Między krytyką a metafizyką : studium filozofii Josepha Marechala

Authors:

• Aleksander Bańka

Abstract

The work Between critique and metaphysics. A study of Joseph Maréchal’s philosophy is the first book in Polish devoted to the philosophy of Joseph Maréchal, a Belgian Jesuit, commonly known as the founder of the “transcendental Thomism”, as well as a scholar of mysticism, biologist, psychologist and theologian. The book constitutes a study of the most important threads of his philosophy, and consists of six chapters, introduction and conclusion. The first chapter starts with a presentation of a larger context of Maréchal’s philosophy. It includes, above all, the origins of the critical problem which, mainly thanks to Descartes was inscribed into modern philosophy generating idealism on the one hand, and evoking counter-reaction of the proponents of classical, realistically — oriented on Scholasticism on the other. A larger context of Maréchal’s philosophy outlined in such a way is inasmuch important as it evokes a narrow context, namely an attempt to solve the critical problem proposed by the neo-Scholastic Louvain school. Both contexts, the narrow and the larger one, are, hence, described in the first chapter of the work in question as peculiar foundations in which Maréchal’s philosophy grows. Although a philosophical doctrine of the Belgian Jesuit treats the neo-Scholastic programme of a Louvain school as a reference point, it, nevertheless, blazes its own trail of solving the critical problem which Maréchal take in early period of his scientific activity. Because of that, the second chapter is to show how the natural studies at the Louvain University and an early period of a scientific-didactic activity, as well as an idea of a dynamic finality of intellect, a key one from the perspective of his later attempt to solve the critical problem, are shaped in Maréchal’s thought during the first years of an intellectual formation in the Society of Jesus. Its philosophical aspect, however, is not limited in Maréchal’s conception exclusively to the doctrine of St. Thomas of Aquin. The third chapter presents what influence on Maréchal’s formation is observed in the case of other philosophical factors: openness to modern thinking trends (especially including a discovery of the philosophy of acting, as well as the influence of Maréchal’s brethren, and a dialogue with Kant’s philosophy). The core of the fourth chapter, after discussing the development of the so-called epistemological fundamental problem presented by the Belgian Jesuit in the first four brochures of The starting point of the metaphysics, is the analysis of Maréchal’s interpretation of Kant’s philosophy. This is a phenomenalistic interpretation which, aiming at making the conception put forward by the philosopher from Königsberg coherent, also points to the perspective of overcoming the aporias in Kant’s theory by the dynamism of intellect, founding, in turns, the foundations of the Thomistic metaphysics of the cognizing subject. That is why, the fifth chapter is to show how Maréchal aims at a critical justification of the validity of the affirmation of an objective reality taking place, in his opinion, in each judgment, by means of building a peculiar metaphysics of the cognizing subject in the Brochure 5 of The starting point of the metaphysics. The very analysis becomes completed in the sixth chapter with Maréchal’s deduction of ontological affirmation, and its transcendental transposition. By means of this deduction, the Belgian Jesuit makes an attempt to prove that in each affirmation act of a given objective reality — the reality captured in its ontological basis — the affirmation of the real existence of God as an absolute and necessary condition of the possibility of an objective cognition also takes place implicitly. In view of that, the deduction of an ontological affirmation constitutes the core of Maréchal’s attempt to consolidate the classical metaphysics, and so is presented in this study. Between criticque and metaphysics. A study of Joseph Maréchal’s philosophy is addressed to philosophers, philosophy students, as well as all readers interested in broadening their knowledge on neo-Scholastic philosophy.