Andrzeja Nowickiego krytyka języka religijnego

Abstract

Andrzej Nowicki, a Marxist philosopher, has created an unconventional way of understanding atheism. In his view its content is not designated by the Greek ethymology of that word. Atheism, according to him, is not merely a negation of the transcendental reality, but most of all an afirmation of values hidden under the mistified form of the religious language. He carries out the principal criticism of religion, aside to the well-known forms (a ciriticism of the essence, genesis and function of religion), by proving a nonsensical character of the religious language. He claims that religious concepts have no real designates, as they are commonly thought to have. It is rather the designate-creating and personifying consciousness of man that makes use of a particular way of speaking to create the designates of the religious language. They are in fact humanistic, rationalistic and materialistic values under the disguise of a mistified „shell” of the religious language. The reson why Nowicki's analyses are inapt comes from that that he disregards the nature of the language in general, its basic distinctions as well as the questions of verifiableness of the language. Apart from that, is it possible to study the value of the religious language and its semantic field, if one a priori negates the existence of whatever forms of the extramaterial reality?