To clash with common sense and to patch up cultural holes: philosophical culture in the works of Leszek Nowak and Józef Niżnik

Abstract

The article raises the question of cultural function of philosophy and acts of philosophizing. The argument that follows reinterprets Leszek Nowak’s and Józef Niżnik’s metaphilosophical theories as philosophical culture, i.e. the essential features of philosophy indicated by Nowak and Niżnik, are viewed as relatively common presuppositions about philosophy shared by philosophers (implicitly or explicitly). In this way, viewing philosophy as cultural game leads to the question of what kind of epistemological-cultural game philosophy would be. I address the question by referring to Andrzej Zybertowicz’s model of four types of epistemological-cultural games: reproduction, discovery, redefinition, and design. In the final part of the text, I follow Niżnik’s idea that the function of philosophy is to patch up cracks (which I dub “ontological holes) in human symbolic universe and briefly analyze two examples from history of philosophy of such breaks that lead to development of fully fledged philosophical stances.