Abstract
Kazimierz Twardowski, a student of Brentano, established an analytical philosophical school in Lvov at the end of the nineteenth century. As charismatic teacher, he trained a group of young philosophers very soon. This group became the Lvov-Warsaw School (LWS) just after the end of World War I; in fact, its particular members obtained positions in other Polish universities (in Cracow, Vilna and Poznań). Although some philosophers from LWS were active until the end of the twentieth century (even at the beginning of twenty-first century), the School itself existed as an organised and compact scientific enterprise until 1939. Its end was caused by World War II and the later political changes. LWS was a large and complex community (about 80 persons) with several generations and circles. Twardowski and his oldest students (like Jan Łukasiewicz, Stanisław Leśniewski, Władysław Witwicki, Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, Zygmunt Zawirski and Tadeusz Czeżowski) constituted the first generation of LWS. They trained the second generation, mostly acting in Lvov and Warsaw. The Warsaw Logical School with Leśniewski, Łukasiewicz and Alfred Tarski as the main representatives, became the most famous branch of LWS, working on various problems of mathematical logic. This circle had close connections with Polish Mathematical School. Philosophers like Ajdukiewicz, Czeżowski, Kotarbiński or Zawirski contributed to epistemology, ontology, philosophy of language and philosophy of science. On the other hand, LWS was also active in the history of philosophy, ethics, aesthetics and psychology. Thus, all basic parts of philosophy were represented in LWS. Due to the multi-ethnic character of Polish society in the interwar period, LWS consisted not only of Poles (the majority), but also Jews and Ukrainians. The significance of LWS can be considered from the following two axes. Logicians achieved many fundamental results which influenced the world logical research. Some of them (Tarski’s theory of truth, Łukasiewicz’s many-valued logic, Leśniewski’s systems) were important for general philosophy. Taking into account the role of LWS in Poland, this school essentially contributed to philosophical culture of this country.
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Notes
- 1.
Alan R. Perreiah (1991) once faulted me for not including Chwistek in the LWS. He failed to notice, however, that being a logistician in Lvov was not enough to belong to the School. Having remarked on Chwistek’s critical approach to the LWS, let me also note that other critics (and there were more of them; see Woleński 1997) included Henryk Elzenberg (see Zegzuła-Nowak 2017), Ludwik Fleck and Florian Znaniecki.
- 2.
I cannot help but recount the following story here. I had read the history of analytic philosophy written by an American author (I will leave out the name and the title). I only found one Polish name in it—Alfred Tarski. I asked the author why he had left out Polish philosophers. He answered that he knew there were logisticians in Poland, but had never heard of any philosophers.
- 3.
Some also actively participated in the resistance movement, e.g. Hiż worked as a cryptologist at the Home Army (AK) Headquarters, and Sobociński was part of the political leadership of the National Armed Forces (NSZ).
- 4.
This is a paraphrase of a famous quote from Mikołaj Rej: ‘Among other nations let it always be known / That the Poles are not geese, have a tongue of their own.’
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Woleński, J. (2019). Lvov-Warsaw School: Historical and Sociological Comments. In: Drabarek, A., Woleński, J., Radzki, M. (eds) Interdisciplinary Investigations into the Lvov-Warsaw School. History of Analytic Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24486-6_2
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