Dialectics as the philosophical core of Zygmunt Bauman’s thought. The case of freedomThe aim of this paper is to analyse the philosophical roots of Zygmunt Bauman’s thought, epitomized by dialectics, especially in the context of the issue of freedom. In the first part of the article the author analyses the problem of the dialectics of nature and society by means of the concepts borrowed from Henri Lefebvre. The second part discusses Bauman’s philosophical predecessors, especially the members of the Frankfurt School, (...) i.e. Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer and Erich Fromm. The final part is focused on tripartite condition of freedom, unfreedom and determination, as diagnosed by Bauman. (shrink)

The above text is an attempt to reconstruct Plotinian conception of dialectics (presented in a treatise "On dialectics") based on these parts of "Enneads" which includes Plotinian conception of thinking. Dialectics, according to Plotinus, is not philosopher's instrument as logic is, it is not a method of solving philosophical problems. It is a way which enables soul to return to the One. The return consists of two stages with two corresponding kinds of dialectics; reason dialectics enables soul to know itself (...) through self-thinking and to get to the Intellect whereas dialectics of the Intellect is an exploration of Nous by which getting to the One is possible. Generally dialectics is redeeming thinking raising the soul up to the One, which realizes itself on the level of every lower hypostasis as self-thinking. Dialectics is an embodiment of the Return (epistrofe) – cosmic principle opposite to Outgoing (proodos) – directing everything, what was generated by the One, back to its origin. (shrink)

The aim of the article is an analysis of the early works of Jarosław Ładosz, a Polish philosopher and mathematician, who in the 1960s conducted a thorough examination of the most important scientific accomplishments in the field of logic and mathematics from the perspective of Marxist philosophy. Being nowadays assessed as a symbol of dogmatism and orthodoxy in Polish Marxism, Ładosz revised most of the superstitions on the relationship between mathematical logic and dialectics, which have been legitimized in official Marxist (...) philosophy since the times of Marx and Engels, in his early works. Having rejected the claims of some Marxists for the formalization of dialectics, he presented the original concept of dialectics as a methodological tool for studying the sources of logical knowledge. Combining dialectical materialism with Jean Piaget’s epistemology, he formulated an elaborate, original hypothesis of the social construction of logico-mathematical knowledge, while at the same time transcending the subject-object division as-sumed in Marxist dogmatic epistemology. (shrink)

Wladyslaw Strózewski's Dialektvka Tworczosci develops the thesis that art, having not only its raison d'être, has its final effect lying within the wholeness of being. Strózewski, whose roots are deep in scholastic tradition and phenomenology, as well as in Hegel, has always seen being as seated in allusion to nothingness, which as non-being is indirectly accessible to us through experiences of an essential, existential, or axiological nature.