Research program and its realization

Father Professor Mieczysław A. Krąpiec had formulated a research program of metaphysics which came to be the fundament and intrinsic content for so established the Lublin School of Philosophy. The program consists of the following elements among other things:

  1. the object-oriented way of doing philosophy what means that philosophy is to be developed as the general metaphysics or as the particular metaphysics; it means the metaphysics (philosophy) has the really existing things as its proper subject;
  2. what should be specific to metaphysical consideration is a historicism which can secure the philosophy from repeating the same old mistakes once made and from coming back to the solutions that were wrong; at the same time the historicism can warrant the development of philosophical cognition;
  3. the consideration within any particular discipline of philosophy should be accompanied by the consciousness of its methodological autonomy what in turn means the need of investigation of the neutral methods of the general metaphysics and of the particular metaphysics too;
  4. one should pay attention to and admit the fact of an integral language in philosophy (in its semantic, syntactic and pragmatic aspect) and the specific kind of both the metaphysical cognition and the demonstration and justification;
  5. in proving the evidence of metaphysical claims you are to use the method of the objective explanation of the facts, events or processes taken into consideration that is to point out such real factors the negation of which would cause the negation of the fact you're trying to explain. This kind of explanation aims to reveal the basis of the "disengaging" the human cognition and thinking from the absurd and apriorism by pointing out the objective ratio (cause) of the existence of the fact taken into consideration;
  6. the objective explanation is to provide the realistic interpretation of the world and man with the proper philosophical tools and to reveal the foundations of the rationality of the human cognition and doings.

 

Researches

Researches in the field of the general metaphysics focus on the method of the realistic metaphysics, the system of metaphysics, the problems of substance, transcendentals, aim, the philosophical theory of the creation ex nihilo (A. Maryniarczyk, P. Gondek, T. Duma). On the ground of philosophical anthropology the labor concentrates on the quest of the fundaments of the transcendence of human being and the human appetitive and moral acting (B. Czupryn, A. Gudaniec, Z. Pańpuch). As far as the philosophy of law is concerned the labor focuses on the issues of the philosophical background for the law and human rights and the civilization conditions of a theory of law (K. Wroczyński, K. Stępień, P. Skrzydlewski).

 

Selected works and undertakings

In order to systematically deepen the problems of metaphysics in context of the contemporary ways of doing philosophy there is a scientific symposium "On Tasks of the Contemporary Metaphysics" ["Zadanie współczesnej metafizyki"] organized and held by the Chair regularly once a year (since 1998), during which the program of the Lublin School of Philosophy is being realized and the popularization of it in discussions with the other kinds of present-day philosophy is performed as well. The aftermath materials of the symposium are being edited by the Polish Thomas Aquinas Association.

 

The above-mentioned symposiums focused and dealt with such topics like:
  • Tasks of the contemporary metaphysics: cognition or establishing the senses? (11-12 December 1998)
  • Fides et ratio on its first anniversary: interpretations - overinterpretations - deformations (9-10 December 1999)
  • Person and the ways of its realization in culture (14th December 2000)
  • For the realism in philosophy (13th December 2001)
  • The "anthropological mistake" and its follow-ups to culture (12th December 2002)
  • Metaphysics in philosophy (11th December 2003)
  • Return to analogy in philosophy (10th December 2004)
  • Substance, nature, natural law (15th December 2005)
  • Soul - mind - body. A dispute over the unity of human being (14th December 2006)
  • A dispute over the aim. Problems of the goal and goal-oriented explanation (13th December 2007)

 

Translations and commentaries

As the part of the labor of the Chair of Metaphysics there was prepared and published by the KUL in 1996 a very unique in all Polish philosophical literature the trilingual edition of Aristotle's Metaphysics (text in Greek, Latin and Polish). There was also a similar work done with the selected papers of Saint Thomas Aquinas from his Quaestiones Disputatae De Veritate; the bilingual Latin and Polish edition of the text with commentaries and studies added was published by KUL in following issues: De Veritate - On Truth (1999), De Bono - On Good (2003), De Ideis - On Ideas (2004), De Passionibus - On Feelings (2008).