Keywords: Stoicism; Seneca
In a world that seems somehow parallel to that in which Jesus had already been born and had already been sacrificed for the sins of humankind, Seneca embarks the small, yet courageous ark of the stoicism. Before leaving towards his own atonement, Seneca puts down his last thoughts, with the purpose of guiding his younger friend and faithful disciple, Lucilius.
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Keywords: sentential adverbs; evaluative adverbs; axiology; valuation; epistemic modality; evidentiality; mirativity
The article suggests ordering the division of the sub-group of sentential adverbs, defined as evaluative adverbs, that is not consistent enough. The suggestion consists first of all in separating evaluative adverbs in the strict sense, that is ones referring to axiological categories, from other types of evaluative adverbs. Among the latter the following ones may be distinguished: 1. Epistemic adverbs, with the help of which the speaker evaluates the truth of the proposition (certe, certo, plane, profecto, sane, vero, vere, fortasse, forsitan), 2. evidential adverbs that point the basis on which the speaker gives some information (scilicet, videlicet), and 3. mirative adverbs, with which the speaker expresses his surprise that the given state of affairs does occur (inopinanter, inopinate, inopinato, necopinato). Among 4.the evaluative adverbs in the strict sense, in turn, four sub-groups may be distinguished: a. generally evaluating (bene, male), b. referring to cognitive values (sapientier, stulte, imprudenter, inepte, recte, falso), c. referring to utilitarian values (opportune, feliciter, (per)commode incommode, perincommode), and d. referring to moral values (recte, falso, merito, iure, iniuria). In the suggestion, recognizing the adverbs expressing surprise as the marker of mirativity is the most arguable point, as it is a language category that has been noticed relatively recently and has not been yet well recognized.
More...Keywords: erotic lyrics; diary; an image of the self; alterity
Dans l’intimité du XIX-ème siècle, même le lecteur postmoderne puisse avoir une veritable surprise. La lyrique érotique de Costache Conachi, par exemple, ou le journal intime de Vasile Alecsandri, inspirés d’ailleurs par mère et fille, offrent une perspective assez surprenante sur les écrivains et surtout sur la manière ambivalente de regarder, sentir et conserver en page l’amour. Sans ignorer les convenances de l’espèce (lyrique érotique/ journal intime), les auteurs y re-composent une sensible image sur soi, à l’encontre de la plus radicale altérité, la femme qui marque le destin. Les fases de l’amour et surtout le commentaire extrêmement moderne sur la féminité qu’on trouve dans l’oeuvre de chacun d’eux corrigent visiblement la perspective du lecteur sur les possibilités „restreintes” de l’auteur érotique d’il y a presque deux siècles.
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Keywords: Thaddaeus Zieliński; Greek; tragedy; comedy; anti-Judaism
The paper is an attempt to assess — in an avowedly subjective manner — the significance of the work of Thaddaeus Zieliński, the most eminent Polish classicist, for the present-day studies of ancient Greek literature and culture. Taking into account the immense impact of much of Zieliński’s contributions, and their unageing influence over many classical studies topics (Greek comedy, tragedy, Homer), the discussion touches also the more controversial issues related to the works of this great scholar.
More...Keywords: Franz Boas; concept of culture; history of anthropology
In my paper I investigate how the notion of culture appears in the writings of Franz Boas, especially in his probably most prominent work, in The Mind of Primitive Man. Firstly I try and see why we find such contradictory opinions about Boas’ status in the history of anthropology. In this section, besides following Stocking’s reasoning, I introduce gossip and oral tradition as a possible explanation for why Boas sometimes – even today – is depicted somewhat similarly to a culture hero. To avoid the mistake of an unhistorical inquiry, as a next step, I follow how the concept of culture, and the way the Other is viewed and depicted, changed in the intellectual traditions of Europe. I see Boas’ work as one in a boundary position, in a historical period where both the term culture and that of the Other is seen differently, when the former becomes a tool for writing down the latter. In my analysis I aim to prove that Boas’ use of the concept of culture remains contradictory, an that the terms in his writings appear not only in a neutral, descriptive, plural sense. Rather, culture sometimes appears as ideal and spiritual, opposed to a material, technological civilization; and it is also used to describe a more ideal state of man. From these points I conclude that it is false to see Boas as the inventor of the concept of culture, he is, rather, an important actor in the historical changes that led to a new discourse of the Other.
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Keywords: Septuagint; Hebrew Bible
The name Septuagint originally referred to the translation of the first collection of the Hebrew Bible, that is the Torah, into Greek. It later comprised also various books incorporated into it: the translation of other two collections, that is Prophets and Writings. Later, seven other books, translated from Hebrew or written in Greek, were added to the Greek version of the Jewish sacred books, which is when the same name was given to all books, which – by analogy to the Hebrew Bible – gained the status of the Greek Bible. It was an extremely bold and, in many ways, a totally unprecedented translation undertaking, which exerted a permanent infl uence on the European and global culture. The Septuagint was the basis of the New Testament, written and accepted in Greek as a record of Jesus Christ’s life and activity as well as the birth and establishment of Christianity. It was a signifi cant bridge between the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament also because it considerably contributed to rapprochement between the Judaic and Hellenic cultures. This paper discusses the origin and impact of the Septuagint as well as its specifi city.
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Poprzednie walne zebranie Polskiego Towarzystwa Teologicznego odbyło się 23 lutego 2010 roku. Obejmowało część sprawozdawczą i udzielenie absolutorium zarządowi za rok 2009. W drugiej części wręczono medal „Zasłużony dla Polskiego Towarzystwa Teologicznego” ks. prał. dr. Tomaszowi Chmurze oraz wysłuchano wykładu prof. dr. hab. Andrzeja Borowskiego nt. Kapłan i kapłaństwo w kręgu tematów literackich.
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Keywords: time; duration; eternity; the mirror of time; the meaning of time;
I have in mind the pages written by Cantemir in Sacro-sanctae scientiae indepingibilis imago (1700), the fourth book, in reference mainly to time, duration and eternity. Some of the ideas and discussions there are undoubtedly of Patristic inspiration. There are also certain new representations, specific to the European savant environment of the 17th century. Cantemir spoke firstly of the need to relate the temporal to the eternal, which is previous from a metaphysical and theological point of view. Thus, time is to be seen “in the mirror of divine eternity”. In its turn, time represents the mirror (speculum) in which the created become distinguishable in their path. In that mirror man “simultaneously” sees the past, the present and the future, which enables him to delimit them and to relate them to one another. The temporal participate to universal time and universal time confers itself to them according to their measure. From all that, present day man may keep in mind that the image of finite time, scattered or senseless, unrestful as such, may nevertheless have a trustworthy alternative.
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17 października 2009 r. minęła 60. rocznica wznowienia powojennej działalności Biblioteki Warmińskiego Seminarium Duchownego „Hosianum” w Olsztynie.
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Keywords: Thomas Aquinas; universals; existence (esse); metaphysics; epistemology; anthropology;
The article analyzes the thomistic concepts of universals and existence (esse). In the Middle Ages, the question of universals was one of the most relevant problems of scholasticism. Theologians and philosophers debated over cognition of eternal forms and their existence in human understanding. They used asking: did universals exist in reality or in the intellect alone. Aquinas treated universals in three ways: as forms abstracted from matter, as forms in the divine intellect, and as forms which are the essences of intellectual substances. He was convinced that human cognition is grounded on sense perceptions and imagination without which the cognition is not possible: no body – no cognition. This attitude of the Angelic Doctor was very important for the development of philosophical anthropology. He claimed that being and essence are the first things to be conceived by our understanding, that being (ens) is understood through substantial forms thanks to which all beings have existence (esse). Existence was one of the most important parts of Aquinas’s metaphysics used in explanation of general development of the material world, nature of universals and modes of their existence.
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Keywords: Cicero; Cornelius Nepos; Roman literature; reception of Greek culture in Rome; ancient Greek history; ancient Greek historiography
The article analyses references to Pisander, Antiphon, Phrynichus and Theramenes in the writings of Cicero and Nepos. From a historian’s point of view, the accuracy of the Romans’ statements varies greatly and has to be evaluated in each instance separately. The Romans’ opinions concerning the Greek politicians should be judged cautiously, because the Roman writers were not interested in giving an overall assessment of the Athenian oligarchs’ political careers.
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Keywords: Boethius of Dacia; eternity of the world; augustinism; aristotelianism; averroism;
The article analyzes the critical scholastic discourse concerning fundamental questions on metaphysics and Weltanschauung. In the 13th century, the discourse was focused on the concept of creation as methodological basis for philosophical and theological conceptions. In 1270, the Bishop of Paris Etienne Tempier issued the condemnation of thirteen heretical theses forbidding their propagation. The condemnation strengthened positions of Augustinism in philosophy and theology. One of the authors of the condemnation was Franciscan friar John Peckham who was convinced that Augustinism and Aristotelianism are incompatible. He attacked the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas accusing him of accepting the Averroist teaching on the unity of forms. The condemnation enkindled the confrontation between Franciscans and Dominicans in considering and evaluating Greek and Arab philosophical heritage. Franciscans regarded as erroneous the attempts of Dominicans to Christianize Aristotle’s teaching. Boethius of Dacia published the treatise De Aeternitate Mundi in which he tired to prove that there is no contradiction between philosophy and religion. By doing this he tried to rehabilitate the members of Art faculty accused of the distortion of Christian teaching. The controversy concerning the eternity of the world exposed the noetic influence of Neo-Platonic Peripatetism on the elaboration of theological and philosophical concepts of creationism.
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In the article one of Stephen Langton’s Quaestiones theologiae is published in a critical edition. Ļe quaestio is devoted to the problem Vtrum homo licite possit uelle contrarium eius quod scit deum uelle and occupies position n° 18 in an index of Langton’s Quaestiones found in MS Cambridge, St. John’s College Library, C 7. In fact, if we were to order Langton’s Quaestiones as if they were discussing the topics found in Peter Lombard’s four books of Sentences, this quaestio would belong to Book I, more precisely to a section of the work where some attributes of the one God are discussed (after an account of the mystery of the Trinity has been given). Ļe problem arises from the consideration of the divine attribute “will”, where such questions occur as whether divine will is always fulŀlled, or whether man is bound to will all that God wants (given that God’s will is known by man). Ļe article consists of a text-critical introduction followed by an edition of the three preserved versions of the quaestio. In the introduction it is argued that the three versions transmitted in the manuscript tradition all depend upon a unique disputation presided over by Langton in his school. Ļe presence of three versions is explained by assuming that the disputation was recorded by two different scribes (reportatores), giving origin to two different written records of it (reportationes). Ļe ŀrst reportatio (= reportatio b) has been elaborated into a text transmitted by a ŀrst textual family (= family φ); the second reportatio(= reportatio a) has been elaborated into two different texts, one transmitted by a second textual family (= family ψ) and one transmitted by a single MS. Ļe different versions are published according to the strict rules of critical edition, without trying to produce a unique text harmonizing the three reportationes, but rather leaving them as the manuscript tradition has delivered them to us, in the conviction that each version represents a reception of the single oral performance that, in its actual wording, is irreparably lost.
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Keywords: Marcus Tullius Cicero; De Re Publica; Somnium Scipionis; cult; folk religion
The sixth book of Cicero’s De Re Publica, entitled The Dream of Scipio, provides the context for this article’s presentation of the beliefs of ancient Romans. It opens with an overview of the religiosity of Cicero’s contemporaries and how it evolved. It describes the organisation of the cult, procedures for declaring feast days by priest pontifex and activities of Roman flamens. It notices the influence of Pythagoreanism, Orphism and Greco-Oriental Rationalism on the religious life of the Romans, and – in Cicero’s view – a great beneficial effect of the traditional religion and emerging mysticism on political life of the state. His reflections on this theme, expressed in The Dream of Scipio in the sixth book of De Re Publica, demonstrate close affinity with Stoicism and Platonism, both very popular philosophical systems at the time. The article closes with a critical overview of the cults, piety and morality of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Their religiosity was de facto their personal matter, though they did not neglect the material benefits that could be drawn from the cults.
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Keywords: Albert the Great; Latin Aristotelianism; Averroism; Scholasticism; Syllabus;
The article analyzes the causes of 13th century university crisis which was provoked by Averroes’s commentaries on Aristotle’s treatises studied in the Faculty of Arts of Paris University. Translated from the Arab sources, Latin texts of Aristotle were quite popular in cathedral and monastic schools. Albert the Great fought the Latin Averroists attempting to Christianize the teachings of Aristotle. In the Latin Aristotelianism the majority of theologians saw danger to the foundation of Christian doctrine. As an ardent partisan of Augustinianism the bishop of Paris Stephan Étienne Tempier was strongly opposed to any studies of Aristotle’s philosophy. In 1270 he issued ordinance prohibiting thriteen statements to be promulgated in the university. In 1277 Tempier published Syllabus listing 219 prohibited statements and naming Sigerus of Brabantia and Boethius of Dacia as Averroist leaders. The appearance of Syllabus revealed the crisis of Scholasticism.
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Keywords: essence; existence; distinction in being; ontological difference; temporality; Dasein; Duns Scotus;Martin Heidegger;
The article maintains that the being (ens) is the proper subject of metaphysics, not being at all (esse). Itis demonstrated by way of comparison of two different contexts. The first one is scholastic distinctionin finite being, and the second one — the ontological difference by Martin Heidegger, which is foundedon the first. Duns Scotus and Francisco Suarez shows that the content of being (esse), as a result ofdifference between essence and existence, cannot be explicated in logos. It is accessible in the modesof the giveness of essence, of its presence. Heidegger discusses the possible access to being through itsdifference from a being, in situation when Desein understands being (esse) by way of own actual existence.Nevertheless, Dasein cannot articulate the meaning of being, because the later, as a principiumof temporality and of consciousness, always is concealed from reflection. Being is the source of any definitenessfor the subject; it is an absolute beginning. That is why being cannot have the definite contentfor thought. In its meaning being is nothing and for us it discovers itself mediately — from essence andthe modes of essence, i.e. by way of the being (ens).
More...Keywords: Cicero; Pro Milone; Court speeches; Discrepancy between delivered and published speech; Rhetoric; Asconius;
Pro Milone represents an exception in two aspects both among the speeches left to us as Cicero’s life-work. On the one hand, this is the oratio whose original was delivered by the orator in a lost lawsuit, however, later on, guided by political considerations, he published its revised version. On the other hand, Pro Milone is the speech of which we exactly know that the version published by Cicero and left to us is different from the oration given before the court of justice not only in style and structure but in its essence. Pro Milone is an essential constituent part and source of Cicero’s philosophy of the state that produced hardly overestimatable impact on European thinking, that is, in them Cicero as an orator and a politician, trying in vain to get back to the summit of his former influence, formulates his concept on the theory of the state pointing far beyond the handling of the facts of the case and the rhetorical tactics as well as the rhetorical situation, which later on crystallised and constituted the subject matter in his theoretical works.
More...Keywords: Cicero;Rome;god;religion;divination;superstition
The article analyses Cicero’s attitude to gods, religion, divination, and superstition. Cicero follows tradition in acknowledging the existence of the gods, considering them immortal, blissful, animate, and anthropomorphic. He is ambivalent about the interaction between the gods and people. Cicero considers religion important for the Roman people because this was the popular belief — it was not his own viewpoint. Cicero thinks that people obtain divination from the gods. According to Cicero, there are two types of divination: artificial (auspices, haruspices, divination by lightning, stars, and other signs of nature) and natural (predictions in a dream, in a state of ecstasy, before death). In relation to divination, we see how multi-dimensional Cicero’s beliefs were: as a philosopher, he can accept or deny divination; as a Roman politician, he regards divination as an important instrument of the Roman religious rituals. Cicero opposes superstition to religion in his theological works, but in his secular works, he uses superstition and religion as synonyms.
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Keywords: youth; religiosity; speech; sermon; Germany; Poland
Studies on the life conditions and religiousness of German and Polish youth indicate the progressive changes that occur in the area of the religious life among the modern generation of young Germans and Poles. Generally they can be divided in two groups: 1) referring to both Polish and German youth; 2) treating each of the youth groups individually. The multi aspects and diversity of the religious transformation of young Germans and Poles requires a proper response from the Catholic Church of both countries. This response should take into account suggestions of such evangelical methods that respond to the mentality and spiritual needs of the young generation. First of all it is necessary to change the approach of speech, not only taking care about merits but also new forms and contexts.
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Keywords: Apostolic tradition;Church of Rome;Ireneus of Lyon;Succession of bishops;Papal primacy;
The apostolic churches, as guarantors of orthodox doctrine, had gener-ally higher authority than all other churches, because it was believed that the apostolic faith was certainly preserved in them. In the fight against gnosis in the second half of the 2nd century, Christian authors argued with the apostolicity of the church and they used to use the Roman Church as the perfect and the most appropriate example precisely because of its exceptional apostolic origin. The first author and witness of this state is Hegesippus, whose argument – the preser-vation of true apostolic faith due to succession of bishops in every church where he used Rome as the best example – was deepened by Ireneus of Lyon. Rome has in his Adversus Haereses the “fullness” of apostolicity, is the most apostolic church of all churches thanks to its connection to both Peter and Paul and their martyrdoms. Therefore, every other church in which the apostolic faith and tra-dition is preserved must ipso facto agree with Rome. Moving forward Rome is the best example for demonstrating apostolicity of the whole church. The ques-tion for the last analysed author from this period – Tertullian – was how to dis-cern from the heretic and apostolic reading of the Scripture since Gnostics used the same texts with completely different explanation. The answer was (to put the simplest) the apostolic faith itself. It is again passed through generations thanks to succession of bishops and the best places where to verify it are apostolic churches. Rome is not as obviously named as the best example; the fortresses of the true faith the apostolic churches were equal, still the Rome in his enumera-tion covers more place. It is the testimony of the very high reverence for Roman church, which was quite common during the whole Christian antiquity.
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