Karol Chrobak

The essay contains an analysis of selected socio-political ideas of Helmuth Plessner. The basic assumption of this study is the existence of a close categorial relationship between Plessner’s reflections in The Limits of Community (1924) and in Die Stufen des Organischen (1928). As the interpretative key, the author uses one of the pivotal concepts of Plessner’s philosophy of life, namely the category of “border.” Showing the adequacy of this category in relation to Plessner’s social and political concepts, the essay addresses the issue of the individual-society relationship, the question of social roles and their possible deviations, and the problem of political leadership.

The technological enhancement of communication between scientists and the people of the Earth, as well as the more frequent meetings of experts and philosophers at Conferences, have lately motivated the IAGP to give priority to the broadening of themes that concern the general state of our world seen from the perspective of globalization. This perspective is most indicative of the investigation and dealing with the environmental problem, on account of the combination and mutual influence of the systems that act on our planet and which create environmental problems. That is why the slogan “think globally act locally” is extremely appropriate for a right treatment of the ecological problem. Thus, we can say that there are issues and problems that are directly or indirectly related to certain places and countries but have global significance. There might still be some who have an anthropocentric approach to things and do not accept that nature as such has an independent intrinsic value. In spite of that, or exactly because of that, and because humanity at large is in danger, they are obliged as political beings/bodies to take interest in environmental issues.

This essay diagnoses the condition of contemporary liberal democracies. It assumes that the current crisis of democracy is not the result of an external ideological threat, but it is the result of the lack of a coherent vision of democracy itself. The author recognises that the key symptom of the contemporary crisis is the decreasing involvement of citizens in public life and their growing reluctance to participate in public debate. He claims that the reason for this is the increasing social polarisation. The article considers two forms of polarisation: vertical and horizontal. The first form is illustrated by Colin Crouch’s considerations, while the second one by Fareed Zakaria’s thoughts. What finds its manifestation in both cases is the phenomenon of citizens’ resignation from participation in the public debate; in the first case it is because of the lack of faith in the effectiveness of this type of opiniongiving mechanism, while in the second case it is because of the lack of recognition of other political and ideological options in society. These reflections are concluded in the postulate that the basic task facing democracy today is to maintain the public sphere as open as possible, i.e. not excluding any ideological position in advance. This kind of conclusion is illustrated with the concepts of Chantal Mouffe and Helmuth Plessner.

This article is an introduction to Ernst Cassirer’s essay Naturalistic and Humanistic Fundation of Philosophy of Culture. At the beginning the biographical background of its emergence is outlined. Hitler’s rise to power forced Cassirer to emigrate to Sweden. This difficult situation induced him to substantially rethink the ethical dimension of his philosophy of symbolic forms. In the essay Cassirer distinguishes two currents of modern philosophical reflection about man and culture: the naturalistic and the humanistic one. The former considers culture as a result of purely natural processes that run completely independently of any human decision. Such an approach reduces man to “a marionette” that is blindly obedient to external impulses. According to Cassirer such a way of thinking characterizes Hegel’s idealism, Taine’s positivism as well as Spengler’s fatalism. These diff erent naturalisms he contrasts with a humanistic approach to the philosophy of culture where man turns out to be an active, creative being that produces around himself his own world of culture. Following Cassirer I explain this “new humanism” with reference to the philosophy of Johann Gottfried Herder and Wilhelm von Humboldt. Th e conclusion that Cassirer draws from their reflections is that culture is the field of manifestation of man’s inexhaustible power of form giving. Although this power is always ascribed to an individual it is realized in a social context of a particular community

This paper focuses on the theory of plurality of realities introduced by Leon Chwistek. A critical analysis of this theory and an extensional interpretation of Chwistek’s axiomatic descriptions of four realities lead to an epistemological interpretation of this theory. The word “plurality” in the title is a result of different waysof understanding the same original set of sense-data. This interpretation is contrasted with Kazimierz Pasenkiewicz’s ontological version of this theory. In the final parts of the paper the most important consequences of this theory are discussed. First, the ethical relativism postulated by Chwistek is criticized. Second, an attempt to illustrate the plurality of realities with an example of different styles of painting is discussed. Third, a critical rationalism in the form of a kind of practical attitude toward social reality, which results from the theory of plurality of realities, is outlined.

The principal aim of this article is to analyze the structure of institutional facts. These are facts whose essential part is a particular social context. The physical facts that present the background of institutional facts are called “brute facts”. In the article I define the link between them and institutional facts. I first analyze the concept of the brute fact using Elizabeth Anscombe’s article On brute facts. I discuss in detail the structure of institutional facts and define their relation to brute facts. Then I take up the analysis of the contemporary theory of institutional facts presented by John Searle in his book The Construction of Social Reality. I first distinguish between regulative and constitutive rules and analyze more closely the structure of such constitution. Next, I introduce the concept of institution which according to Searle means a particular pattern of behavior that is defined by a set of constitutive rules. In the end I take up the issue of the ontological foundation of the institution, i.e. of collective consciousness.

The main focus of this article is to present Leon Chwistek’s theory of multiplicity of realities and to confront it with the theory of culture of Ernst Cassirer. Both authors depart from a similar assumption about the mediated character of human cognition. However, this Kantian thesis has been developed by each of them in a unique way. This enables to compare various developments of the same transcendental thesis: on the one hand Chwistek’s logical understanding of the plurality of realities and on the other Cassirer’s theory of man’s symbolic organization of reality. Chwistek considers the multiplicity of realities as resulting from the logic of the objectivity itself. According to Cassirer, this plurality and its dynamism are embedded in the very human nature that still develops into the direction of more and more rational form. Key words L. CHWISTEK, REALITY, RELATION, DYNAMISM