Czy lingwistyka potrzebuje metafizyki?

Abstract

A deep reflection on contemporary linguistics, both in terms of its subject matter and methods, as well as in terms of its aims, leads to the observation that naturalism constitutes the basis of the cognitive work of linguists in the mainstream of contemporary research. The essence of philosophical, and hence also linguistic, naturalism lies in materialism, the philosophical legacy of Marx and Engels and their political heirs: Lenin and Stalin. In this light, the title question regarding the possible need for implementing the object, methods and aims of classical metaphysics into linguistics, seems highly legitimate. The problem with linguistic naturalism is, among other factors, its failure to address the real basis of communication, and its nihilism, expressed in the absence of the key questions of linguistics: why (is) language? and for what purposeful (intentional) cause (is) language? In this paper, I will discuss the problems of linguistic naturalism along with the corresponding questions using the dialectical method of St Thomas Aquinas.