Józef Maria Bocheński’s Formal Analysis of the Prima via From 1953

Abstract

Drewnowski formed the so-called Cracow Circle in the 30s of the previous century. Its main aim was to utilize contemporary logic in theology and philosophy of God. The first work in this area was Salamucha's formal analysis of the prima via, published in 1934. The article was reviewed by Bocheński, who provided a number of remarks concerning Salamucha's analysis. At that time he did not decide to conduct a holistic research into the prima via. That was done by him only at the end of his life as part of the logical analysis of the quinque viae. This paper aims at presenting Bocheński's unpublished formal analysis of the prima via from 1953 and proving that it constitutes a valuable completion of his published formal analyses, which come from the 1980s and 1990s. Above all, they provide a more insightful analysis of the notion of movement in the prima via, as well as the form of axiom expressing the lack of regress into infinity. In the formalizations of 1953 there are also interesting analyses concerning the ancestral closure of three-argument relations.