A
Brief Overview of Lublin Thomism
The Lublin School of Christian Philosophy
by Professor Piotr Jaroszynski
Doctor
Habilitatus of the Catholic University of Lublin,
"Lublin
Thomism" was born at the Catholic University of Lublin
after the Second World War when Poland lost her independence.
Stalin installed a puppet government that implemented the
agenda and served the interests of the Russian Communists.
However, Poland had been traditionaly a very Catholic country
and the Catholic Church was still very strong. The opposition
towards communism was based upon our identification with the
catholicism. Even though we Poles had lost much of our property
and independence on the economic or political level, our spirit
was free, and we still pursued and recognized the truth. It
happened that the Catholic University of Lublin was the only
private university over the iron curtain; all other universities
were subject to the Marxist ideology. Both the Germans and
the Russians tried to eliminate the entire Polish intelligentsia,
in incidents such as the massacre of Polish officers by the
Russians in Katyn. Some very young professors, who survived
the war, like J.Kalinowski, M.A. Krapiec, S.Swiezawski, S.Kaminski,
M.Kurdzialek, and later K.Wojtyla (later Pope John Paul II),
came to conclusion that they must demonstrate the errors in
the marxist conception of man. A wrong conception of man leads
to totalitarianism. Their task was not merely to show the
errors in a marxist philosophy of man, but to discover and
show the true image of man. This was a philosophical task,
but also had far-reaching political consequences. This is
how ”Lublin Thomism” emerged.
The Department of Philosophy was opened at the Catholic University
of Lublin in 1946. The professors and students there have
studied and written works in almost all the fields of philosophy:
metaphysics, philosophy of man, philosophy of religion, philosophy
of law, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of art and beauty,
philosophy of culture, methodology of philosophy etc. Most
of the work was done by Father Mieczyslaw Albert Krapiec and
his pupils. We try to follow the path of classical realistic
philosophy. In our approach, the understanding of being as
existing lies at the bottom of all philosophical investigation.
The approach of Saint Thomas Aquinas provides a reliable guide
in our investigations. While the writings of Saint Thomas
himself provide us with a fresh and direct philosophical approach
to the major questions of philosophy, the same cannot be said
about the tradition that grew from his works. We must distinguish
between the actual thought of Saint Thomas as found in his
works, and "Thomism", which is the collective works
of many generations of scholars who have commented upon the
thought of Saint Thomas. Unfortunately, much of traditional
Thomism has distorted the thought of Saint Thomas in the area
of philosophy. Saint Thomas presents a philosophy based on
existence, which we may call "existentialism" (but
we must avoid any confusion with the philosophy of Jean-Paul
Sartre in this regard). Much of what is called Thomism is
a kind of essentialism. Essentialism lays the stress upon
concepts rather than real existence, and takes its starting
point in logic rather than in existence.
The phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and his disciples is well-known
in Poland, where many notable philosophers are in one way
or another disciples of Husserl. Perhaps the best known of
the Polish phenomenologists is Roman Ingarden, but there are
many others. The Lublin Thomists are well acquainted with
phenomenology, and draw upon their insights and methods, but
we should not exaggerate the influence of pheneomology upon
„lublin thomism”. We think that phenomenology
is useful on the level of description, but phenomenology is
not a proper starting point for metaphysics. Metaphysics is
the first philosophical discipline, and all other branches
of philosophy are simply applied metaphysics. Metaphysics
is the philosophy of being, and it is essential that the metaphysician
should grasp being as existing. Being is grasped in existential
judgements, which cannot be reduced to descritions or concepts.
However, if the metaphysician adopts the phenomenological
"epoche" as his principle method, he becomes an
idealist. Since "epoche" is the "bracketing
of existence", that is, leaving the problem of existence
to the side in order to concentrate on neutral description,
the philosopher who makes "epoche" his starting
point lapses into idealism.
The essentialist approach which infected much of Thomism came
from the wrong application of some of Aristotle's works. We
find a theory of scientific knowledge in Aristotle's "Posterior
Analytics", but this particular theory does not belong
to metaphysics, nor did Aristotle or Thomas apply it to metaphysics.
It is not hard to discover why. This theory of science was
proper rather to the particular sciences, especially mathematics
and geometry. In such areas we use univocal terms, which can
be defined according to proximate genus and specific difference.
They fit perfectly as subjects and predicates to syllogistic
reasonings. Metaphysicals terms are, by way of contrast, neither
univocal nor strictly limited in their range of denotation
and thus cannot be strictly defined. To apply them in syllogistics
would be an error.
Metaphysics has its own distinctive object and method. We
can discern two distinct phases in the development of metaphysical
knowledge. The first phase is the formation of the transcendentals.
This involves the „clarification” of the concept
of being. In the second phase, we peer into the very structure
of being in the light of the concept of being and of other
transcendentals as well as of the first principles of being.
Here we see the major role played by the process of „rendering
free of contradiction”. Instead of definition, we have
„clarification”, instead of a syllogism, we have
„rendering free of contradiction”.
The method by which we graspo being as existing is called
„separation”. This method is neutral, there is
no „a priori” possible, for any „a priori”
appears on the level of content (an essence), not on the level
of existence which is grasped immediately, without any media,
since existence is not an essence, and cannot be mediated
as for ex. a color or a form.
Moral relativism, so predominant in contemporary culture,
has its main source in Kantian philosophy. Immanuel Kant introduced
to philosophy and to ethics a theory of value, which later
on was developed by different neokantian schools, and finally
found its place in almost every area of culture. However,
the main difference between the value and the good is that
the good is a property of being (therefore, good is real!),
whereas value was introduced in opposition to being (a correlate
of „Sollen” as opposed to „Sein”).
The value is not real, since it is not a property of being,
and this leads to idealism and the relativisation of morality.
Ethics cannot be separated from the philosophical anthropology,
since it is a man who takes decisions, which are good or bad
for man. If so, we must know what and who man is. It is absurd
to talk about ethics without philosophical anthropology.
The most important for philosophical anthropology is to discover
the inner and outer facts characteristic for man. Then, these
facts must be interpreted in a philosophical way, i.e. rendered
free of contradiction. Some of the external facts are that
fact that man lives in societies, that he produces tools,
and uses language. The inner facts include various individual
experiences on the physiological, psychic and spiritual level.
These facts are apparent only to the subject who experiences
them. The subject of experience sees that his individual experiences
have the same source. It is the same I, which fulfills different
acts: I breathe, I am sad, I think. As Father Krapiec noticed
in his brilliant book „I-Man”: to render these
facts free of contradiction we need to turn to the theory
of the soul which is an act of a body.
There are two aspects of the theory of person. From the historical
point of view neither the Greeks, nor the Romans had a developed
understanding of man as a person. A man was conceived as a
soul. The situation changed in the Christian perspective,
when every man was respected as created as an image of God;
this word „image” was a key, since it corresponded
to Greek term „prosopon” and latin word „persona”.
From the philosophical point of view this Christian message,
as in the case of the discovery of existence, provided a much
better explanation for the essential unity of the human being,
i.e. composed of body (potency) and soul (act), where a soul
of man is a subject for existence and for different acts.
Karol Wojtyla, now Pope John Paul II, was the author of "The
Acting Person". The importance of his reflections in
this book seem to lie in his detailed analysis of the human
decision as the main source fo human moral responsibility.
Philosophy develops in a different way than mathematics or
physics. It is a distinct branch of culture. Mathematicians
and physicists do not need to study the past, and each new
discovery redefines the field of knowledge. In philosophy,
the past always remains important. The methods used in philosophy
do not depend upon technological development as in particular
sciences. Philosophy has a different object of study(being)
and studies its object under a different aspect (qua being).
On the other hand, philosophy is the most difficult science
to understand and it is good to know the history of philosophy
from the very begining, in order to avoid errors when past
philosophers have already found proper solutions.
Is
metaphysics dead? Is metaphysics irrelevant in a culture which
values the constant and incremental progress of the natural
sciences and technology? The death of metaphysics would be
the death of man as a rational being, since metaphysics poses
rational questions which have perennial value for man. I think
that those who speak about the „death of metaphysics”
simply do not understand what metaphysics is, probably they
think about the ontology of Christian Wolff. But here again
we see how important is knowledge ot the history of philosophy,
without which it is easy to be in a state called by Aristotle
„apaideusia” (lack of education). Aristotle began
his work, the "Metaphysics", with a review of the
various views of other philosophers. When we read this review,
we find that the same views recur throughout history and in
our time as well.
How do we see the role of epistemology? Epistemology is various
known as the theory of knowledge, criteriology, or gnoseology.
Much of modern philosophy puts epistemology in the place of
metaphysics. The problem of epistemology taking the place
of metaphysics has its source in Cartesian philosophy, the
philosophy of René Descartes and his followers. However,
Descartes only knew scholastic philosphy as seen thorugh the
eyes of Suarez, who followed the path of Duns Scotus. Descartes
did not know Thomas Aquinas as an original thinker. After
the methodic scepticism was done, it was impossible to return
to the real world, since "a posse ad esse non valet illatio"(there
is no valid inference from what can be to what is). Without
a real being there is no more place for metaphysics. One can
substitute it be epistemology or ontology, both leading to
nihilism.
Epistemology did not exist as an independent branch of philosophy
in ancient and medieval times, because realistic epistemology
(and not quasi-metaphysics) is a branch of philosophical anthropology.
It is a man (a person) and not an impersonal consciousness
who cognizes being. To develop realistic epistemology we must
first know what is being and what man is.
________________________________________
The
Foundation for the Lublin School of Christian Philosophy
The Foundation
for the Lublin School of Christian Philosophy was established
in June 1992. The members of the Foundation's governing board
are Prof.dr hab. Piotr Jaroszynski (president), Dr Krzysztof
Wroczynski (secretary), Henryk Dyrda. The Foundation was established
at a ceremony in Promnice near Katowice in conujnction with
the promotion of the works of the Lublin School. The event,
which was attended by distinguished representatives of Polsih
science, culture and politics, included an exhibition of the
published works of the philosophers of the Catholic University
of Lublin.
President
of the Foundation
Prof. Piotr Jaroszynski
The purpose
of the Foundation is to rebuild and foster learning and culture,
based on Christian culture, the common heritage of Europe,
in the context of the realistic approach to philosophy, whose
roots reach back to antiquity, and also to assist in the development
and promulgation of the works of the Lublin School. The founders
of the Foundation share a deep conviction that the renewal
of the Polish nation in its various aspects must take place
through the renewal of culture.
The Aims of the Foundation
To function as an autonomous institution of higher education,
a university needs both a specific legal charter and adequate
financial resources. Although the Catholic University of Lublin
enjoys full legal autonomy today, it is still a long way from
achieving full financial autonomy. The severe financial constraints
under which the University must operate, though understandable
given the current economic situation in Poland, make it extremely
difficult for the University to support such activities as
the publications of books and periodicals, the presentations
of lecture series, the participation of professors in conferences
in Poland and abroad, and the provision of stipends and scholarships
for promising young scholars and students. Without such activities,
the intellectual development of the young will surely suffer
and the great potential of the Lublin School will be wasted.
Such a tragedy, from the point of view of the welfare of Polish
culture, would be unforgivable. The Foundation fort the Lublin
School exists precisely to prevent this from happening. The
Foundation is counting on the understanding and generosity
of people who hold in their hearts a concern for future generations,
for the fate of Poland rests in their hands.
The Foundation for the Lublin School of Christian
Philosophy.
Headquarters:
John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin
Katedra Filozofii Kultury (Department of the Philosophy of
Culture)
al.Raclawickie 14,
20-950 Lublin, Poland,
tel. (81) 445 43 85
e-mail:
fundacja@fundacja.hg.pl
Bank Account
No:
Powszechny Bank Kredytowy in Warsaw, (Poland) IX Oddzial,
PL 96 1060 0076 0000 4010 4011 71 69 BPH KPLPK
Help
the Foundation today; meet enlightened people tomorrow!
…………………………………………………………………………..
 Ethics:
The Drama of The Moral Life
"Either ethics must be restored to school curricula or
realistic hope of restoring morality must be abandoned until
that happens."
by Prof. Piotr Jaroszynski
"Ethics
has as its basic premise the idea that morality is permanently
and essentially inscribed in human life and that each person
constantly faces moments of decision. There is danger in our
being subject to the pressures of different ideologies and
customs, but when we know the foundations of ethics, we become
more sensitive to moral issues and the moral implications
of our decisions."
Matt Anderson's and Prof. Piotr Jaroszynski's book THE DRAMA
OF ETHICS is a book you will read and share. Ethics is the
art and science of living well. Ethics gives us tools for
finding the purpose of life, and applying it in action. It
is the ultimate know-how. All other kinds of know-how are
for small groups of people. The dentist knows how to use his
drills, the policeman knows how to use his gun, the lawyer
knows how to make a case stronger or weaker. Ethics is different.
Every single one of us must develop the skill to live a good
an upright life. We must have the intellectual tools to reason
our way through moral dilemnas, instead of relying always
on others to tell
us what is right or wrong.The authors show how true ethics
is not based on some abstract and distant set of ideas, but
it must be rooted in reality. Everything we do has a purpose,
and ethics helps us find the ultimate purpose as our guide.
Sometimes
in our society we are so enchanted by the technical sweetness
of what we are doing, we forget the moral implications of
our actions. The authors follow the lines of the Lublin School
of Philosophy, which strongly teaches that the good and happiness
of real human beings is more important than any technological,
economic, or political goals. The present Pope, John Paul
II, was a teacher at the Catholic University of Lublin, and
strongly influenced the shape of this philosophy. The authors
are also deeply rooted in more than two thousand years of
philosophical tradition, but they also have the gift of presenting
the best of this tradition in a way that everyone can understand.
The authors
discuss sex, politics, and religion. They treat these matters
with great care and diligence. They do not focus on what is
in the news today, because that will be forgotten, but deal
with general principles of public morality, war and peace,
and the role of religion in public life. This book will still
be timely and fresh centuries from now. The book presents
the lost teaching of the four cardinal virtues: prudence,
justice, fortitude, and temperance. These are the habits of
a man or woman who knows how to be effective in living well
and doing what is right. They teach us about the virtues using
many examples from history and literature. At a time when
so many people say that values are relative, the four cardinal
virtues are found in all cultures and societies as ideals
of what it means to be good. This book may be read in a couple
of afternoons, but it is also well suited as a teaching tool.
There are study questions following each chapter. An earlier
version of this book was approved for use in the high schools
of Poland where it has gone through several editions. This
version is very well suited to the needs of American educators.
It is very concise and easy to read for people of all ages,
but the seasoned philosopher will also find much food for
thought. It is specially recommended for use in schools, and
for parents who would like to take an active part in teaching
their children what they need to know.
Click
to Order: ETHICS: The Drama of the Moral Life
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