Philosophy in Poland: Varieties of Anti-Irrationalism. A Commitment to Reason without the Worship of Reason

Abstract

I shall elaborate more on the idea of anti-irrationalism proposed by the Polish analytic philosopher Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, a prominent member of the Lvov-Warsaw School of philosophy and logic. In my reading, anti-irrationalism stands in opposition not only to overt irrationalism, which is made clear by the term itself, but also to all forms of rationalism that tip toward something like worship of reason. Having characterized anti-irrationalism as it originally appeared in Ajdukiewicz’s works, I shall propose a certain reformulation (and generalization) of it, so as to capture a broader philosophical legacy in Poland, primarily, yet not exclusively the Lvov-Warsaw School.