On the Dramatic Stage in the Development of Kotarbiński’s Pansomatism

Abstract

Kotarbiński’s philosophical doctrine, which originally he chose to call reism, developed over a number of years beginning with a couple of essays published in the early twenties. In a more mature form reism is embedded in his opus magnum,by which I mean his Elementy published, for the first time, in 1929. The principal tenets of reism at that stage in its development have been stated by Kotarbiński himself with the aid of the following three propositions:

• (1) All objects are things

• (2) No object is a property or relation or event or any other of the alleged objects belonging allegedly to an ontological category other than the category of things

• (3) The terms ‘property’, ‘relation’, ‘event’, and any other would-be names of alleged objects belonging to an ontological category other than the category of things are pseudo-names or onomatoids (see Kotarbinski, 1930–31 reprinted in 1958a).

To Tadeusz Kotarbinski, the philosopher, on his ninetieth birthday from a grateful, respectiful, and faithful but not uncritical follower.