The reflection on form (eidos, morphe) is situated at the core of Aristotle’s philoso-phy. Not only it was the bone of contention with Plato and other academic philosophers, who maintained the separateness and immutability of forms, but mature Aristotle’s theory of form provided him with an adequate theoretical equipment for all fields of scientific inquiry, so the concept of form proved to be all-pervasive (transcendental). This issue is examined in the paper. The article also deals with some issues characteris-tic of the contemporary (postmodern) debate, such as the question of sense and intellec-tual cognition, the problem of identity, the mind-body problem. Finally, the parallel topic of matter is addressed by showing that Aristotle’s conception still proves incisive in contrasting several theories, lending itself—more or less implicitly—to the Neopla-tonic conception.
The topic of the paper is the idea of matter in Tadeusz Kantor’s painting after World War II, including metaphorical painting, the informel, and the painting of the matter (1945-1964). The artist defined matter as an indeterminate, universal foundation which is a vehicle of the attributes of all that can be perceived by the senses, both animate bodies and inanimate things. A starting point are Kantor’s own texts – his notes and publications reflecting particular stages of his artistic evolution, critical essays on art, as well as later statements referring to the period under scrutiny. The present analysis is an attempt to find out whether Kantor’s postulates were really reflected in his art. Its main goal is to reconstruct his line of reasoning concerning matter and focus on the activities rooted in his theories, which is why contemporary reception and interpretations of his painting have not been taken into account. The frame of reference includes philosophical and artistic ideas known to Kantor or available to the artistic circles of the period. The text has been divided into four parts corresponding to particular stages of the artist’s development: (1) 1945-1947, when Kantor was trying to find ways of artistic expression beyond traditional topics of painting, such as the human figure, (2) 1947-1954, the metaphorical period, when, as a result of his visit to the Palais de la Découverte, he tried to represent the world invisible to the eye, (3) 1955-1959, the informelperiod, when paint became for him an equivalent of the matter, a synecdoche, one substance symbolizing all of it, and (4) 1958-1964, painting of the matter, when he kept using also other substances added to paint and chose a “concrete” approach to the painting’s meaning. The authors argue that over the first two decades following World War II Kantor succeeded in creating a new kind of painting, corresponding to the present, in which matter was to be dominant. To achieve that goal, for many years he was experimenting with different ways of representing matter – its ruling forces and principles. His initial existential observations, which challenged the uniqueness of humans in the universe, were later supplemented by shocking contact with science at the Paris Museum of Inventions. In the next decade, Kantor stopped making references to science and accepted process as a basic method of reaching the ontological foundation of the world, i.e. “matter.” His art was no longer “production,” but turned into “action.” At the last stage under consideration, he decided that the painting must not present signs referring to reality beyond it. He rejected the idea of painting as illusion and mediation, claiming that the matter of art is concrete, that it becomes “what it is.”
The article presents Bruno Schulz’s and Heinrich Kleist considerations on matter. A comparative approach enables a new interpretation of Traktat o manekinach by Schulz and of some selected works by Kleist. The author ponders about the role of elpis, around which the human world is created. The Greek word: elpis, contains a whole parable about a hope which has stood up to nonexistence, darkness, a lack of form. A human being turns out to be forced to create, knead matter, because his life depends on it. By shaping things he gives reality to his own world that may disappear at any time. Both reflected upon authors, Schulz and Kleist, choose two different paths to contact with matter and they inscribe it – together with a human being – into a philosophical thought that goes far beyond simple the “living” – “lifeless” opposition.
Inspired by Karen Barad’s views I search for an answer to the question: how can we include without excluding at the same time? This question brings into view the aporia of the discourse on exclusions, which manifests that struggle against violence invariably causes a violence of another kind. Barad takes the metaphysical point of view, accord-ing to which the world is a whole rather than composed of separate objects. From the perspective of category of “entanglement” she proposes to rethink some fundamental dichotomies: nature–culture, object–subject, body–mind, and, perhaps, to change our understanding of the mechanisms of exclusion.
Humean doctrine on causality is well known. Since all our knowledge comes from experience, we are able to know that “B follows A” (B propter A) but not that “B is caused by A” (B propter A). All the rest comes from our mental habits. If we limit ourselves only to sensual experience, nothing more can be claimed on causality. However, such a strategy is very far away from what is done in physics. We cannot forget about mathematical structures physics employs for modeling the world. And there are mathematical structures that model what is transparent for sensual perceptions but what is essential for causal interaction. This is also true as far as the Newtonian physics was concerned but to see this more sophisticated philosophy of physics is needed than that Hume had at his disposal. In contemporary physics, causal interactions, as modeled by mathematics, can be drastically different from our everyday imaginations. For instance, causally related events can be space-like separated.
The aim of this paper is to highlight the decisive contribution of Simplicius and Philoponus to the resolution of the problem of evil in Neoplatonism. A correct and faithful interpretation of the problem, which also had to agree with Plato’s texts, became particularly needed after Plotinus had identified evil with matter, threatening, thus, the dualistic position, which was absent in Plato. The first rectification was made by Proclus with the notion of parhypostasis, i.e., “parasitic” or “collateral” existence, which de-hypostasized evil, while at the same time challenging the Plotinian theory that turned evil into a principle that was ontologically opposed to good. In light of this, the last Neoplatonic exegetes, Simplicius and Philoponus, definitely clarified the “privative” role of kakon, finally relieving matter from the negative meaning given to it by Plotinus and restoring metaphysical monism.
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The aim of this paper is to highlight the decisive contribution of Simplicius and Philoponus to the resolution of the problem of evil in Neoplatonism. A correct and faithful interpretation of the problem, which also had to agree with Plato’s texts, became particularly needed after Plotinus had identified evil with matter, threatening, thus, the dualistic position, which was absent in Plato. The first rectification was made by Proclus with the notion of parhypostasis, i.e., “parasitic” or “collateral” existence, which de-hypostasized evil, while at the same time challenging the Plotinian theory that turned evil into a principle that was ontologically opposed to good. In light of this, the last Neoplatonic exegetes, Simplicius and Philoponus, definitely clarified the “privative” role of kakon, finally relieving matter from the negative meaning given to it by Plotinus and restoring metaphysical monism.
Aristotelian Forms are mysterious entities. I offer an account of them as entities that makes the laws of nature be laws. The Aristotelian ontology is fundamentally an anti-Humean ontology: Not only are laws a reality over and beyond regularities, but that in virtue of which they are laws is in fact that which is most truly called substance. If we further take it, say, on ethical grounds, that there are individual forms, then we get a multiplicity of substances in the universe, including multiple substances of the same sort, and the laws of nature end up being grounded in their powers. But we have global regularities, then, only because there is coordination between the lawmakers, or forms, of the solo doings of individual entities, a coordination that entails global patterns.
The primary ideal of philosophical investigations was focused on seeking for causes which existed in the world of nature. First attempts were concentrated on discovering a basic constructive element (proto-element), which also was to be the primitive principle (ajrchv) of life and transformations in the world. That current was represented by such philosophers as Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras or Diogenes of Apollonia, who endeavored to describe the reality and its intrinsic processes in a broader causal context. They emphasized mate-rial and dynamic causes for originating things and keeping them in existence – causes which transcended a homogeneous principle. The variety of phenomena in the world demanded to seek for causes of different kinds, and became a sig-nificant step for understanding the reality in a strictly philosophical way. With having distinguished functions of causes, mentioned thinkers gave a solid foun-dation for understanding cause as aijtiva in later philosophy (of Plato and Aris-totle). According to first philosophers, however, the existence and function of causes remained completely dependent on the material component of the reality, which proved that pre-Socratic philosophy was entirely dominated by the physi-cal view of the world.
The article indicates how the mountainous space is articulated in Cosmos in its “logical-underground” manner. The gradual occurrence of random improbabilities permeates the novel. In addition, the book reveals marked differences in how tangible matter is represented in its first part (the guest house events) and in its description of the Tatras. Eventually, the journey of the living protagonists ends under the mass of inanimate matter, thus obliterating the cohesion of human and animal world, and even of corporeality as such. This is how the human polarity – the improbable – demonstrates itself and how it multiplies indefinitely.
A point of departure for the author is thesis proposed by T.J. LeCain, who studied anthropocentrism hidden in a very nucleus of debate about antropocene. One should, in his view, comprehend and analyse culture and technology as the part or the product of a matter. The “human age” initiated in the age of the industrial revolution driven with fossil fuels turns out to be an effect of transformations, of which coal is a chief perpetrator. The turn from anthropo- to carbocene let us examine factors which are the underlying reason for development of industrial-information society. The very material factors (retaining wide understanding of the term “matter”, which can also include the temperature or the gravity) are called to the scene, and then embodied or set in motion by choreographers — Mette Ingvartsen, Agata Siniarska and Aleksandra Borys — who try to problematize in their works the issue of dispersed, material agency. In her text the author examines how the problems essential for anthropocene and carbocene debates are being choreographed.
The principle of unity, interrelation of being and history is viewed here as a princi-ple of ontology, gnoseology and epistemology, as a basis of updating philosophical outlooks, especially the problem of man and his relationship to the world (world-attitude). It is shown that consciousness was been interpreted in the context of a specific type of relations of man to the world. To overcome subjectivism a deep sense of objec-tivity of being and its development in relation to man is restored. A three-tier definition of being is given: substantive, attributive, and properly historical. The relationship of human activity to being and its development is explicated.
This study draws attention to the ordering of matter and form argued for in Aristotle’s Physics II, 8 (199a30–32). This argument for hylomorphic teleology relies on the presentation of nature earlier in Physics II, 1. In this way, it highlights the connections between chapter one’s account of nature as matter and form and chapter eight’s defense of final causality. Grounding final causality in the principles of nature reveals its central importance for Aristotle’s view of nature. To clarify the meaning of hylomorphic teleology I contrast my interpretation of Aristotle with that of Wolfgang Wieland regarding the scope and foundation of the final cause, countering his claim that chance and universal final causality are mutually exclusive. I contend that the presentation of teleology in chapter eight supports a diverse interpretation of the final cause, one that admits chance events while not sacrificing the intrinsic ordering of matter to form.
The article analyzes the role of matter (materia prima) in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, from both the systematic and historicalphilosophical aspect. It shows that Arab tradition (Avicenna and Averroes) and its interpreters from the first half of the 13ᵗʰ century played an important and very complex role in his reception of philosophical tools derived from Aristotle. The article also presents the process by which Aquinas was able to unite hylomorphism with the metaphysical theory of real distinction esse/essentia, which paved the way for a non-dualistic conception of man.
The teaching on the Eucharist from The Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas aptly illustrates that philosophy is an indispensable tool for rationalizing revealed truths in practicing theology. The author applies terminology developed on the basis of Aristotelian metaphysics to properly conceive the mystery which the liturgy refers to with the words: “This is the great Mystery of Faith”. Using the metaphysical concepts of “matter” and “form” as well as “substance” and “accidents,” Aquinas describes the essence of the Eucharistic mystery in which, through the words constituting the form of the sacrament, uttered by the priest on behalf of Christ and at His command, the substance is transformed from bread and wine (transubstantiatio) into the substance of the Body and Blood of the Lord. As a result, the accidents of bread and wine, still perceived by the senses, exist by the power of God’s creative action without their proper subject. Thomas draws attention to the uniqueness of the sacrament of the Eucharist among other sacraments, in which matter, such as water or oil, does not undergo a substantial transformation, but becomes only an instrument, the use of which is accompanied, through its consecration, by a specific power to produce spiritual effects.
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Szczególnym przykładem przemawiającym za prawdziwością stwierdzenia, w myśl którego filozofia stanowi niezbędne narzędzie, służące racjonalizacji prawd objawionych, pozostaje nauka o Eucharystii zawarta w Sumie Teologicznej św. Tomasza z Akwinu. Autor ten sięga po terminologię wypracowaną na gruncie arystotelesowskiej metafizyki celem wyjaśnienia istoty Misterium, do którego liturgia odnosi słowa: „Oto wielka Tajemnica Wiary”. Posługując się metafizycznymi pojęciami „materii” i „formy” oraz „substancji” i „przypadłości”, Akwinata podejmuje swego rodzaju próbę wyrażenia niewyrażalnego, opisując istotę Eucharystycznego Misterium, w którym - pod wpływem stanowiących formę sakramentu słów, wypowiadanych przez kapłana w imieniu samego Chrystusa oraz na Jego wyraźne polecenie - następuje zamiana substancji chleba i wina (transsubstantiatio) w substancję Ciała i Krwi Pańskiej. W wyniku tej przemiany spostrzegane nadal ludzkimi zmysłami przypadłości chleba i wina istnieją bez właściwego sobie podmiotu, mocą stwórczego działania Boga. Tomasz zwraca uwagę na wyjątkowość sakramentu Eucharystii wśród innych sakramentów, w których ich materia, jak woda czy olej, nie ulegają substancjalnej przemianie, ale pozostając nadal sobą spełniają jedynie rolę narzędzia, którego użyciu towarzyszy, dzięki ich konsekracji, określona moc sprawiania duchowych skutków.
Przedstawiona w artykule analiza motywu domu z perspektywy posthumanistycznej pozwala pokazać uwikłanie bohaterów w liczne intra-akcje, które można interpretować w kategoriach realizmu sprawczego zdefiniowanego przez Karen Barad oraz podmiotowości relacyjnej i mikropolityki opisanych przez Rosi Braidotti, odwołującej się w swoich przemyśleniach do Félixa Guattariego i jego idei trzech ekologii: społeczeństwa, środowiska i psyche. Wybór przykładowych projektów artystycznych oraz filmów polskich (Pora umierać, Dzikie róże, Cicha noc) i zagranicznych (Fukushima, moja miłość, Pod wiatr) pozwala pokazać różne poetyki filmowania domu oraz sposoby budowania narracji ukazujących związki bohaterów z materialnością, przyrodą, środowiskiem społecznym i naturalnym.
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The text presents an analysis of selected films, both Polish (Pora umierać, Dzikie róże, Cicha noc) and foreign (Grüße aus Fukushima, Con el viento) and artistic projects which address the issue of home in terms of matter/meaning and intra-activities between human and non-human subjects. The methodology of the analysis is based on post-human theories of Karen Barad and her idea of agential realism, and Rosi Braidotti and her concept of a reconfiguration of the post-human subject and of ethical micro policy. There are also some references to Félix Guattari and the idea of multiple ecologies: social, environmental, and mental.
Jednym z głównych tematów powracających w twórczości Małgorzaty Szumowskiej jest ciało ujęte w sposób podmiotowy, jako konstytutywny element tożsamości, oraz przedmiotowy, jako obiekt zabiegów medycznych, fragmentaryzacji, rozkładu, autopsji. Zwrócenie przez reżyserkę uwagi na materialność ciała oraz wskazanie splotu między nim a materią, która posiada własną dynamikę i sprawczość, zachęca do przyjrzenia się jej wybranym dziełom z perspektywy nowego materializmu reprezentowanego m.in. przez Karen Barad, Rosi Braidotti czy Roberta Esposita.
EN
One of the main recurring themes in Małgorzata Szumowska’s work is the body shown subjectively as a constitutive element of identity, and objectively as a target of medical procedures, fragmentation, decomposition, autopsy. The director’s attention to the materiality of the body and her pointing at how it is intertwined with physical matter that has its own dynamics and agency encourage us to examine her selected works from the perspective of new materialism represented by Karen Barad, Rosi Braidotti and Roberto Esposito, among others.23-38
In the 13th century metaphysics gained quite innovative shape. It resulted in boost of interest in angelology, which has become scientific science. The famous debate between Thomas Aquinas and Avicebron finished with Aquinas’s theory of angelic ontological structure. He has proved that angels are not composed of matter and form, but their composition should be rather regarded in the categories of essence and existence, whereas act of existence plays primary role. The new account of angelic nature let Thomas to show perfection of higher separated substances’ cognition. It is, of course, the consequence of their ontological structure – Angelic cognition is abstracted from the matter, because angels are immaterial, so there is no possibility of processes of abstraction, which belongs only to the bodily beings. Aquinas’ conclusion is simple: angels do not achieve the truth, so there is no process of deduction in their cases, because they are immaterial, which brings about intellectuality of their cognition.
The question under consideration is an attempt to present the ontic foundations for a pluralistic interpretation of reality, the interpretation specific of Aristotle’s metaphysics. This text shows the way to understand being as substance and indicates its composite structure. The being’s composite of matter and form as subontic elements is principal in the context of ontic pluralism. It is a foundation on which to comprehend being both in the context of identity and variability. Despite the fact that the principal constitutive factor is form, it is only owing to the being’s composite of matter and form, and the specific relationship between these elements, that we can explain the ontic structure of reality. A review of the modes of being has been made with a view to matter and form (in Aritotle’s sublunary and superlunary spheres of the world). The modes of matter and form and their specific ontic character reveal the real foundations of the ontic plurality and variability in the world. There is no contradiction in the fact that the formal factor actualizes the material factor because these elements create a whole—being-substance—only in combination.
PL
Rozpatrywane zagadnienie jest próbą przedstawienia ontycznych podstaw dla pluralistycznej interpretacji rzeczywistości, stanowiącej specyfikę metafizyki Arystotelesa. W tekście ukazano sposób rozumienia bytu jako substancji oraz wskazano na jego złożeniową strukturę. Zasadnicze w kontekście pluralizmu bytowego jest złożenie bytu z materii i formy, jako z subontycznych elementów. Stanowi ono podstawę do ujmowania bytu zarówno w kontekście tożsamości, jak i zmienności. I mimo że zasadniczym czynnikiem konstytuującym byt jest forma, to dopiero dzięki dostrzeżeniu złożenia bytu z materii i formy oraz wykazaniu specyficznej relacji, jaka między tymi elementami zachodzi, możliwe staje się wyjaśnienie ontycznej struktury rzeczywistości. Ze względu na materię i formę dokonano także przeglądu występujących sposobów bytowania (w wyróżnionych przez Arystotelesa sferach świata: podksiężycowej i nadksiężycowej). Przedstawione sposoby występowania materii i formy oraz ich specyfika ontyczna odsłaniają realne podstawy dla wielości i różnorodności bytowej występującej w świecie. Nie zachodzi sprzeczność w tym, że czynnik formalny aktualizuje czynnik materialny, ponieważ elementy te dopiero w łączności tworzą całość – byt-substancję.
Artykuł odnosi się do problematyki definiowania architektury. Za pomocą przedstawienia relacji pomiędzy ideą a materią dzieła wydaje się możliwe wskazanie pewnej wymiennej zależności mówiącej o pochodzeniu formy w sztuce architektonicznej. Celem artykułu nie jest wskazanie, co decyduje o powstaniu budowli, lecz dywagacja (poparta historycznymi przykładami), co jest ważniejsze dla architekta – idea czy materia dzieła. Wysnucie wniosków autor pozostawia czytającemu.
EN
The article refers to the problems of defining architecture. By showing the relationship between the idea and the matter of the work, it seems possible to indicate a certain interchangeable dependence about the origin of the form in architectural art. The purpose of the article is not to indicate – what determines the construction of the building but the division (supported by historical examples) what is more important for the architect – the idea or matter of the work? The author leaves the application to the reader.
The myth of [H]Elias Artista (or ‘Elijah of the Arts’) is one of the most interesting components of the rich 16th-century Paracelsian tradition from the margins of the post-Reformation orthodoxy. It signals a surprising development within the Christian apocalyptic tradition since ‘Helias artium chymicarum’, the messianic Experimentator as a human Christ-like figure and an end-of-time counterpart of the biblical blacksmith Tubal-cain, is an original transformation of the Jewish apocalyptic Elijah in a context of the early modernity on the eve of the Thirty Years War. That figure is an example from the broader domain of the Paracelsian ‘theoalchemy’ (Telle), which may be construed as a typically modern hybrid in the Latourian sense. Furthermore, in order to understand the peculiar post-Reformation phenomenon of the mysticism of nature (Dorn, Khunrath, Gutman, Arndt, Boehme, and others), which is in stark tension with orthodox theologies, it is necessary to take into account that it was a product of the new powerful intellectual formation which can be dubbed the nature (or cosmological) apocalypticism. It is claimed that that ‘vertical’ (non-eschatological) apocalypticism of nature is an early modern form of the ancient Jewish apocalyptic tradition transformed under the new social-cultural conditions into a formula of the ‘learning the secrets of nature’ in a complex process of renegotiating the power relations, and it produced the ample resource of the cognitive motivations for experimental activity, quite independently of the gradually waning millenarian affects. Thus, that transformation is important for understanding the religious early modernity and its immanentist, activist attitudes and getting beyond the one-dimensional discourses of the secularization paradigm, which obliterates or ignores the ‘vertical’ axis of apocalypticism and fixes itself upon the horizontal (millenarian) dimension while (re)constructing the criticized unpicturesque ‘irreligion of progress’ (Löwith). Early modernity could be better understood as a diffused turn (effect) associated with the innovative material (e.g. medical or chemical) practices and their new conceptualisations of matter and knowledge, where philosophy, theology, science of matter and social revolt seem inseparable. The myth of the Elijah of the Arts, contrary to a superficial secularization interpretation, is one of the symptoms of the growing process of ‘de-eschatologization’ through the alternative direction of apocalypticism, i.e., shifting an interest to nature and matter as the religious objects available to exploration, which produced the new power conflicts typical of modernity but also the ‘laboratory’ as a space of unveiling that which is hidden in nature.
PL
Mit Eliasza Artysty (albo „Eliasza nauk/sztuk”) jest jednym z interesujących komponentów bogatej szesnastowiecznej tradycji paracelsjańskiej z marginesów poreformacyjnej ortodoksji. Sygnalizuje zaskakujący kierunek rozwoju chrześcijańskiej tradycji apokaliptycznej, ponieważ ten „Helias artium chymicarum”, mesjański Experimentator jako ludzka, stylizowana na Chrystusa postać i odpowiednik biblijnego kowala Tubal-Kaina na końcu historii, jest oryginalną transformacją żydowskiego, apokaliptycznego Eliasza w kontekście wczesnej nowoczesności tuż przed wojną trzydziestoletnią. Jest to przykład z szerszego obszaru paracelsjańskiej teoalchemii (J. Telle), którą można interpretować jako typowo nowożytną hybrydę w latourowskim sensie. Co więcej, by zrozumieć szczególny poreformacyjny fenomen mistyki przyrody (Dorn, Weigel, Khunrath, Gutman, Arndt, Boehme i in.), pozostający w silnym napięciu z ortodoksyjnymi teologiami, należy wziąć pod uwagę, że był on wytworem tej nowej, szerokiej formacji intelektualnej, którą można nazwać przyrodniczą (albo kosmologiczną) apokaliptyką. Autor twierdzi, że „wertykalna” (nieeschatologiczna) apokaliptyka przyrodnicza jest wczesnonowożytną formą tradycji apokaliptycznej, która w nowych warunkach społeczno-kulturowych przeszła transformację w formułę „poznawania tajemnic przyrody” w złożonym procesie renegocjacji relacji władzy i wytworzyła własny zasób motywacji poznawczych do aktywności eksperymentalnej, niezależnie od słabnących z czasem afektów millenarystycznych. Transformacja ta jest bardzo istotna dla zrozumienia religijnej wczesnej nowoczesności z jej immanentystycznymi, aktywistycznymi postawami i wyjścia poza jednowymiarowe dyskursy paradygmatu sekularyzacji, które zacierają albo ignorują wertykalną oś apokaliptyki i zafiksowują się na wymiarze horyzontalnym (millenarystycznym) w swoich konstrukcjach „irreligii postępu” (Löwith). Wczesną nowoczesność można lepiej zrozumieć jako rozproszony efekt związany z innowacyjnymi praktykami materialnymi, zwłaszcza medycznymi czy chemicznymi, oraz ich nowymi konceptualizacjami materii i wiedzy, gdzie filozofia, teologia, nauka o materii i społeczna rewolta wydają się nierozdzielne. Mit Eliasza nauk, dokładnie odwrotnie do powierzchownej interpretacji sekularyzacyjnej, jest jednym z symptomów zachodzącego procesu „de-eschatologizacji” przez alternatywny kierunek apokaliptyki – przenoszenia zainteresowania na przyrodę i materię jako dostępne eksploracji obiekty religijne, co wytworzyło też nowe, typowe dla nowoczesności konflikty o władzę, ale i laboratorium jako przestrzeń odkrywania tego, co ukryte w przyrodzie.
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