the world. With regard to the difficult and complex relationship between philosophy and theology,hermeneutics calls for critical rethinking of the Heideggerian postulate to exclude theology from philosophy on the grounds of the autonomy of philosophy, and to exclude philosophy from theology on Barthian revelational positivist grounds.Heidegger‟s philosophy has a long history of being interpreted as an invitation to theology to think about God and religion in a new, non metaphysical way. Reexamining (...) the question of the meaning of Being,Heidegger inspired a search for new paths of thinking God outside the established onto-theological tradition.I will argue that both exclusions—philosophy from theology, theology from philosophy—are hermeneutically untenable. (shrink)