History

Historical events following the Second World War caused the Faculty of Arts to lose the necessary human potential for the development of formal logic after 1949. In the first half of the 1950s, modern logic and the methodology of sciences was taught only at the Department of the History of Philosophy and Logic. This was thanks to V. Filkorn. The number of study programmes that involved teaching logic or possibly logic and the methodology of sciences gradually increased in number as late as 1959–1962. Besides philosophy, logic became an integral part of the study of psychology, journalism and pedagogy.

The Department of Logic was established at the Faculty of Arts in September 1962. Its founding members were the former teachers of the Department of the History of Philosophy and Logic, dissolved in 1960, who specialized in logic (V. Filkorn, G. Riška), and fresh philosophy graduates (P. Cmorej, R. P. Hambálek and J. Viceník) – members of the student study group of logic, which had been formed in the late 1950s by a small group of students who, under the influence of Prof. Filkorn, began to delve into the problems of logic and the general methodology of sciences. The tradition of the study group survived and continued to thrive at the newly established department. In 1963 it led to the foundation of the Bratislava Logic Circle BRALOK, which worked to organize regular seminars at the department. The leadership of the department was entrusted to Prof. V. Filkorn, who remained its head until 1985.

Following the foundation of the Department of Logic, formal instruction in logic gradually won its way to nearly all non-language disciplines at the faculty and to some other faculties and educational institutions at the university. In almost all cases, it took the form of one-term courses in logic or possibly logic and the methodology of sciences. Only students doing a single major in philosophy took a two-term course in logic and a two-term course in the methodology of sciences. The 1970s brought lectures that went beyond the basic courses in logic. A course titled the Basics of Higher Mathematics offered instruction in non-classical logics and set theory.

The research specialization of individual faculty members of the Department of Logic was in its first phase, i.e. in the 1960s, given by the way the department had constituted itself. Their research interests arose in the context of the above-mentioned student study group and were to a large extent affected by the fact that it was essential for the beginning teachers to master the fundamentals of logic. Therefore, most works of this period were not published until 1965-1969.

The Department of Logic was significantly marked by the so-called “normalization” years of 1969 and 1970. There were dismissals and the remaining staff had only limited possibilities to publish. In consequence, opportunities for international cooperation were minimal. The department was part of the Faculty of Arts, which was considered and openly referred to as an “ideological faculty” by the then decision-makers and had to cope with all the consequences of such labelling. Some teachers like P. Cmorej were banned from teaching, publishing and participating in international academic events, prevented from enhancing their qualifications and had their salaries frozen for many years; others like J. Szomolányi and R. P. Hambálek faced less strict restrictions related to their professional growth and publication activity; and still others like G. Riška were prevented from returning home from a study trip abroad and thus forced to emigrate.

The Department of Logic was also marked by the climate of existential insecurity reigning at the faculty and general stagnation of intellectual thought in the 1970s and early 1980s. 1981 brought an organizational change which involved incorporating the Section of the Methodology of Sciences into the department and changing its name into the Department of Logic and the Methodology of Sciences, yet, in other respects, the intellectual life at the department continued to be characterized by inertia. The fact that the staff composition of the Department of Logic and the Methodology of Sciences in January 1985 was identical with the sum of the employees of the original Department of Logic and the Section of the Methodology of Sciences as of January 1971 bears witness to this. Things set in motion and gathered pace in the second half of the 1980s and especially in the 1990s, which were marked by higher staff turnover. Between 1985 and 2000, as many as seven teachers resigned from the department.

In the period of the 1970s and 1980s, a clear distinction was made between two dominant research areas. The department centres on formal logic and its application in the semantics of natural language on the one hand and on the philosophy of science, general methodology and especially the methodology of social sciences on the other. In the 1980s the department devised an elective one-term course on the philosophical questions of logic and a special seminar in logic. Both of them dealt with topics like the philosophical questions of semantics of possible worlds in the context of theory of models for intuitional logic, aletic modalities for epistemic, temporal and other intentional logics, theories of the truth, theories of meaning and others.

After 1989 there was an expansion in the teaching of logic and the methodology of sciences especially within the study programme of philosophy. In the second half of the 1990s, 4^th and 5^th year students could opt for the so-called logic-methodology direction of Philosophy Studies. The department enhanced the number of elective courses, which built up on compulsory courses in logic and the methodology of sciences. In the 1990s the range of research topics extended to include the history of logic, intentional logic, the semantics of natural language, mathematical logic, philosophical questions of logic and analytical philosophy.

In 1985–1988 the department was run by Assoc. Prof. J. Viceník. In 1988 he was replaced by Assoc. Prof. J. Szomolányi, who remained in office until 1998. Since 1998 the department has been managed by Professor. F. Gahér. In 2020, Assoc. Prof. Lukáš Bielik became the Department Chair.