Józef Czapski: ciało – osoba – twarz

This article is dedicated to analysis of Józef Czapski’s different carnality aspects in his works and personal documents (letters, diary memos). Czapski was a painter, painting theoretician as well essayist and diarist. In every discipline mentioned the most important factor was personal experience – contact with nature, feeling of world carnality. The article shows (basing on works referring to the period of war) how Czapski expressed his attitude to his and others suffering. From the letters and personal memos excavated fragments illustrating the process of growing old – hidden but affecting 50 years old Czapski (he died when 97) The last part is dedicated to Czapski’s blindness and the way he was able to save the dignity of the human who’s body is in the process of irreparable destruction (blindness, dementia).

Matematyczne ciało. Wprowadzenie do teorii matematyki ucieleśnionej

Mathematics as a field of knowledge and culture presents researchers with many problems, also of a philosophical nature. One of the issues worth considering when considering the nature of mathematics is the theory of embodied mathematics, which links abstract mathematical thinking with the functioning of the human body in its purely physical dimension. This theory, on the one hand, uncovers new information about the yet unknown neural correlates of mathematics, and on the other hand, it poses important philosophical and cultural questions about the place of mathematics and its role in discovering the rules of reality.

Ciało i cielesność – ku doświadcze(a)niu egzystencjalnemu

When Emmanuel Lévinas was reflecting on the I-You relationship, he intentionally omitted the conjunction “and” to emphasise their distinctiveness and the fact that they cannot be reduced to each other. For Lévinas, the use of the conjunction “and” would indicate reciprocation – I just like You and interchangeability – I being You. However, it would also indicate such type of relationship that would be précised in the mutual dependencies – I exist thanks to You and You exist thanks to I. This could not be accepted by Lévinas, because he assumed that only I can exist due to You. Why, then, does the title of the paper contain the conjunction “and” between the body and corporeality? I assume that body and corporeality are in a relationship based on reciprocation – interdependence that is both the source (arche) and the warp of the existential experience/experiencing – what we are while becoming.

Krzątanina Brach-Czainy – myślenie ciałem. Między metaforą a wiedzą

The article presents problems with the interpretation of the category of everyday life in the essays by Jolanta Brach-Czaina.The „krzątactwo” metaphor changes thinking about the reality around us. The „krzątctwo” as a form of being in the world combines corporeality with reflection, challenging strong boundaries between disciplines.

Ciało, gest, literatura

As Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote, the experience of the body, the somatic experience and the gesture as an act of expression bring into being both the sense of things that are being interacted with and the sense of existence of which the body is a vehicle. If so, then the verbal expression, creativity, literature – apart from the fact that it is (most often) a representation of things (and thoughts) that are already anchored in culture and create its universe – can be an individual event of a similar nature and course: becoming, creating, bringing out the subject-body in writing and in what’s being written. The works of Stanisław Czycz serve as an example of such literature-gesture. They have specific characteristics of autobiographical and autocreational writing, and also take up the problem of experiencing the body and corporeality. However, they are analyzed here as autoteleological work – as a gesture of a body that is being created and a body that is creating its own sense.

Cielesność w obrębie dramatu ludzkiego istnienia

One of the authors to include the issue of the human body in the discourse of philosophical anthropology was Helmuth Plessner, who perceived it as: 1) a physical (Körper), 2) and a biological object (Leib), as well as 3) a substrate of the subject that refers to the previous two. Plessner argued that man’s attitude to his own corporeality creates a space to manifest human “eccentricity.” In Tischner’s conception, however, “eccentricity” gains a new and more dramatic dimension. Unlike the “eccentricity” perceived as a biological, ethological and ontic phenomenon, Tischner’s corporeality becomes an indispensable constituent within the arena of human drama, both internal and external. As part of the arena, corporeality is a component within the man as the subject of drama, while externally, it reveals its other meaning since it often determines purely ontic frames of human existence. Man refers to various meanings of his corporeality. While some remain within the scope of existential and dramatic valorisation – both positive (egotistic solidarisation) and negative (egotistic desolidarisation) – others expand beyond this horizon.

Kulturoznawcze badanie intertekstualnych gier z kanonem. Propozycje teoretyczno-metodologiczne

The role the canon plays in culture will be discussed in the paper. The canon can be seen as one of the most important media of cultural memory, a kind of cultural grammar or a vital semantic resource which influences a huge amount of new texts. This sort of textual variations on the canon may be considered secondary cultural mnemotechniques; in the same way intertextuality may be interpreted as a tool of active remembering. From the perspective of the semiotics of culture the above-mentioned canon-based hypertexts serve not only as memory-devices but as examples of cultural autocommunication as well. While religion as one of the most crucial „cultural systems” (Geertz) influences a lot of other subsystems of the semiosphere (Lotman), intertextual relations to the canon of religious texts vitalize the hypotext and create the whole set of new meanings, strengthening semiosis and dynamizing culture at the same time.

Możliwość religii w obliczu współczesnego pluralizmu

Nowadays, very often in connection with postmodern philosophy, there appears a question of a normative call for pluralism. The argumentation made by postmodernists focuses mostly on the notions of violence and of metaphysics which, according to them, is a theoretical ground for violence. In the following paper we will try to present the possibile justification of this normative call, the reception of this call on Polish and international grounds, and also we will try to present how, in the face of this call, religion can function. To do this we will show concepts of religion; the first concept by Janusz Salamon (not connected to postmodernism) and the second by Gianni Vattimo (strictly postmodern).

Filozofia arabska, islamska czy muzułmańska? Kilka uwag terminologicznych

There is no agreement among the students of the works of Al-Fārābī, Avicenna and Averroes on how their philosophy should be named. The following terms are most frequently used: Muslim philosophy, Arab philosophy, and Islamic philosophy. A closer look at the arguments of the supporters of each of these choices shows that the reason for those terminological discrepancies depends on the postulated relation between religion and philosophy, or more broadly, between religion and science. We emphasize either the ethnic aspect (Arab) or the dominant culture-forming factor (Islam) depending on the terminology chosen. This article aims to present and analyze the arguments of the supporters of each of the terms. The author focuses on philosophers living in the Middle Ages. The question of which of the aforementioned terms best represents the phenomenon in focus will be seen when we study those terms by putting them together in two pairs: the first, Arab philosophy – Muslim philosophy, and the second, Muslim philosophy – Islamic philosophy.

Udawanie i zabawa jako formy zaangażowanie religijnego

Pretense and play are present in a variety of religious traditions. They are used in religious thinking about the world as well as in ritual behavior. As a form of simulation, pretense and play are more than cultural forms because they occur in human and animal behavior. Simulation is based on complex cognitive and communicative processes and requires metacognitive and metacommunicative abilities. In religious practice, pretense and play tend to turn into serious and “authentic” behavior accompanied by the sense of reality characteristic for religious experience. It seems that the ability to cross the frames of pretense and play towards seriousness and authenticity is part of the logic of simulation. Categories of pretense and play can be used to explain the dynamic character of religious faith. The latter can be understood as shifting between two modes of experience: the reality mode (the world seen as “it is”) and the simulation mode (the world of “as if”).