Abstract: | The work Between critique and metaphysics. A study of Joseph Maréchal’s philosophy
is the first book in Polish devoted to the philosophy of Joseph Maréchal,
a Belgian Jesuit, commonly known as the founder of the “transcendental
Thomism”, as well as a scholar of mysticism, biologist, psychologist and theologian.
The book constitutes a study of the most important threads of his philosophy,
and consists of six chapters, introduction and conclusion.
The first chapter starts with a presentation of a larger context of Maréchal’s
philosophy. It includes, above all, the origins of the critical problem which,
mainly thanks to Descartes was inscribed into modern philosophy generating
idealism on the one hand, and evoking counter-reaction of the proponents of
classical, realistically — oriented on Scholasticism on the other. A larger context
of Maréchal’s philosophy outlined in such a way is inasmuch important as it
evokes a narrow context, namely an attempt to solve the critical problem proposed
by the neo-Scholastic Louvain school. Both contexts, the narrow and the
larger one, are, hence, described in the first chapter of the work in question as
peculiar foundations in which Maréchal’s philosophy grows. Although a philosophical
doctrine of the Belgian Jesuit treats the neo-Scholastic programme of
a Louvain school as a reference point, it, nevertheless, blazes its own trail of
solving the critical problem which Maréchal take in early period of his scientific
activity. Because of that, the second chapter is to show how the natural studies
at the Louvain University and an early period of a scientific-didactic activity, as
well as an idea of a dynamic finality of intellect, a key one from the perspective
of his later attempt to solve the critical problem, are shaped in Maréchal’s
thought during the first years of an intellectual formation in the Society of Jesus.
Its philosophical aspect, however, is not limited in Maréchal’s conception
exclusively to the doctrine of St. Thomas of Aquin. The third chapter presents
what influence on Maréchal’s formation is observed in the case of other philosophical
factors: openness to modern thinking trends (especially including a discovery
of the philosophy of acting, as well as the influence of Maréchal’s brethren,
and a dialogue with Kant’s philosophy). The core of the fourth chapter, after
discussing the development of the so-called epistemological fundamental problem
presented by the Belgian Jesuit in the first four brochures of The starting point of
the metaphysics, is the analysis of Maréchal’s interpretation of Kant’s philosophy.
This is a phenomenalistic interpretation which, aiming at making the conception put forward by the philosopher from Königsberg coherent, also points to the perspective
of overcoming the aporias in Kant’s theory by the dynamism of intellect,
founding, in turns, the foundations of the Thomistic metaphysics of the
cognizing subject. That is why, the fifth chapter is to show how Maréchal aims
at a critical justification of the validity of the affirmation of an objective reality
taking place, in his opinion, in each judgment, by means of building a peculiar
metaphysics of the cognizing subject in the Brochure 5 of The starting point of the
metaphysics. The very analysis becomes completed in the sixth chapter with
Maréchal’s deduction of ontological affirmation, and its transcendental transposition.
By means of this deduction, the Belgian Jesuit makes an attempt to prove
that in each affirmation act of a given objective reality — the reality captured in
its ontological basis — the affirmation of the real existence of God as an absolute
and necessary condition of the possibility of an objective cognition also takes
place implicitly. In view of that, the deduction of an ontological affirmation constitutes
the core of Maréchal’s attempt to consolidate the classical metaphysics,
and so is presented in this study. Between criticque and metaphysics. A study of
Joseph Maréchal’s philosophy is addressed to philosophers, philosophy students,
as well as all readers interested in broadening their knowledge on neo-Scholastic
philosophy. |