Czeżowski et al. on Persistence

In 1951, Tadeusz Czeżowski’s paper Identyczność a indywiduum i jego trwanie [Identity and the Individual in its Persistence] appeared in Sprawozdania Towarzystwa Naukowego w Toruniu. The text documents the views of the representatives of the Lvov-Warsaw School on the issues of persistence and identity of objects through time. The paper is a useful signpost in finding, identifying, and analyzing these positions in the available historical material. Czeżowski’s text provides very interesting interpretative details regarding the discussed positions, which are absent in contemporary discussions of persistence through time. This paper aims, firstly, at analyzing Czeżowski’s text, secondly, at identifying and describing the positions of selected representatives of the School in relation to the issues under discussion, and thirdly, at capturing interpretative threads in the reconstructed positions, which, on the one hand, are absent from contemporary discussions, and which, on the other hand, can prove valuable even today. The general message of the text is the belief that although there were no systematic analyses of the issue of persistence through time conducted within the Lvov-Warsaw School, its representatives were aware of the issue and offered a number of solutions, which from today’s perspective are surprising in their boldness and novelty.