Upór – nowe oblicze pewności. Luter a nowoczesność

Stubbornness – a new mode of cognitive being in the world. Resolve (Entschlossenheit), decisiveness – this is how we can philosophically characterize Luther’s attitude, which is in fact a continuation of medieval disputes, and of the Franciscan and Ockhamist nominalist priority of will over reason, decision over cognition. This is linked with the modern passion for certainty – first, religious certainty (Reformation, Counter-Reformation) and then philosophical certainty, in the new Cartesian/Leibnizian paradigm of philosophizing more geometrico. Finally, there is the scientistic illusion of possessing the philosopher’s stone. All these changes thoroughly modified the notion of truth and how it is employed, giving rise to a new doctrinairism as an invention of modernity. The first to take a stand against this trend was Nietzsche, writing of truth as “a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms,” fretting poetically over his own thoughts: at first joyous and soaring, they coagulate in deadly earnest and harden into – God forbid – truths. Here the notion of truth as being right is fundamentally shaken. This work was continued systematically and effectively in the 20th century by Martin Heidegger.