Kazimierz Twardowski

Works

• 1894On the Content and Object of Presentations

  Distinguishes act, content and object of a presentation: even “a round square” has a content, but its object does not exist.

• 1900On So-Called Relative Truths

  Argues that truth is absolute and timeless: apparent relativity comes from incomplete or ambiguous sentences.

Position

In his habilitation Twardowski sharpened Brentano’s theory of intentionality: every presentation is an act directed at an object by way of a content, and content and object must be distinguished. The content exists in the mind; the object may be a real thing, an abstraction or something that does not exist, like a round square, but even then it is presented. Alexius Meinong’s theory of objects and Edmund Husserl’s analyses of intentionality took up and criticised this distinction; Husserl’s manuscript “Intentional Objects” (1894) responds to it directly. In 1900 Twardowski argued against relativism that truth is absolute and that apparently relative truths are incomplete sentences, and in “Actions and Products” (1912) he distinguished mental activities such as judging from their products, such as judgements – a step away from psychologism. His influence lay less in a system than in an ethos: clear language, precise distinctions, argument instead of grand speculation, and the independence of philosophy from worldviews. From his seminar emerged the Lwów–Warsaw School, whose logic and philosophy Jan Woleński reconstructed in 1989. Critics have noted that his own published work is slim beside that of his students and that the school’s ideal of clarity could narrow philosophy to the analysis of concepts.

Life & context

Kazimierz Twardowski was born on 20 October 1866 in Vienna into a Polish family; his father was an official in the Austrian administration. He attended the Theresianum and from 1885 studied philosophy at the University of Vienna, above all with Franz Brentano and also with Robert Zimmermann. He took his doctorate in 1891 with a study of Descartes and habilitated in 1894 with “On the Content and Object of Presentations”. In 1895 he became professor at the university of Lwów (now Lviv), then the capital of Austrian Galicia, where he taught until 1930. He set up the first laboratory of experimental psychology in the Polish lands (1907), founded the Polish Philosophical Society (1904) and the journal “Ruch Filozoficzny” (1911), and was rector of the university during the First World War. His seminar trained Jan Łukasiewicz, Stanisław Leśniewski, Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz and many others; Roman Ingarden began his studies with him. After 1918 Lwów belonged to the Polish state, and his students carried his method to Warsaw, Poznań, Vilnius and Kraków. He died in Lwów on 11 February 1938.

Further main works

• Idea and Perception (Idee und Perception. Eine erkenntnis-theoretische Untersuchung aus Descartes, 1892)
• Actions and Products (O czynnościach i wytworach, 1912)
• On Clear and Unclear Philosophical Style (O jasnym i niejasnym stylu filozoficznym, 1920)