DESCRIPTION: The author of the text in question, Prof. Mieczysław Gogacz (1926-2022), published the largest number of texts in the Society of Christian Philosophy (SPCh) of all authors: 55 articles and nearly 30 other works. He was a representative of Thomism, in which he represented the current of purifying the thought of St. Thomas from Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism. In addition, he dealt with the history of medieval philosophy, ontic issues, the theory of cognition, aesthetics, pedagogy, the theory of culture, mysticism and religious life. Initially associated with the Catholic University of Lublin, later with the Academy of Catholic Theology in Warsaw (currently: UKSW in Warsaw). The presented article takes on the philosophical perspective of despair, the feeling of threat, the struggle with the search for the meaning of life and hope. "Despair is a psychological process that can be divided into three stages: a sense of threat, the loss of purpose in life, and the extinction of self-preservation mechanisms. Due to the purpose or effect to which this process leads, it can be called a breakdown of emotional life. It occurs within the realm of human emotions and has its source in the breakdown of the relationship between the intellectual and emotional life of a person. This breakdown must have been caused by an experience that the person cannot understand or distance themselves from, and which has therefore become the only content affecting their emotions. However, this experience must be the experience of some kind of life catastrophe, the loss of the basic justification for one's actions. As a result, the impact on emotions consists in causing them to fade, because the content that affects emotions is the feeling of losing something most valuable. This emptiness must result in distraction, in the direct breakdown of feelings. The end of this breakdown is the emotional, and in turn spiritual, and often also physical death of a person. For all these reasons, analysing the structure of despair and understanding this experience and feeling becomes a kind of task in itself. Perhaps even in despair, in this rather uniform process of inner destruction, there are some weak points that allow one to interfere with this process with goodness, integrating the dissipating emotions. Maybe there is even a way out of despair towards hope’ (p. 151). The article is very accessible and contains many interesting insights on the topic. It can be classified as contemporary philosophical coaching, as it is aimed at providing help and guidance to those who find themselves in a crisis point in their lives.
SUMMARY: The process of despair. 2. Defence against the loss of a life goal. 3. Revitalisation of self-preservation motives. 4. Addition.
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English
Język Polski