Mateusz Oleksy

In this paper I venture to examine from several different (but related) perspectives the ambivalent significance of practice in Greek thought. On the one hand, philosophical culture (vita contemplative or theoria) evolves in stark opposition to political culture (vita activa). On the other hand, philosophy in the era of post-Socratic schools takes the form of a spiritual practice (askesis) oriented on the conversion or transformation of the soul of a pupil, and quite often is defined as a preparation for social life (both in the ethical and political aspect). I discuss the Greek problem of anthropocentrism in the context of the critical opposition of bios theoretikos and bios politikos, special attention being paid to the internal tension between theoria (and its self-understanding) and philosophical practise as present in the schools. It is not my intention to deny the distance which separates theoria from praxis. Nevertheless, my objective is to bring out the ambivalence of the notion of theoretical contemplation in the context of Platonic dialectics. Near the end of the paper, I suggest – alluding to Nietzsche's judgment of the relation between post-Socratic and pre-Socratic philosophy – that one should approach with caution two very tempting visions of Greek philosophy. The one is the idea of alleged primacy of the practical over the theoretical in Greek philosophy. The other is the myth of the "primordial practise of the ancient sages", characterized in metaphysical terms.

I would like to identify a certain weakness which is characteristic, in my view, of the ‘critique of the model of representation’ or of the project of ‘overturning the hegemony of representation’, popular in philosophical circles inspired by Heidegger’s writings. According to Heidegger’s influential interpretation of modernity — which, by the way, is indebted to Hegelian philosophy of history — the logic of the development of modern thought is entirely subordinated to one idea: the idea of absolute domination of the subject as the power of discursive representation. This interpretation provides a unified vision of the history of modernity as the history of increasing relativization of all aspects of reality to the subject and its capacity to represent and to form judgements. This unified picture of modernity constitutes the common point of reference and inspiration for many intellectual enterprises under the banner of deconstruction, hermeneutics, philosophy of difference, and the critique of Enlightenment. The same interpretation is explicitly or tacitly assumed in postmodernist accounts of contemporary culture, according to which our task as post-modern thinkers is to abandon, overthrow, and shatter the model of representation.

In this article I demonstrate that philosophy illuminated by the Linguistic Turn is no better suited to solve the epistemological problem of realism than was transcendental epistemology. The bulk of this paper concerns a polemic with Hintikka's vision of the relation between model-theoretic semantics and the epistemological problem of realism. In this polemic I argue for three points: (1) Hintikka's assumption that there is a fundamental opposition between two visions of language, the view of language as a medium of communication and the view of it as a calculus, is mistaken. I demonstrate that the latter vision of language presupposes the former one, (2) Hintikka's argument for the thesis that the view of language as a medium of communication constitutes the common source of the troublesome thesis of ineffability of semantics and semantic universalism is faulty. I demonstrate that the source of both beliefs lies in the unwarranted assumption that logical semantics against Hintikka is that logical semantics should not be interpreted as a new tool for solving the old epistemological problem

The purpose of this article is to distinguish the position which I call „arealism” from both semantic realism and semantic anti-realism. Arealism is based on the deflationary critique of the logico-semantic debate on realism, i.e., on the argument which undermines the foundationist presuppositions of this debate. I attempt to draw carefully the distinction between arealist, deflationist approach to the problem of realism and the position of semantic anti-realism, which is usually framed in terms of the assertability-conditions semantics. Moreover, I argue that linguistic antirealism faces problems similar to those which haunted transcendental idealism. In the second part of the paper I demonstrate in a dialectical manner that arealism (1) is holistic in a particular Wittgensteinian sense, (2) does not support nor assume linguistic relativism, (3) should not be confused with meta-theoretical thesis of inexhaustibility of semantics, (4) involves a particular strategy of deflationary criticism, and (5) does not lead to semantic nihilism or eliminationism

This article is a proposal for in-depth reading of Schopenhauer's doctoral treatise "On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason" and a recontextualisation of his thought (Wittgenstein's early and later remarks about subjectivity, the analyses of ego-centric discourse in analytic philosophy of language). I venture to expose and at least partly analyse the basic problems implicit in the enigmatic statement made by Schopenhauer in his treatise. Such issued as the existence of the cognizing subject and its individualization, the relations between subject, body and will, self-identification of the subject and the role of first-person point of view are looked at from the perspective of the central question about the origin of solipsism in the modern philosophy of subjectivity. In a broader context, Schopenhauer's philosophy is considered as a key stage in the collapse of modern subjectivism with its idea of epistemologically and ontologically autonomous self-conscious subject.