Jacek Juliusz Jadacki
The only way for the future scientific philosophy is to forget for the present about the previous philosophy and to start quite anew. -- Jan Lukasiewicz
Professor Peter Simons's book tries to combat this British picture of modern European philosophy, according to which it has two disjunct currents: analytic and continental, i.e. non-analytic. In fact, there is a part of this philosophy, which, being continental, is not non-analytic, but, on the contrary, substantially analytic. It is just Central European philosophy, containing the Austrian roots and its three main branches: Czech, German, and Polish. For Polish reader the author hopes i.a. to help exposing this Austrian roots of modern Polish philosophy.
Professor Simons sees in Polish contribution to Central European philosophy "the only development, deriving historically from Bolzano [Czech-Austrian] and Brentano [German-Austrian], which fully maintained the original Austrian virtues (and added some of its own)"[5].
Professor Simons is a British-born but a time ago "nationalized" as Salzburgian, hence it may be understood that he reads the roots of particular branches of Central European philosophy into Austria. Warsawians have a little different perspective. Modern Polish analytic philosophy is, of course, deep-rooted in Austrian glebe. The interesting symptom of this state of affairs is, i.a., the following liguistic fact. Foreign surnames with the suffix "-o" have in Polish the genetive suffix "-a" (e.g., "Leoncavallo" - "Leoncavalla"), whereas Polish surnames have either "-i" (e.g. "Moniuszko" - "Moniuszki") or "-y" (e.g. "Szeluto" - "Szeluty"). The surnames of Bolzano and Brentano are notoriously declined by Polish philosophers according Polish paradigme: "Bolzany" instead of regular "Bolzana", and "Brentany" instead of regular "Brentana"! ,
Speaking about linguistic facts, the reader of Professor Simons's book (even not being English) is enchanted of its style, with fine, far from the orthodox analytic dryness, and with a little "baroque" vocabulary and phraseology.
But to return to the problem of roots, this is worth saying that Poland has, first of all, his own tradition in analytic philosophy (cf. e.g. my paper "On the sources of contemporary Polish logic", "Dialectics and Humanism'", 1980, no 4). Professor Simons is right, stressing "that Polish philosophy combines aspects of both [ends of the Anglo-Austrian axis] with a DASH [stress of mine, JJJ] of its own" 157]. It may be engaging for British philosophical public that one of the gratest exponent of this tradition at the first half of XIXth century - Aniol Dowgird - referred i.a. directly to the Scotish philosopher Thomas Reid. Micha/l Wiszniewski, professor of Jagiellonian University in the middle of XIXth century, was the author of the critical analysis of sir Francis Bacon's Novum organum (NB. One of Wiszniewski's main works was published in English in London.) It might be of use, if we generally emphasize these immediate Polish-British filiations. The close predecessor of Kazimierz Twardowski in the Lvov University, Aleksander Raciborski, the minute inquirer of John Stuart Mill's A system of logic. Leon Chwistek, philosopher and logician, contemporaneous with the second generation of Twardowski's pupils, carried on a scholar correspondence with Bertrand Russell (cf. my paper "Leon Chwistek - Bertrand Russell scientific correspondence", Dialectics and Humanism, 1986). Etc., etc.(cf. my items concerning Dowgird, Wiszniewski, Raciborski, Chwistek and other Polish philosophers in Encyclopedie philosophique universelle. III: "Les oevres philosophiques", Paris, 1992). The equally symptomatic fact is that David Hume's "An enquiry concerning human understanding" was translated into Polish (in 1905) by Twardowski and Jan Lukasiewicz.
It is very satisfactory trend that from the middle of our century (ideo)logical impulses have begun to run firmlier also back to the English terminal of Anglo-Polish axis, lately with the profound participation of Professor Simons.
I intend to limit myself below to enumeration of some
complementary cautionary notes on his brilliant considerations.
I hope it is admissible in the case of the reviewer who sets on
reviewed work as high value as I do.
2. LVOV-WARSAW SCHOOL
That's my detail commentary to Professor Simons's picture of the School and to his descritpion of its representatives.
1. Professor Simons claim that "the whole Warsaw School [...] adopted the standpoint [...] that being true or false is something distinct from denoting this or that individual or any semantic role presupposing denoting" [25]. In my opinion, at least Lukasiewicz (and at least in early period of his activity) was the adherent of the Fregean view in this matter.
2. It is worth while to say in connection with Professor Simons's analysis of the Brentanian reduction of every proposition to existential one [43-45], that this problem has been broadly disussed also in the Lvov-Warsaw School from the early part of our century. The School - and namely Marian Borowski - developped also its own theory of objects in Meinongian style.
3. The translation of Rudolf Lotze's "Metaphysik", made in 1910 by Adam St!o1gbauer, one of Twardowski's pupils, shows a concern of the School with the thought of this German philosopher [153].
4. I am ready to believe that the School did not take en gros
English side in the controversy about the "spirit" of the Anglo-Austrian
analytic axis [155]. The School opinion of Aristotle and scholastic
philosophy lies near the Brentanian (favorable) position. Twardowski, e.g.,
states directly that "Greek philosophers dowered almost the whole posterior
European philosophy with the mental matter" (cf. "Greka i lacina a
filozofia", Filomata, 1933, no 50); in the Middle Ages he finds
periods of "exuberant deveopment of philosophical thought" (cf.O
filozofii sredniowiecznej, Lwow-Warszawa, 1910). On Lukasiewicz' s
philosophical inheritance we can say simplifying that it closes between
Aristotle (cf. On the principle of contradiction in Aristotle, Krakow,
1910) and ... Aristotle (cf. Aristotle's syllogistic from the standpoint
of modern formal logic, Oxford, 1951).
3. KAZIMIERZ TWARDOWSKI
1. I cannot agree with Professor Simons's constatation that Twardowski after his appearance in Lvov "set about organizing Polish philosophical life" [9]. Certainly, he gave a new impulse, but the organizational structures of this life had existed in Poland from the foundation of Cracow University (in 1364) till now - in spite of political catastrophes of the state such as the partitions of the country in the end of XVIIIth century or the Nazi and Bolshevik occupations in the middle of our century.
2. The odds are that Twardowski do explicitly allude to the incompleteness of general objects [197]. In the paper "Wyobrazenia i pojecia" he writes that general images are sketchy [ogolnikowe], i.e. "they stress some [scil. individual] features of an imagined object more distinctly, and others - less distinctly", whereas "general concepts are free from individual features" (cf. Wybrane pisma filozoficzne, Warszawa, 1965). According to Twardowski "objects presented in general concepts as such do not exist at all", and e.g. "the object of the general concept of triangle has only [common features, i.e.] such features, which are discovered in all concrete triangles" (ibidem; cf. also my papers "The metaphysical basis of Kazimierz Twardowski's descriptive semiotics", in: J. Pasniczek, ed., Theories of objects: Meinong and Twardowski, Lublin, 1922, and "Kazimierz Twardowski's descriptive semiotics", Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, 1992, vol. 27).
3. Professor Simons is right in his opinion that
Twardowski was "the most influential of all Polish
philosophers" [202], but it is true only in relation to the
first half of XXth century.
4. JAN LUKASIEWICZ
1. In the German summary of Lukasiewicz's work O zasadzie sprzecznosci u Arystotelesa his terminology is really "totally Meinongian" [196], but in the Polish original (Krakow, 1910) we read: "Facts [or objects of convictions] are labeled by Meinong "objectives". [...] I do not use in this work the term "objective" [but "proposition"], because "proposition" in my estimation is not synonymous with "objective". A proposition is an objective expressed in words or other signs".
2. Professor Simons reconstructs very accurately Lukasiewicz's way to non-Aristotelian logic. It may be well to add at least two little pieces. The first piece is the author's review of his lecture "O wartosciach logicznych" read on the 19th November, 1910, in Lvov (cf. below, Appendix, no 1). In the second lecture "Nowa teoria prawdopodobie0n1stwa" read on the 11th of December, 1912, also in Lvov, Lukasiewicz for the first time explicite identified "degree of probability of indefinite proposition [scil. of propositional function]" with "its logical value", which "can pendulate from 0 (false proposition) to 1 (true proposition) through fractions (probable proposition)" (cf. Ruch Filozoficzny, 1913, no 2). It was the announcement of his work Die logischen Grundlagen der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung (Krakow, 1913).
It is not out of place to mention in this context that controversy between Tadeusz Kotarbi/nski and Stanis/law Lesniewski - and with Lukasiewicz's participation - on logical values of propositions, held in 1912. The possibility appeared for them as the third value of propositions concerning the future, especially propositions on indetermined objects, i.e. subfactual objects in Meinongian sense [206].
3. There is reason in what Professor Simons say relative to the importance of the work Die logischen Grundlagen der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung in Lukasiewicz's intellectual development [198]. This fact is confirmed by Lukasiewicz himself, e.g. in one of his letters to Father Jozef Maria Bochenski (cf. below, Appendix, no 2).
4. Professor Simons admits he does not know whether Lukasiewicz visited Alexius Meinong in Graz during the period from 1902 to 1906 [202]. According to my informations he stayed at that time only in Berlin and Leuven.
5. The hypothesis about the lack of Meinong's direct influence on Lukasiewicz's logical conceptions [203] is partly reinforced by two letters to Father Bochenski (cf. below, Appendix, no 3 and 4). They show that problem of "migration of ideas" was of great moment for Lukasiewicz.
Editor's note. The above text is just a set of excerpts from the original J.J.Jadacki's contribution which was written on the request of MU Editor, but because of many logical formulas for technical reasons could not be fully reproduced. Nevertheless, it seemed advisable to publish at least this sample to show a method of discussion in which mastering of historical details assists conceptual analysis. The full text appeared in Axiomathes, ed. by Roberto Poli, No. 3, dicembre 1993.
File put on WWW server 17-02-96.