From the series ‘60/60 the best of SPCh’ (41) [60 most interesting publications from 60 years of SPCh]
2025-11-07
Kazimierz Kłósak: ‘Natural’ definition of the human soul, its legitimacy and limits of scientific utility[Studia Philosophiae Christianae 2(1966)1, pp. 173-204].
DESCRIPTION: Kazimierz Kłósak (1911-1982) studied philosophy and theology at the Faculty of Theology of the Jagiellonian University, completing his studies with a doctoral thesis entitled Thomism in the view of Jacques Maritain, written under the supervision of Konstanty Michalski. He studied philosophy in Rome and Louvain. From 1945, he lectured in philosophy at the Jagiellonian University. In 1951, he became a member of the Philosophy Committee of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences. From 1954, as an associate professor, he lectured in philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy and Theology of the Catholic University of Poland in Warsaw. He was head of the Department of Natural Philosophy, vice-dean and dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Theology. From 1964 to 1971, he was head of the Department of Natural Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Lublin. He obtained the academic title of full professor in 1968. He was the founder and co-founder of the biannual journal Studia Philosophiae Christianae and the annual journal Analecta Cracoviensia. He wrote over 130 academic papers. Kłósak practised the Louvain version of neotomism. He dealt with issues related to the philosophy of nature and philosophical anthropology, including the question of the human soul. He also analysed theodicy problems. He was known for his polemics with the concepts of dialectical materialism. The text in question concerns the natural definition of the human soul and its status. The author emphasises that the ‘natural’ definition is linked to a specific worldview. "Empirical: the definition of the human soul is criticised for its lack of full descriptive adequacy in relation to human mental phenomena. In his opinion, it is completely unclear how, in the field of specific psychological sciences, human mental phenomena could be defined as mental. After all, we do not know of any system of concepts within the latter sciences that would allow us to define what the mental aspect is within the framework of an egalitarian real definition. In this situation, which does not allow us to go beyond the empirical statement of the ‘phenomenological’ separateness of mental phenomena from physical ones, the concept of what is mental must be considered definitively, and not just conventionally, as a primary concept. "From the point of view of neo-scholastic philosophy, one cannot agree with the claim inspired by various positivist currents that the “empirical” definition of the human soul is the only definition that can be taken into account in all scientific research. A neo-scholastic who advocates the generic distinctiveness of natural philosophy and metaphysics will point out that, in the realm of cognition, definitions of a different epistemological type are valid in these two sciences. These are definitions that express the ontological analysis of our soul – ontological analysis in a broader sense, when, within the framework of natural philosophy, it shows us the human soul in the part of being characteristic of it (...)" (p. 203).
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