Разговор:Бранислав Петронијевић/Архива 1

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Branislav Petronijevic (1875-1954), Serbian philosopher, mathematician, and paleontologist, was born in Sovljak, near the town of Ub, in Central Serbia. He is considered the most distinguished Serbian philosopher of the first half of the 20th Century. After graduating from Belgrade's Grande Ecole and the University of Leipzig, he taught Philosophy at the University of Belgrade for many years, and was a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU). In paleontology, Petronijevic was the first to distinguish between the genera Archaeopteryx and Archaeornis; he also discovered new characteristics of the genera Tritylodon and Moeritherium.

Petronijevic systematically treated many problems, both in pure philosophy and in scientific methodology. He considered himself a "born metaphysician" and devoted himself to constructing his own metaphysical system. But, although original, it grew out of the nineteenth-century empirical metaphysics of Hermann Lotze, Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann, and Johannes Volkelt.

Petronijevic's epistemological theory of empiriorationalism claimed that all contents of consciousness are absolutely real in the same sense as things per se. Thus there can be no absolute or immanent or transcendental illusion. Petronievich rejected phenomenalism also, specifically Kant's. Petronijevic claimed that an analysis of directly given empirical contents of consciousness shows that there are qualitatively simple evidences of experience, the 'givenness of something" -- the givenness of simple sensuous qualities as basic correlates of the laws of thought. Thought and being are identical, and apodictic knowledge of being itself is possible.

In his main philosophical work, Principen der Metaphysik, Petronijevic claimed that the basic task of metaphysics is to explain the structure of the "world of multitude, diversity, and change" as the "pre-evidence" of the directly given empirical and transcendental reality. According to him, the world is a manifold of "discrete points of being" and of quality, of will, etc. The world as a manifold is possible only because the real points of being are separated by "real acts of negation,"which determine the qualities of being and without which being would be absolutely homogeneous. Petronijevic regarded the principle of negation as "the absolute principle of the world," of both being and thought; only on the basis of this principle can the diversity and multiplicity of the world be deducted and explained. On similar grounds Petronievich considered the principle of sufficient reason the fundamental law of true knowledge.

Petronijevic synthesized Spinoza's monism and Gottfried Leibniz's monadological pluralism in his monopluralism. His original and profound "hypermetaphysical" teachings on the origin and development of the qualitative and quantitative manifoldness of the world have yet to be studied and evaluated. His views on real space and real time, which he regarded as "discreta" rather than "abstract continua," deserve special attention. He constructed a new geometry of real discrete space.

In the field of ethics Petronijevic formed a specific concept of malism, perspective indifferentism and transcendental optimism. In addition, he wrote several important works on history of philosophy, logic and psychology. His Logic is still used.

Petronijevic's view was essentially idealistic, since he held that absolutely unconscious atoms are impossible and that the soul, which is immortal, is a conscious monad.

Petronijevic upheld an ethical theory of transcendental optimism and free will. He devoted a number of studies to aesthetics, particularly in the work of the great Serbian poet and philosopher Petar II Petrovic Njegos and Russian author Leo Tolstoy.

Among his most notable contributions to the logical foundation of mathematics are his work on typical geometries, on the problem of the finitude and infinitude of space, the three-bodies problem, on differential quotients, and on mathematical induction.In psychology he developed theories about the observation of compound colors. In the history of science his most notable works were on the methodology of Newton's discovery of the law of gravitation, on Urbain Le Verrier's and Johann Gottfried Galle's discovery of Neptune, and on Dmitri Mendeleev's discovery of the Periodic table of chemical elements.

He is also fondly remembered as a teacher and mentor to Nada Stoiljkovic, Ksenija Atanasijevic, Djoko Slijepcevic, Dimitrije Najdanovic and many others.

Works by Petronijevic:

• Der ontologische Beweis fur das Dasein des Absoluten. Leipzig, 1897;
• Der Satz vom Grunde. Belgrade, 1898;
• Prinzipien der Erkenntnislehre. Berlin, 1900;
• Prinzipien der Metaphysik, 2 vols. Heidelberg, 1904-1911;
• Die typischen Geometrien und das Unendliche. Hedelberg, 1907;
• L'Evolution universelle. Paris, 1921;
• Resume des traveaux philosophiques et scientifiques de Branislav Petronievic. L'Academie Royale Serbe, Bulletin de l'Academie des Lettres, No. 2. Belgrade. 1937.

Works on Petronijevic:

• Spomenica Branislav Petronievic. SAN No. 13. Belgrade, 1957.
• Numerous articles on Petronievic by various authors, including Bogdan Sesic.