The aim of this book is to present the heritage of the Lvov-Warsaw School from both the historical and the philosophical perspective. The historical view is focused on the beginnings and the dramatic end of the School brought about by the outbreak of World War II. The philosophical view, on the other hand, encompasses a broad spectrum of issues, including logical, epistemological, axiological, and psychological problems.
It should be emphasised that the philosophical perspective reveals the interdisciplinary nature of studies carried out by Kazimierz Twardowski and his students. The School’s achievements range across philosophy, ethics, psychology, logic, and mathematics. Their unifying factor consists in the fact that they all reflect the rationalist and analytical trait of the School’s philosophy, characteristic of the Polish philosophy at the beginning of the twentieth century.
This volume, entitled ‘Interdisciplinary Investigations into the Lvov-Warsaw School’, consists of three parts: (1) History, Culture, and Axiology; (2) Psychology; (3) Logic and Methodology.
The first part begins with a paper by Jan Woleński, entitled ‘The Lvov-Warsaw School: Historical and Sociological Comments’. The author introduces Twardowski as the founder of an analytical philosophical school in Lvov at the end of the nineteenth century. Twardowski, as a charismatic teacher, did not take long to train a group of young philosophers. This group became the Lvov-Warsaw School just after the end of World War I. Although some philosophers of the Lvov-Warsaw School were active until the end of the twentieth century (and even at the beginning of the twenty-first century), the School itself existed as an organised and coherent scientific project only until 1939. Its end was brought about by World War II and the ensuing political changes.
Woleński points out that the Lvov-Warsaw School was a large and complex community (of about 80 persons) spreading across several generations and circles. Twardowski and his earliest students (including Jan Łukasiewicz, Stanisław Leśniewski, Władysław Witwicki, Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, Zygmunt Zawirski, and Tadeusz Czeżowski) constituted the first generation of the Lvov-Warsaw School. They trained the second generation, acting mostly in Lvov and Warsaw. The Warsaw School of Logic with Leśniewski, Łukasiewicz, and Alfred Tarski as its main representatives, became the most famous branch of the Lvov-Warsaw School, working on various problems of mathematical logic. This circle had close connections with the Polish School of Mathematics. Philosophers, like Ajdukiewicz, Czeżowski, Kotarbiński or Zawirski, contributed to epistemology, ontology, the philosophy of language and philosophy of science . On the other hand, the Lvov-Warsaw School was also active in the history of philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, and psychology. Thus, all basic parts of philosophy were represented in the Lvov-Warsaw School. Due to the multi-ethnic character of the Polish society in the interwar period, the Lvov-Warsaw School consisted not only of Poles (the majority), but also Jews and Ukrainians.
Woleński considers the significance of the Lvov-Warsaw School from two perspectives. Its logicians achieved many fundamental results which influenced logical studies around the world. Some of them (Tarski’s theory of truth, Łukasiewicz’s many-valued logic, Leśniewski’s systems) were important for general philosophy (in particular, Tarski’s works in semantics resulting in a change in the philosophical orientation of logical empiricism from syntax-oriented to semantic-oriented). Taking into account the role of the Lvov-Warsaw School in Poland, it made an essential contribution to the country’s philosophical culture.
The next essay, written by Elżbieta Pakszys, ‘The Victims and the Survivors: the Lvov-Warsaw School and the Holocaust’, discusses the subject of death in general and in particular as it concerns philosophers of the Lvov-Warsaw School during the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazi Germans during World War II.
Pakszys reports on individual stories of survivors rescued from prisons and concentration camps, as well as stories of those who managed to survive the Holocaust in hiding, revealed in the course of post-war studies. All of them survived concentration camps and resumed active lives after the war. They all shared the experience of being imprisoned in the female concentration camp at Ravensbrück.
‘The Lvov-Warsaw School on the University and Its Tasks’ by Włodzimierz Tyburski presents the ideas and assertions of key representatives of the Lvov-Warsaw School concerning the role and tasks of the university and the ethical duties (deontology) of the scholar. The discussion of these topics is preceded by an exposition of selected ideas on the role and mission of the university shared by outstanding Polish scholars from the fifteenth through the twentieth century. This issue was of utmost importance to Twardowski, founder of the Lvov-Warsaw School, as well as his followers, including Czeżowski, Kotarbiński, Ajdukiewicz, Witwicki and others.
In his essay, ‘The Lvov-Warsaw School on the University and Its Tasks’, Tyburski presents the ideas and analyses concerning the above topics carried out by Twardowski and Czeżowski, since they are highly representative of the entire Lvov-Warsaw School. All of its representatives shared their conviction that the university is committed to (a) serving the ideal of truth, (b) harmoniously combining its research, educational, and teaching functions, (c) educating creative individuals displaying intellectual, aesthetic as well as moral qualities, (d) contributing to cultural development, (e) influencing both its immediate and more distant surroundings by applying the results of its research activity. Czeżowski, Twardowski and all other representatives of the Lvov-Warsaw School firmly stood for the university’s independence, freedom of scientific research, and independence from governments and politics.
Another hallmark of the School was a common catalogue of duties involved in the education and training of university students. Tyburski emphasises that the university as proposed by the Lvov-Warsaw School differs considerably from the contemporary proposals, where the university is designed as an enterprise offering teaching and research services defined by the current demand. These are two very different institutions, with different structures, functions, goals, and following entirely different standards.
‘The Axiology Project of the Lvov-Warsaw School’ by Anna Drabarek is concerned with the discussion of values by Twardowski, Witwicki, Kotarbiński, Czeżowski, Władysław Tatarkiewicz, and Karol Frenkel. Drabarek claims that they developed an interesting and inspiring axiology project , being a creative development of the postulate of ethics as a science, and emphasising the importance of facts in the substantiation of norms. Drabarek points out that the axiology project of the Lvov-Warsaw School, contrary to David Hume’s paradigm, removes the chasm between facts and values.
Firstly, Drabarek claims that an attempt at showing the need for a constant confrontation of facts and values becomes the most important challenge for morality. This project also had a pragmatic objective, as it was one of the ways of restoring the meaning of life to the Polish nation which, after 120 years of slavery, was only beginning to rebuild its identity. It could therefore be called a kind of therapy through meaning, emphasising the ability to shape man’s existence based on the values of truth and good.
Secondly, Drabarek considers the problem of objectivism in the understanding of good found in the philosophy of Tatarkiewicz and Czeżowski. Good is considered an absolute value, one that is unqualified and objective. It may be defined as a property of things, or seen as a way in which things exist. Good can be known intuitively, but intuition is understood as an autonomous kind of knowledge, or a certain experience which may be improved.
Drabarek then goes on to analyse the category of act found in the philosophy of Twardowski, Witwicki, Frenkel, and Kotarbiński. Every rule of a just act must contain an empirical element and be based on an inductive juxtaposition of individual instances of just acts or individual rules. Despite the absolute nature of good, rules are always relative. When judging an act, one should take into account the person’s character, or the permanent direction of their will, and through introspection we can understand and judge the dynamics of human action.
Finally, Drabarek presents the category of happiness found in the philosophy of Twardowski, Tatarkiewicz, Kotarbiński, and Czeżowski. Drabarek discusses the personal role model of a reliable guardian, or an honest man who comes to the aid of all those who need help. Moreover, Drabarek points out the heroism which results from a specific treatment of values in the process of moral improvement.
In the paper ‘Interpersonal and Intertextual Relations in the Lvov-Warsaw School’, Anna Brożek starts with the premise that two kinds of relations are essential to any philosophical school. Firstly, there are interpersonal relations between its members, including those between teachers and students. Secondly, there are intertextual relations between elements of the school’s output, namely between problems, conceptual schemes, methods, or theories accepted by its various representatives.
The chapter consists of two parts. In the first part, the conceptual scheme for the analysis of various types of interpersonal and intertextual relations is provided. The author claims that contacts between philosophers (oral or written, unilateral or bilateral) are a necessary, but not a sufficient element of one philosopher’s influence on another. Influence takes place if contacts between philosophers result in some actions either of them takes, or convictions they embrace. Such influence may be positive or negative. Moreover, one may be more or less aware of being influenced by someone else.
The second part of the chapter provides some examples of interpersonal and intertextual relations within the Lvov-Warsaw School, particularly as regards contacts between Twardowski, the School’s founder, and his direct students. Further on, some examples of Twardowski’s influence on the first generation of the Lvov-Warsaw School are provided, and the way his influence was revealed is described. In addition, important characterological and theoretical differences between Twardowski’s students are discussed.
In the conclusion, a hypothesis is proposed that the characteristic nature of interpersonal and intertextual relations within the Lvov-Warsaw School were caused by Twardowski’s methodology and his interdisciplinary approach to philosophical problems.
The second part of this volume, devoted to psychology, begins with a text by Stepan Ivanyk on ‘The Relationship Between Judgments and Perceptions from the Point of View of Twardowski’s School’. Ivanyk emphasises that ‘judgment’ and ‘perception’ were undoubtedly two of the most important terms used in psychological and ...