Knowledge and Faith

Jan Salamucha

jan 2003. · Polish analytical philosophy 4. knjiga · Rodopi

O ovoj e-knjizi

Jan Salamucha was born on the 10th of June 1903 in Warsaw and murdered on the 11th of August 1944 in Warsaw during the Warsaw Uprising very early on in his scholarly career. He is the most original representative of the branch of the Lvov-Warsaw School known as the Cracow Circle. The Circle was a grouping of scholars who were interested in reconstructing scholasticism and Christian philosophy in general by means of mathematical logic. As Jan Lukasiewicz's successor in the area of logic and Konstanty Michalski's student in the area of the history of medieval thought, Salamucha had an excellent preparation for this task. His main achievements include a masterful logical analysis of the proof ex motu for the existence of God, a modern interpretation of analogical notions and a comprehensive approach to the problem of essence. He also contributed several historical studies: he examined Aristotle's theory of deduction (and found contradictions in it), he reconstructed William Ockham's propositional logic and established the authenticity of his treatise on insolubilia, and he identified the historical sources of the antinomies in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. He did not shy away from popularizing philosophy, and in that work he was able to elucidate rather than oversimplify the complexities of philosophy.