RESEARCH

Domains of research

• Examination of the “polish” sources of modern logic.
• Study of the relations between the history of logic and the philosophy of logic.
• Study of the Lvov-Warsaw school, more specifically of its relations with the legacy of Brentano, the positivism of the Vienna Circle and Husserlian phenomenology.
• Study of the tradition of logical rationalism in the philosophy of science in general, and in the social sciences in particular.
• The development and applicability of new techniques for electronic storing and publishing (XLM-TEI).

The high scientific standing of polish logic is well known. Many universities and research institutes specializing in the study of the Bretanian tradition and of austrian philosophy more generally, have looked very closely at certains aspects of polish philosophy between the two world wars, e.g. at the work of Twardowski. Twardowski’s habilitation thesis, Vom Gegenstand une Inhalt der Vorstellungen, was a kind of philosophical best-seller towards the end of the 19th century. Within this international context, the availability of the Twardowski archives constitutes a major breakthrough. Had 20th century euporean history been different, had the geopolitical situation of Lvov been different, Twardowski’s work would have been widely known and its importance widely recognized and assessed. (Lvov was the capital city of Western Ukraine, a polish city until the beginning of WWII.) The availability of the last great archival philosophical sources of the 20th century will set the record straight concerning both Twardowski and the school of thought he initiated. Neither the people involved nor the books they published had any chance of yielding a philosophical legacy. Political murder, emigration, destruction, physical and ideological elimination, have all had a wide-ranging negative effect on people and ideas. Ideas, though, may yet live again.

The aim of the elv-akt Archives is to foster the knowledge and study of the philosophical wealth of the Lvov-Warsaw school and of its less well-known aspects.

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