Kazimierz Twardowski (part I)

1. Life Kazimierz Twardowski was born in Vienna on October 20, 1866. His father, Pius, was a member of Austrian Civil service. Both Pius Twardowski and his wife, Malwina (maiden name Kuhn), were Polish. Twardowski grew up in the atmosphere of moderate religiosity and fervent patriotism. At the age of twelve, Twardowski entered the Viennese Theresianum (Theresian Academy) where he received comprehensive education. The Academy provided him with solid education in the subject of secondary school education but also in many languages, including classical ones (Greek and Latin). Already at Theresianum, Twardowski became acquainted with philosophical works and philosophical problems. Thanks to discipline of the school, Twardowski practiced systematic work. He graduated from Theresianum in 1885 and in the same year he began studies at University in Vienna. He studied psychology, classical philology, mathematics, physics and philosophy. The most important philosopher in Vienna at that time was certainly Franz Brentano, who became Twardowskis model of philosophical researcher and teacher. Twardowski took his doctorate in philosophy in 1891, by virtue of a dissertation on the views of Descartes on ideas and perceptions (under supervision of Robert Zimmerman). The following year he married Kazimiera Koodziejska. He wrote about her many years later:
I lack the words to portray the love with which, in her infinite goodness, my wife has never ceased to surround me. As the wisest of counsels and most dependable of helpers in all of lifes affairs, she had the greatest part in anything useful that was given me to accomplish.

Twardowskis had three daughters: Helena, Aniela and Maria. The youngest became later the wife of Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, who was Twardowskis student and one of the greatest representatives of the LvovWarsaw School.
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Thanks to a grant from Austrian Ministry of Culture and Education, in 1892 Twardowski travelled to Leipzig and Munich. After coming back from Germany, Twardowski worked in mathematical bureau in life insurance branch of the Civil Servants Union of the Austrian Monarchy. At the same time he worked as a tutor and wrote his habilitation dissertation. He achieved his habilitation in 1894 on the basis of the dissertation On content and object of presentations. This dissertation is (as yet) his most known philosophical study abroad (probably because it was written in German and not in Polish). After achieving habilitation, in the academic year 1894/1895 Twardowski started lecturing in Vienna as a Privatdozent. Being a Pole he had rather no chance to receive a chair of philosophy in Vienna. At that time, the chair of philosophy in Lvov University vacated and Twardowski, exactly on his twenty-ninth birthday, was appointed the professor of philosophy in Lvov. He remained in Lvov University for 35 years. During this period, he was the main organizer of philosophical life and became a founder of the most important philosophical school in the history of Polish philosophy. Twardowski devoted himself mostly to didactic work and tried to organize Polish philosophical and wider speaking scientific and cultural life. But he remained scientifically active. He wrote mostly in Polish (creating, by the way, an important part of contemporary Polish philosophical terminology) and that is why his later scientific achievements are not broadly known. In his mature life, Twardowski published relatively little because of the following reasons. Firstly, he devoted exceptionally much time for didactic work and performed many public functions having little time for strictly scientific work. Secondly, he was satisfied with resolving problems or finding resolutions in oral discussions; usually he was not interested in publishing the results of them. Thirdly, he liked when his students developed his thoughts (even if they did not mention that he was the source of their ideas). Fourthly, he was a perfectionist and did not want to publish works which were not enough elaborated. Twardowski died in 1936. During his funeral, one of his students, Wadysaw Witwicki, said:
Several months ago the Professor told one of members of our group that he was happy and he gave the reasons for this. He referred to his age, because he had not expected he would live so long. He had seen Poland regain its independence, which was for him a source of permanent joy. For many years he worked with dedication as a professor of philosophy, and if he had to choose his profession over again, he would choose the same again. He particularly enjoyed the attitude of his disciples towards himself, an attitude which was quite exceptional and the extraordinary character of which he fully realized.... All this was said by a man who was gravely ill but was not broken by the fact; on the contrary, here was a man who had dominated his sufferings. This statement of his really reminds one of the last letters written by 2

Epicurus to Hermarchus. And this is not a coincidence, because the Professor deliberately shaped his attitude after the pattern of the old Greek masters of autonomous ethics. This is why during the last years of his life he showed others by his own example how to endure physical pain and turn it into one more opportunity for the victory of concentrated will.

2. Components of Twardowskis posture 2.1. Twardowski as a teacher It was mainly the Twardowskis personality and his dedication to teaching and organizing work that made the rise of the Lvov-Warsaw School possible. Twardowski started almost from scratch. As Witwicki wrote:
[Twardowski] found the lecture halls almost empty. Several of his acquaintances and several bolder strangers used to come in, partly out of courtesy, and partly out of the curiosity in order to see how the young professor looked and lectured. Gradually the hall became more filled and soon it could not accommodate all those willing to listen; with the lapse of time the lectures had to be transferred outside the university because no university hall could accommodate the listeners who from the early morning hurried to secure themselves a place.

Witwicki writes here about Twardowskis lecture on philosophy for students of all fields. But Twardowski, shortly after moving to Lvov, started to organize serious philosophical studies at Lvov University. He passed whole his own library to University and founded philosophical seminar. Another devoted student of Twardowski, Izydora Dmbska, describes how work of seminar looked like:
The seminar was the meeting place for students of all years beginning with the second. It was there that under the direction and the most careful attention of the professor they prepared themselves for independent scholarly work. Classic philosophical works were read and interpreted jointly (always in the original, which required the knowledge of foreign languages). Every participant in the seminar would work out his topic, and at the end of the year would submit the result to the professor for appraisal. It often occurred that ones second seminar paper was an independent scholarly contribution and could serve as a doctoral thesis or a thesis for the candidate to professorial examination. Twardowski secured for his students ideal conditions for work. Each member of the seminar could use the reading room, to which he had his own key; from 7 am. to 10 p.m. in that reading room he had his own desk and could avail himself of the necessary books from a large library (which in 1930 had some 8,000 items). Rigorous and unconditionally binding regulations, thought over in minutest details, secured the smooth functioning of this unique students work room. Everyone had the right and the opportunity to have frequent contact with the professor who, every day, invariably received students in his office between noon and 1 p.m. He used to spend some eight to nine hours daily in the seminar, often visiting the reading room and having many personal contacts with the members of the seminar. Such was the outer framework of his work, which was an educational activity unique of its kind. In order to acquire a better knowledge of his disciples, Twardowski kept detailed files, in which every student had his record with the assessment of papers and examinations and a description of interests and achievements. Twardowski also kept all the papers of his disciples in the seminar archives.

One of the most characteristic features of Twardowski as a teacher was that he did not force on his students any world view, any philosophical doctrine, any area of research. What he was trying to teach them was rather the method of work. There were two main postulates essential to this method: the postulate of precision and the postulate of justification. According to the first postulate, every thesis should be expressed with maximal clarity and accuracy. According to the second one, every conviction should be expressed with the strength proportional to the strength of its justification. This Twardowskis posture bore fruit in the fact that scientific interests of his students were really varied. Some of them became mostly logicians, others mostly historians of philosophy, others psychologists, estheticians, ethicists, etc. Some of them chose areas of science outside philosophy. But all of them were trained in the history of philosophy and in logic. Twardowski also inculcated them devotion to systematic work and love of reality. 2.2. Sources of Twardowskis philosophical conceptions In his scientific research, Twardowski was influenced mostly by Franz Brentano and also by Brentanos disciples Alexius Meinong and Anton Marty (called Brentanos Minister for Language). Also Bernard Bolzano influenced Twardowskis views to some extent. From Brentano, Twardowski inherited realism and absolutism in the theory of truth. Similarly to Brentano, Twardowski believed that consciousness is a complex of acts which are different from their contents and that scientific philosophy should be based on descriptive psychology and analysis. After Brentano, Twardowski was also against metaphysicism in philosophy, i.e. against investigations that in advance assume a definite solution of philosophical problems. 2.3. Conception of philosophy Twardowski considers philosophy as a complex discipline, composed of particular disciplines: history of philosophy, psychology, logic, ethics, aesthetics, theory of knowledge, metaphysics, etc. On the other hand, he pointed to some characteristic features of all philosophical disciplines:
We thus have to point to a common characteristic on the strength of which we include the various philosophical disciplines in a single group. That common characteristic consists in a certain property of the objects with which the philosophical disciplines are concerned. All philosophical disciplines investigate objects which are given to us either exclusively in our inner experience or in both inner and external experience. It is easy to deduce the various branches of philosophy from this definition of philosophical disciplines.

Being given in inner, introspective experience is, according to Twardowski, a distinctive property of the domain of philosophy.

The popular view in the philosophy of 19th century was psychologism. This view has two aspects: methodological and ontological. Methodological psychologism says that one of the most important methods of philosophy is introspective analysis of own mental acts. The thesis of the ontological psychologism reads: objects such as values, meanings, and judgments are just mental (psychic) objects, and the sciences which deal with them (axiology and logic, respectively) are parts of psychology. Being a methodological psychologist, Twardowski refused psychologism in the ontological version. The crucial work in which Twardowski expresses his antipsychological views in relation to ontology is Actions and Products. Comments on the Border Area of Psychology, Grammar and Logic (1912). 3. Twardowskis metaphysics 3.1. The pluralistic conception of being Let us consider two objects: a city (e.g. Warsaw) and a number (e.g. number two). They have almost nothing in common. Warsaw is a spatiotemporal object, very complex, cognizable thanks to external senses (in fact maybe it is not cognizable as a whole, but we may cognize it through its parts). Number two is something that we cannot see or hear. It is extra-temporal and extra-spatial. It is an ideal or abstract object, as we are used to saying. Metaphysicians who consider such different kinds of objects as Warsaw and number two divide into two subsets. Some of them claim that there are many different ways of existence, e.g. number two exists differently than the city of Warsaw: the first is ideal, the second real. Other metaphysicians claim that there is only one way of existence but many different kinds of objects. Twardowski belonged to the second group. He was among those metaphysicians who assume that there is one mode of existence and only different kinds of beings. The varied class of beings one can categorize in few ways by distinguishing existential, ontical or metaphysical categories. 3.1.1. Kinds of beings Let us see what categories of objects were distinguished by Twardowski. From the existential point of view, he proposed three classifications of entities and distinguished: (a) possible and impossible entities. (b) factual (i.e. existing) and only intentional (i.e. in fact unexisting) entities; (c) real and unreal entities. Impossible entities (e.g. an oblique square, a devoted-of-weight body) possess contradictory properties. All other entities are possible. Examples of real entities are: a shrill tone, a tree, redness. On the contrary, absence [of something], change [of something] or space - are unreal. Intentional objects are only objects of our thoughts (they are only imagined ones); beings which are not only objects of our thoughts are factual.
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Real entities (e.g. a shrill tone, a tree, redness) and unreal entities (e.g. , absence [of something], change [of something] or space) can be factual (e.g.) as well as intentional. If we see a tree, this seen tree is both a real and factual entity; if we only imagine this tree, it is a real but intentional entity. If we find an absence of amber in our chest, this absence is unreal but factual; if we only imagine this absence, and if in fact we have a piece of amber in our chest, this absence is unreal and intentional at the same time. 3.1.2. From the metaphysical point of view Twardowski distinguished: (a) individual and general entities; (b) simple and complex entities; (c) ultimately physical and psychical entities. An individual entity (e.g. Kazimierz Twardowski, the universe, the day prior to the battle of Marathon, the number thousand) is an entity which, apart from components common to many entities, has at least one specific component. For instance: Kazimierz Twardowski has many properties common to many entities: being-a-philosopher, being-a-man, possessing-three-daughters etc., but he possesses also some properties which are specific only to him, e.g. beingborn-on-the-22th-of-October-1866-in-Wien-on-Favoritenstrae-20. A general entity is a set of components common to many entities presented (i.e. imagined or conceived) as a certain homogeneous whole. Examples of general entities are: number in general, triangle in general, judgment in general etc. A simple entity is an entity completely unanalyzable (i.e. in which we cannot distinguish any parts), e.g. coexistence, equality, a spiritual being. A complex entity is an entity in which we can isolate at least two components; examples of such entities are: a sequence of numbers, a house, a man.1 A physical entity (e.g. someones brain) is a spatially extensive and sensually perceptible entity. A psychical entity (e.g. any state of consciousness a presentation, a feeling etc.) is devoid of spatial extension and it is accessible only in individual introspection. 3.1.2. Components of entity According to Twardowski, every entity irrespective of its existential and metaphysical category is a homogeneous whole, composed of various properties. Whatever can be distinguished in a given entity is a component of this entity: a concrete component, if it is distinguishable factually, or an abstract component, if it may be distinguished only intentionally. Take a red rose as an example. Its stem and its petals are its concrete components, since one may distinguish them factually (e.g. tear off the petals from the stem). But redness of this rose is its abstract component: we may separate redness from the rose
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We must remember that if we recognize all the particular relations to other entities as components of a given entity we can speak only of relatively simple entities; allowing such an assumption, we must say that there are no absolutely simple entities at all. We should distinguish simple and complex entities from entities presented (respectively) as simple, or as complex.

only mentally (in our imagination). All the properties (such as redness) and relations are abstract components of entities. 3.1.3. Ontical categories Many philosophers (Aristotle was the first, probably), proposed a list of ontical (ontological) categories, i.e. a list of the most general kinds of entities. According to Twardowski, there are three main ontical categories: (1) things and persons (e.g. a piece of paper, Lvov, Stanislaus Augustus); (2) states, and especially: (a) properties (e.g. a given color); (b) changes (e.g. motion, activity, suicide); (c) acts (e.g. writing); and finally: (3) relations (e.g. fraternity). 3.2. Acts and products 3.2.1. Acts. Impermanent and permanent products. Physical and psychical acts Distinction between actions (acts in general) and products is important step in the way to refusal of psychologism. It has also a great importance in ontology. Acts are special kinds of states which are connected with some special phenomena and things that are products of them. Products are entities that come into being as results of definite acts. For example: a picture is the product of painting, an inscription is the product of writing, a thought is the product of thinking. The distinction between acts and products seems to be clear. However, sometimes it becomes complicated. Note that sometimes one uses the same (ambiguous) word to name both: act and its products. It happens especially while talking on psychic acts, e.g. the term an idea may mean both act (of having an idea of something) and product of its act. Mixing acts of thinking with products of these acts leads to many misunderstandings. Twardowski distinguishes relatively impermanent products, which can be separated from correspondent acts only mentally (by abstraction), and relatively permanent products. A jump as the product of jumping or a dance as the product of dancing can be distinguished from acts only mentally and are relatively impermanent. A sculpture as a product of sculpturing is a relatively permanent. Products of physical acts i.e. physical products are either impermanent (e.g. a cry as the product of involuntary crying), or permanent (e.g. a plait as the product of plaiting). Permanent products of physical acts exist longer than the acts which have created them. All the products of psychical acts i.e. psychical products are impermanent (e.g. a thought as the product of thinking, a sensation as the product of sensing, a decision as the product of deciding).
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3.2.2. Material of acts and intentional acts Twardowski notices that some acts are directed at some entities. Entities things in particular to which physical acts are directed, constitute the material of these acts (e.g. sand in which there is (a trace of) a footprint). The product of a physical act directed at a certain material is not this material itself but a new structure of this material (created by the act): the product of a directed physical act inheres in the material of this act. This entity, to which a certain spiritual act is directed, constitutes the object of this act (e.g. when we imagine a Tatra landscape this landscape is the objects of our act of imaging). Acts which are directed at some objects are intentional acts. According to Twardowski, all psychical acts are intentional. Twardowski adds that there are properties of products which do not belong to acts creating these products. For instance, it happens that a dream comes false, but not an act or dreaming. A question but not questioning can be unintelligible. 3.3. Components of consciousness In Twardowskis conceptual scheme, spiritual acts and their products which can be only mentally separated are called empirical components of consciousness or psychical facts. They are cognizable only by selfconsciousness. Only states or somebodys own consciousness are immediately cognizable by a given human being. Try to think about something, e.g. about your favorite dish, about Institute of Philosophy at Warsaw University or about the melody of Robert Schumanns Dreaming. Our thinking of something consists in presenting a certain object in our mind. In Brentanian tradition, inherited by Twardowski, presenting is the basic kind of spiritual acts. It is a necessary condition of all other, secondary and more complicated spiritual acts, in particular of judging, feeling and deciding. On the other hand, judging is the necessary condition of feeling and deciding. Presenting and judging, as well as reasoning, are kinds of thinking: (a) presenting is thinking of something (e.g. of Sphinx, of ice cream I have just eaten); (b) judging is thinking that something is such-and-such (e.g. that Sphinx is huge, that the ice cream was delicious); (c) reasoning is thinking about something (e.g. about the solution of a riddle or about the influence of ice cream on my throat). All secondary spiritual acts are bipolar and we can match them in the following way: (a) allowing denying; (b) rejoicing worrying; (c) desiring refraining. The first one of every pair is a positive, the second one a negative act.
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According to Twardowski all spiritual acts basic as well as secondary are intentional (i.e. directed at something). And every act possesses a certain object. 3.4. Act, content, and object of presentation Imagine the Institute of Philosophy at Warsaw University. Many people have presented (themselves) this object but probably every presentation was different from another; however, all these presentations have the same object. Thus, Twardowski distinguished the content of presentation from its object (which were not precisely distinguished in Brentano's school). The product of an act of presenting is the content of a given presentation. This content is what is presented in a given act. The object of a given act is presented by the content of this act. Suppose that he person A presents himself the city where Twardowski was born; the person B present himself the city where the congress after Napoleons wars took place. Both presentations have the same object (scil. Vienna), but they have different contents. Twardowski was convinced that every presentation has exactly one object. On the other hand every entity including impossible, intentional, and unreal entities can become the object of a presentation. These convictions can be explained by analogy to names: according to Twardowski, there is always one and only one object named by a given name used in a given utterance. Saying that Warsaw University is a university we have in mind the fact that one object (here Warsaw University) is identical with another but also one object (here with a certain university). The difference between an act, a content and an object of presentation is real, not just logical. Twardowski gives the following arguments for that thesis: (1) The existence of a content of presentation is not a condition of the existence of an object. A given content of presentation is an existing entity whenever the act of this presentation exists; whereas the object can be an existent, as well as non-existent and even impossible entity. Object of presentation of the Institute of Philosophy is real but the object of presentation of Pegasus is not real. (2) Two presentations with different contents (e.g. the presentation of the city located at the site of Roman Juvavum and the presentation of the birthplace of Mozart) can have the same object. (4) Some properties of an object of presentation cannot be properties of the corresponding content. For example, the object of a presentation of the golden mountain is extensive and golden etc.; the content of this presentation is neither extensive, nor golden.

3.5. Images Among presentations, Twardowski distinguished images, i.e. intuitive presentations, and concepts, i.e. unintuitive ones. 3.5.1. Concreteness and vagueness of images The intuitiveness of images consists in their concreteness and vagueness. A given presentation is concrete if attributes of its object are (co)presented by the content in an undifferentiated way, and consequently are not differentiated in this content. For instance, auditory impressions received during a perception of violin sounds blend, and even if someone is able to distinguish violin sounds from e.g. piano sounds, he does not distinguish components of the former sounds during the process of their perception. When we imagine, for instance, a certain person, all the attributes of this person create an undifferentiated whole, and they can be isolated only by analysis. A given image is vague if only some components of the presented object are explicitly (co)presented by its content. For instance, in an image of a toothache, the feeling of the ache is in general distinct; on the other hand, the impressions of drilling or extracting are indistinct. When we imagine a face of any person, the features of this face the profile, the form of the lips etc. appear sometimes more distinct than, for instance, the color of the eyes. Only entities, which are, were or could be perceived or self-perceived, can be intuitively presented objects e.g. our pain, our joy and our convictions are such entities that can be perceived intuitively. 3.5.2. Perceptive, reproductive and productive images There are three general kinds of images: perceptive, reproductive and productive ones. Perceptive images are fundamental, and all other images are derivative. Perceptive images are images taking place for instance during perceiving an orange just seen, a melody just heard, or anger just experienced. The content of perceptive images is a synthesis of some components: sense impressions and psychical elements. For instance, sight impression does not allow us to think of objects surrounding us as of three-dimensional objects. However, we perceive them as three-dimensional objects because of our previous perceptions and judgments which create in us a permanent disposition (habit) to see objects three-dimensionally. According to Twardowski, every perception consists of such a content, of corresponding impressions, and also of a judgment stating the existence of the object of the constitutive image. Thus, perceptions are a kind of judgments. Reproductive images are memorial reproductions of perceptive images. The examples are: an image of a landscape seen a day before, an image of an affection in the moment of death of a friend who died long ago; an image of a melody heard some time ago, etc.
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Productive images are composed of the following components: (a) an underlying image, and particularly the reproductive image of the entity similar to the object to be productively imagined; (b) an image of judgment that either assigns to the productively imagined object such properties that de facto are not properties of this object at all, or denies it the properties that it in fact possesses; (c) an image of the initially imagined object but with the first properties or without the second properties mentioned above. Productive images divide into involuntary ones (e.g. an image of a dragon in a dream) and voluntary ones (e.g. an image of joy to be experienced at some future moment when dreams come true).

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