The main goal of this paper is to present the philosophical (i.e. attained by the light of natural reason) explanation of the marital relationship according to the Polish philosopher Karol Wojtyła. In our research, our attention was focused mainly on his book Love and Responsibility; the early philosophical work of a young, 37 year old Professor of Philosophy at the Catholic University in Lublin, Poland. In his writings, Karol Wojtyła – the future Pope John Paul II – presents marriage as a monogamous, indissoluble relationship between a man and a woman, which grows out of mutual love for the purpose of procreation. Such a relationship is ruled by the „personalistic norm” which says that a person can never, under any circumstances, be a mere object of enjoyment for another person, but can only be the object (co-object) of love. Love is a self-giving for the good of one’s counterpart, so Marriage as a personalistic unity persists as long as these persons are alive. Because love is fecund from its very essence, so it is fruitful from its nature. Thus, procreation belongs to the principle ends of marriage. Such an attitude – as K. Wojtyła proves – is opposed to the utilitarian point of view of man and Marriage. According to the utilitarian conception, a person can be used as a means for achieving the highest good, i.e., pleasure.

Philippa Foot’s book, Natural Goodness, involves a large project including a theory of natural goodness, a theory of the virtues, and a theory of practical rationality. Natural goodness is the foundation for the rest and is used to support a more or less traditional list of the virtues and a theory of reasons for action.Though Foot’s doctrine of natural goodness may provide an account of some sort of goodness, I argue that it is not adequate as a foundation for practical rationality or as a defense of more or less traditional virtues.

In order to lay the ground for the construction of a philosophy of culture the origin, meaning and some of the implications of the word „culture” are examined and discussed in light of a working definition of the anthropological concept of culture taken from C. Dawson. In Section II another concept of culture is examined, based on the idea of culture as human perfection. Then in Section III the concept of cultural levels is introduced, that is, the differing levels at which the central concept of a culture can be understood or embodied.

In the unlikely confluence of two colossal intellectual heritages, neo-Kantian Jurgen Habermas and Catholic prelate Joseph Ratzinger agree that wehave entered a postsecular age. For both, the inauguration of such an age entails skepticism towards absolutist science and a growing recognition of the contributions of spiritual worldviews to social solidarity. Following their call for a multi-faceted purification in the West whereby secular and religious commitments are subjected to mutual critique, I explore potential Eastern contributions to this process by providing a micro-analysis of the interaction of discursive subjects in three traditions: for Confucianism, the rectification of names; Taoism, truth disclosure; and Buddhism, right speech.

The well-known Ratio Studiorum of 1599 states that logical instruction should follow F. Toletus (Toledo) or P. Fonseca. The latter authored the famousInstitutionum Dialecticarum Libri Octo (1564), the former a similar manual, Introductio in Dialecticam Aristotelis (1561). As is often observed, the contrast between the Aristotelian and present symbolic logics is perhaps most striking in their analysis of relational statements. Both authors recognize the relational logical form as independent from the traditional subject-predicate form and see the need to recognize relational inferential rules. They differ in their specific rules, however, so neither of the authors has captured the system of relational syllogism in its entirety.

The aim of this article is to present the interplay between philosophy, religion and culture in China, to give a clear picture of philosophical, religious and cultural aspects of Chinese culture. What do we understand by Chinese culture? What is the role of Religion and Philosophy in Chinese Culture? The goal of this presentation is to present a deeper account of the philosophical, cultural and traditional differences and similarities between the Chinese and the Western World.What is the meaning of Chinese philosophical ideas? How do we understand and interpret Chinese thought? How do we build a bridge between East and West focused on cultural, philosophical and religious aspects? What has the West done for China and what has China done for West? Are we partners in inter-religious, cultural and philosophical dialogue?

Traditional Christianity holds that God is a singular way, not dependent on the conceptual machinations of humans. I argue that God can be plural ways,different in different human conceptual schemes, all the while holding to traditional Christianity. In short, I provide a framework for an ontological pluralism thatextends not just to the world being various ways but to God being various ways.

I analyse some of the key evolutionary issues that arise in the study of consciousness from a bio-philosophical point of view. They all seem to be related to the fact that phenomenality has a special status: it is a very complex feature, apparently more than biological, it is hard to define because of the plurality of its displays (cognition, various emotions, other complex functions such as vision) and it is difficult to study with classic evolutionary tools (such as philogenetics or paleoanthropology). Giving an answer to the question „is consciousness an adaptive trait?” thus seems to be very difficult and this paper intends to sketch some of the problems we should be concerned with when studying phenomenality as an adaptation.

The classical arguments against metaphysics provided by Immanuel Kant, neopositivists and recently by analytical philosophers focus on the problem of meaning. In my paper I would like to shed a little bit of light on different dimensions of this problem in the metaphysical discourse and make a proposition how to overcome the difficulties that arise from this kind of discourse.

Are actions that are morally good, morally good because God makes them so (e.g., by commanding them)? Or does God urge humans to do them because they are morally good anyway? What is, in general, the relationship between divine commands and ethical duties? It is not an uncommon belief among theists that morality depends entirely on the will or commands of God: all moral facts consist exclusively in facts about his will or commands. Thus, not only is an action right because it is commanded by God, but its conformity to his commands is what alone makes it right. An action is right (wrong) solely because he commands (forbids) it, and solely in virtue of his doing so. This view has come to be known as the „divine command theory of morality”. This paper is devoted to a brief reconstruction of claims and controversies surrounding the theory, beginning with Plato’s Euthyphro, which is the historical initiator of the debate and to a reconstruction of the various lines of argument that have been set forth to defend the theory.

The paper discusses the Kantian legacy in modern views about scientific theories. The aim of this paper is to show how Einstein’s philosophy of science,which was inspired by his physics, offers a specialized version of the Kantian synthesis of Empiricism and Rationalism. In modern physical theories (relativityand quantum theory) Kant’s a priori conditions become ‘constraints’, as shown in Einstein’s use of principle theories. Einstein’s use of principle theories showshow constraints are used to steer the mapping of the rational onto the empirical elements of scientific theories.

Ziel des Aufsatzes ist es, einige relevante Sachverhalte aus der Philosophie Descartes´ hervorzuheben, welche die Entwicklung der (gegenwärtigen) Leib-Seele-Problem-Debatte maßgeblich geprägt haben. Aus der Sicht gegenwärtiger philosophischer Debatte wird die Fundierung des ontologischen DualismusDescartes´ aufgewiesen, um schließlich diesen Standpunkt einer kritischen Würdigung zu unterziehen – mit dem Blick auf eine Zukunftsperspektive. Dasmethodische Verfahren nimmt Rücksicht sowohl auf den Bereich a priori als auch den a posteriori.

The classical paradox of the stone, namely, whether an omnipotent being can create a stone that the being itself cannot lift is traditionally circumvented bya response propounded by Thomas Aquinas, that even omnipotent beings cannot accomplish the logically impossible. However, in their paper ‘The New Paradox of the Stone’, Alfred R. Mele and M.P. Smith attempt to reinstate the paradox without falling foul of the Thomistic logical constraint. According to Mele and Smith, instead of interpreting the paradox as posing a competition between a pair of omnipotent beings – represented by God at two different times – the paradox can be reformulated as posing a question about simultaneous competition between a pair of omnipotent beings. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to probe the possibility of the simultaneous existence of two omnipotent beings in view of the theological arguments for the „unicity of the omnipotent”.

Affective knowledge of God is a kind of knowledge which follows human affectivity. This knowledge takes place on two levels: the level of the natural inclination of man towards God and the level of the religious bias of man towards God. What is the nature of affective knowledge of God? It seems there are three problems in question. First of all, as there is a natural inclination towards God in man, one will be restless unless one recognizes or finds God. Secondly, one who loves God has a new deeper knowledge of the divine things through connaturality and inclination. Thirdly, as the result of one’s encounter with God and of uniting with Him, man experiences certain subjective states which cannot be expressed by words.