Поляк философ және логик: Юзеф Мария Бохенский өмірі мен шығармашылығы

Philosopher

Józef Maria Bocheński or Innocentius Bochenski (30 August 1902 – 8 February 1995) was a Polish Dominican, logician and philosopher.

Born on 30 August 1902 in Czuszów, then part of the Russian Empire, to a family with patriotic and pro independence traditions. His predecessors had fought in the Napoleonic wars and various national uprisings. His father, Adolf Józef Bocheński (1870–1936), who greatly developed the family estate, was a landowning activist, volunteer in the 1919 21 war with the Soviet Union and a doctor of agricultural sciences; his interest in economic history influenced Józef’s own reflections on economic doctrine and his personal aversion to Marxism. Józef’s mother, Maria Małgorzata née Dunin Borkowska (1882–1931), was interested in theology, the author of the biographies of St John of the Cross and St Teresa of Jesus and the founder of a parish in Ponikwa. In charge of raising the children, she was known for her rigorous methods of exerting parental control and autocratic character. Józef’s father had a more liberal disposition, being primarily interested in his sons becoming good athletes and cavalrymen (he himself having had considerable sports achievements as a horse rider). Józef had three siblings: Aleksander Adolf Maria Bocheński (1904–2001), journalist and political author, economic and political activist, member of the Legislative Parliament in 1947–1952, member of the PAX Association Board in 1962–1985 as well as an activist of the Patriotic Movement for National Rebirth; Adolf Maria Bocheński (1909––1944), journalist, political author and soldier of the Polish Armed Forces in the West; and Olga Antonina, married name Zawadzka (1905–2008), teacher and author of religious education curricula, awardee of the Righteous Among the Nations medal. Józef was initially taught at home. The tutors taught the boys patriotic songs, military drills and inculcated them with a romantic perception of patriotism. Yet at the same time, they were raised in French culture, with emphasis being placed on logicality and rationalism. In 1907, the Bocheński family moved from Czuszów in the Kielce region to Ponikwa, a property inherited by Józef’s mother, near Brody in Eastern Galicia. Life in this vast estate had a significant impact on the siblings, who had been taught to cherish the tradition of eastern borderland (Kresy) peoples. The brothers had been politicised since early childhood, and now they argued among themselves the validity Roman Dmowski’s concepts. The topic was so hotly disputed that the parents felt obliged to ban such discussions at the dinner table, all the more so because Józef was quite favourably disposed to the national camp, whereas his father regarded National Democrats to be ‘a mentality rather than a political party’. The First World War, with several evacuations and returns to Ponikwa on account of its proximity to the frontline, led to the family’s drastic impoverishment. They witnessed soldiers’ and workers’ revolts at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution. Their numerous peregrinations also meant that Józef had to frequently change schools, from Tarnów to Warsaw (Konrad Górski School), and then to Lwów (Adam Mickiewicz Gymnasium). As a sixteen year old, Józef Bocheński witnessed Polish Ukrainian fighting in Lwów, but his parents did not allow him to participate. After graduating from high school in 1920, he volunteered to join the 8th Uhlan Regiment and saw action in the Battle of Komarów. These war experiences reaffirmed his conviction that defensive warfare was a justified means of conducting national politics. He studied law at the University of Lwów in 1920–1922, and then political economy at the University of Poznań in 1922–1926. However, he was not attracted to studying as much as to other aspects of student life. In the academic year 1924/1925, he was president of the university’s Brotherly Aid Association, and was also active in the Corona Academic Corporation as well as the Monarchist Organization, of which he was president in 1926. The views that Bocheński then espoused could be perceived as leaning towards the ideals of National Democracy – though he later reflected that in his youth for a time he considered himself to be an anarchist. In the student press, he actively condemned the May Coup and took part in anti Piłsudski demonstrations (his brothers, by contrast, were fervent supporters of the Marshal). The Circle was founded by a group of philosophers and theologians that, in distinction from traditional neo Thomism, embraced modern formal logic and applied it to traditional Thomist philosophy and theology. Other members of the Circle included Jan Salamucha and Jan F. Drewnowski.

Robert Blanché quoted a passage of Bochenski’s Formale Logik in Structures intellectuelles (1966, 39): "Hindu logic knows of three logical propositions and not the four of western logic. For it Some S are P does not signify Some S at least are P but Some S are P but not all." This passage shows that Indian tradition explicitly speaks of the existence of partial quantity, the third quantity to be considered along with totality apprehended by A the universal affirmative of the square, and zero quantity apprehended by E the universal negative of the square. To the two universals A and E entertaining a relationship of contrariety, one should add the third contrary constituted by the double negation of the first two. As the subcontrary I contradicts E and the subcontrary O contradicts A, the logical proposition apprehending partial quantity can be represented by the conjunction of I and O : I & O. In Blanché’s logical hexagon this conjunction is symbolized by the letter Y. Many scholars think that the logical square of opposition, representing four values, should be replaced by the logical hexagon, which has the power to express more relations of opposition.