Inedita, t. 2: Metaphysics and Epistemology

The volume contains previously unpublished works by Kazimierz Twardowski in ontology, epistemology, and axiology, and more narrowly – ethics. These are mainly the manuscripts of his course lectures, which he delivered in the years 1897-1929 at the University of Lvov – supplemented with some texts of individual lectures.

In these lectures, Twardowski presented and analyzed in detail the most important philosophical controversies: in the field of ontology (monism - dualism – pluralism, materialism – spiritualism, realism – idealism – solipsism, etc.), in the field of epistemology (agnosticism – skepticism – dogmatism, rationalism – empiricism – irrationalism , subjectivism – objectivism, relativism – absolutism, etc.) and from the borderline of metaphysics and axiology (e.g. determinism – indeterminism). He devoted special attention to the issue of the existence of the world and the psychophysical problem.

At the same time, he conducted a semantic analysis of the key concepts involved in these disputes – e.g. the concepts of substance and accident, living creature and thing, being and existence, time and space, cause and effect, perception and experience, object and its appearance, saying and judgment, hypothesis and thesis, truth and falsehood (of judgments), rightness and wrongness (of behaviour) and different types of reasoning.

He also clarified the key methodological postulates for the Lvov-Warsaw School: the postulate of proper justification of scientific judgments, the postulate of strictness in expressing them, and the postulate of critical respect for philosophical tradition.

The works contained in the volume are a testimony to the fact, contrary to the popular opinion about the contributing nature of Twardowski’s scientific achievements, that he had a deeply thought-out view of philosophy taken as a whole and an excellent “understanding” orientation in its history.