CFP: Independent Ethics in the Lvov-Warsaw School
One of the main representatives of the Lvov-Warsaw School (LWS), Izydora Dąmbska, wrote:
The achievements of the Lvov-Warsaw School in the domain of logic and the theory of scientific cognition are well-known and appreciated. They somehow overshadowed equally valuable results of the School’s members in the domain of axiology, mainly ethics and metaethics. And yet Twardowski as well as his followers: Władysław Witwicki, Władysław Tatarkiewicz, Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Tadeusz Czeżowski, Maria Ossowska – to mention only a few figures leading in this domain – contributed significantly in the development of these very philosophical disciplines. (Dąmbska 1982/1994, p. 108).
The program of investigations that the members of the LWS realized was formulated and initiated by Kazimierz Twardowski who started from descriptive psychology in Brentano’s spirit but substantially developed the approach to the problems of philosophy, including ethics. According to him: (a) ethics, as any philosophical discipline, is a science; (b) as a science, firstly, ethics should respect the postulates of clarity and justification, and make use of scientific methods; (c) as a science, secondly, ethics should be independent of any world-view (religious one including); (d) the area of ethics covers descriptive ethics, metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics. Twardowski’s followers generally accepted these opinions but they sometimes significantly differed in the way they understood and realized the program such understood.
The present volume aims to present various ethical and metaethical conceptions that appeared at the Lvov-Warsaw School. Among others, papers on the following matters are welcomed:
- Ethics and metaethics in the Lvov-Warsaw School and the School of Franz Brentano: ethics and metaethics in Brentano and his students.
- Ethics in the Lvov-Warsaw School versus parallel ethical conceptions of the Vienna Circle and British analytic philosophy.
- Twardowski’s program of scientific ethics.
- Kotarbiński’s ethics of trustworthy protector and his praxeology.
- Tatarkiewicz’s analyses of good, happiness, perfection, etc.
- Ajdukiewicz’s ethical contributions: analysis of justice, analysis and of human actions.
- Czeżowski’s ethics and metaethics.
- Ossowska’s ethical conceptions and analyses, her program of sociology of morality.
- Dąmbska’s axiological views.
- Ethical views of the third generation of the Lvov-Warsaw School (Marian Przełęcki, Andrzej Grzegorczyk, Klemens Szaniawski, Ija Lazari-Pawłowska, and others).
A special section of the volume will present the views in the domain of ethics, metaethics, and extra-scientific cognition of Marian Przełęcki (1923-2013), on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of his death and the 100th anniversary of his birth. As an assistant of Janina Kotarbińska, and a student of Tadeusz Kotarbiński and Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, Przełęcki was imbued with the spirit of anti-irrationalism. His moral conception of “Christianity of Unbelievers”, as well as his original metaethical conception of moral intuitionism is worth recalling.
The papers may be written in English (preferably) or in Polish, and prepared according to the rules accepted in the journal “Etyka”:
https://etyka.uw.edu.pl/index.php/etyka/about/submissions
The deadline for applications is December 31, 2023.
Contact with the editorial team: etyka@uw.edu.pl
For more information about the prepared volume: abrozek@uw.edu.pl
