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The article mainly discusses Edward Dembowski's philosophy of creation in connection with his Hegelian influences, leftist associations and the ongoing discussion in nineteenth century romantic polish philosophy. The nineteenth century, with its German Idealism and French tendency to act in the name of social rights, had introduced new ideas to work with during harsh historical times. Dembowski, amongst other Poles, was the closest to constructing a coherent metaphysical system for the philosophy of creation (filozofia twórczości). In the paper, I try to show a part of his intellectual evolution, stretching from defining philosophy as knowledge itself in the form of a Hegelian system, through his critique of Hegel's and Cieszkowski's systems, up to his own established system – the philosophy of creation and its social connections. I also speculate about which of his philosophical ideas can remain relevant today.

The starting point of our considerations is the two books published in 2010: “Ill Fares the Land” by the late Tony Judt and “Not for Profit” by Martha Nussbaum. The authors of both books share the conviction that neoliberal changes in the world of global capitalism radically impoverish culture and their consequences may be dramatic and irreversible. In our paper we would like to emphasize the dangers to solidarity and social cohesion posed by neoliberal postulates. We also claim that promoting the neoliberal ideology in the context of higher education and institutions of civic society endangers the very democracy understood as reasonable pluralism (in John Rawls’ terminology), consisting in rationality, plurality of opinions, lifestyles and conceptions of good, as well as consensus as the aim of social and political practices.

In the paper, the essential elements of Kotarbiński’s independent ethics are presented. These are ethics which are one example of ethics in the broader sense, with a range of problems related to the question: how should we live our lives? Kotarbiński proposed an idea of independent ethics, ethics that are independent of religion and philosophy, ethics based on “platitude (obviousness) of heart”. In the paper, some shortcomings of this proposal will be shown, but also, by analysis of the parable of the Good Samaritan, it will be shown how we can overcome the weaknesses of independent ethic theory.

According to the tradition of most empiricists, perception is the basis for all our knowledge (at least of the world). The tradition also assumes that perception by humans is a passive activity resulting in some static states pertaining perception and belief, which are then, in some versions, modified by the mind before being passed onto memory and knowledge. Following the work of J. J. Gibson, we argue that perceiving involves many activities and actions. This is true of both visual as well as olfactory-taste perception. The main moral of this paper is that perceiving and knowing are best thought of not as involving static states, but rather as ongoing temporal activities involving change. This presumably means giving up a frozen ontology of states and moving towards something like a dynamic ontology as a basis.

International audience; What is left of this initial project once Kotarbiński's textbook became obsolete-as Kotarbiński himself claims, perhaps too modestly, in the preface of its second edition, in 1959-and also given the strong criticism of reism, particularly by Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz [1966]? My answer is that the philosophical project of reism then became a methodological framework for intellectual work in general, and in particular for humanistic studies, or what we today call the Human and Social Sciences.

The aim of the paper is the presentation of the main reasons of Tadeusz Kotarbiński’s atheism and an interpretation of his position in terms of the conceptual apparatus used in contemporary philosophical debate on atheism. William Rowe distinguished three types of atheism: friendly atheism, indifferent atheism and unfriendly atheism, a divide widely accepted in contemporary debates. It seems that Kotarbiński’s position is a form of unfriendly atheism. However, the final conclusion will be that William Rowe’s conceptual apparatus is not a satisfying tool for an evaluation and interpretation of Tadeusz Kotarbiński’s views.