DESCRIPTION: Jean Ladrière (1921–2007) was a Belgian philosopher and professor at the Catholic University of Leuven. He was also a Catholic thinker. He first became famous for his important works in the field of the philosophy of mathematics, and then in the epistemology of science and the philosophy of language. He was one of the first to introduce the analytical tradition and Anglo-Saxon language analysis to the continental philosophical scene. However, his preferred area of teaching was the philosophy of science, which he expanded from the analysis of scientific methods and languages to reflections on the social impact of science. He extended to the languages of Christian faith the type of epistemological analysis he applied to the sciences. He showed that the various languages that the self-invention of rationality had given rise to in its history – mathematics, logic, philosophy, science – as well as all ‘institutions of reason’ such as democracy or autonomous art, should be understood as modalities of the creative participation of the spirit in constant creation. His book Nauka, świat i wiara (Science, World and Faith) was published in Polish (PAX, 1989). In an article published in SPCh in 1986 (translated into Polish by Bogna Opolska-Kokoszkowa and Józef Życiński), he reflected on philosophical language itself, on the way it gives meaning and participates in the realm of sense, or destroys its foundations. In his analysis, he attempted to answer the question: On what basis can we even talk about philosophical language, recognising what it wants to achieve and respecting its proper goals – related to the definition of meaning? He concluded that philosophy is not a static representation of a certain timeless essence, but rather a historical connection of forms, in which, apart from a certain overlap of statements, there is also a constant questioning of what has been said before. It is a place of creation, from which new discursive forms constantly emerge. It is also a place of constant judgement, where everything that is created is subject to immediate criticism, exposing any improprieties and highlighting new requirements. "The meaning of terms is completely established when the system is examined in all its parts. However, it seems that meaning does not depend solely on the interrelationships established between terms, but more fundamentally is the result of the coexistence of all these terms in a certain space, which never presents itself as such, but the function of the system is to reveal it silently, even without the knowledge of the person who becomes familiar with it. It is in this space that it attempts to speak without naming what is truly being spoken about. This is where it derives its characteristic power of meaning, and it is from this that it can give its terms the meaning that should ultimately be attributed to them” (p. 95).
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Język Polski