Leon Chwistek

Polish avant-garde painter, theoretician of modern art, literary critic, logician, philosopher and mathematician.

Born 1884 in Kraków. Since 1929 he was a Professor of Logic at the University of Lwów in a position for which Alfred Tarski had also applied. In 1930s involved in a general system of philosophy of science, published in a book translated in in English 1948 as The Limits of Science.

In the 1920s-30s, many European philosophers attempted to reform traditional philosophy by means of mathematical logic. Leon Chwistek did not believe that such reform could succeed. He thought that reality could not be described in one homogeneous system, based on the principles of formal logic, because there was not one reality but many. He developed his theory of the multiplicity of realities first with regard to the arts. He distinguished four basic types of realities, then matched them with four basic types of painting: popular reality (common-sense realism) - Primitivism; physical reality (constructed by physics) - Realism; phenomenal reality (sensory impressions) - Impressionism; visionary/intuitive reality (dreams, hallucinations, subconscious states) - Futurism. He didn't intend to constitute a new metaphysical theory. He was a defender of "common sense" against metaphysics and irrational feeling. His theory of plural reality was merely an attempt to specify the various ways in which the term, “real,” is used. Chwistek's closest friend, Witkiewicz, harshly criticized his philosophical views; Witkiewicz’s philosophy was based on a monadic character to the individual's existence, embracing a multiplicity of existences, with the world being made up of a multiplicity of Particular Existences.

Died 1944 in Barwicha near Moscow.