Poland, philosophy in

3. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Until 1830, influences of the French Enlightenment, German Kantianism and the Scottish philosophy of ‘common sense’ continued to be the main traits identifiable in Polish philosophy (see Neo-Kantianism; Common Sense School). Precursors of the Messianic philosophy which would dominate between the uprisings of November 1830 and January 1863 also appeared, marked by certain supra-national traits connected with Romanticism and post-Kantian German Idealism (see German idealism; Romanticism, German). These also possessed certain national characteristics that were part of Poland’s religious and cultural traditions, and especially of its political and social situation as a nation deprived of statehood and sovereignty. General features of this Messianism include spiritualism, a highly personalized notion of the relationship between God and humans, and an orientation towards action and change – especially moral transformation of the person and the nation.

Most prominent at the time were Józef Maria Hoene-Wroński (d. 1854), who propounded a decidedly rationalistic philosophy, and August Cieszkowski (d. 1894) who represented the non-rationalistic side. Both systems, which had Neoplatonist orientations, were richer than Hegelianism by virtue of their theories of action and of the future. This was also the period of the so-called ‘Catholic Philosophy’ which, in Poland, often came closer to fideism and either was subject to Hegelianism or opposed to it. (Outside Poland, this philosophy came to be connected to neo-scholasticism.) Jewish philosophy developed in Poland during this period, influenced by Enlightenment rationalism and German Idealism. Its most prominent representatives included Mendel Lewin Satanower and Nachman Krochmal.

Positivism (as well as variations on Neo-Kantianism which came close to positivism) became widespread after 1863. This occurred not just as a result of the influence of Comte, J.S. Mill, Spencer and Bain, as well as scientism and Darwin’s theory of evolution (see Darwin, C.): a domestic pre-positivistic tradition with roots in both the eighteenth century and Poland’s politico-social conditions also entered the picture. Representatives of positivism during this period include Michał Wiszniewski (d. 1865) who also sympathized with the Scottish school (though he was not without Kantian influences). An English translation of his Charaktery rozumów ludzkich (Sketches and Characters or the Natural History of Human Intellects) was published in London in 1853. Within a broader understanding of positivism, Polish contributions are evident in the fields of scholarly research on mediumism (Investigations of problems concerning hypnosis and parapsychology – Julian Ochorowicz, d. 1935) and the methodology of medicine (Władysław Biegański, d. 1919). Representatives of other philosophical orientations of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries include Henryk Struve (d. 1912), an eclectic post-Hegelian scholar, and Wincenty Lutosławski (d. 1954), a proponent of the ‘national philosophy’ who was influential not so much for his spiritualistic metaphysics as his Origin and Growth of Plato’s Logic (1897), a work on the chronology of Plato’s corpus.

A new era of development began in Polish philosophy at the end of the eighteenth century, largely due to the 1895 appointment of Kazimierz Twardowski to the chair of philosophy at the University of Lwów, and to the establishment of the first specialized philosophical journal in Poland, Przegląd Filozoficzny, in Warsaw in 1897–8. The Lwów School (subsequently called the Lwów–Warsaw School) founded by Twardowski emphasized the use of detailed analysis, clear and precise philosophizing and inspired research in logic and methodology. (Notwithstanding certain common figures, one should distinguish the Lwów–Warsaw School of Philosophy from the Warsaw School of logic – which arose after 1918 – and the Warsaw School of mathematics.)

Many of Twardowski’s students became prominent in their own right in the fields of philosophy, logic and psychology. Leopold Blaustein (d. 1944) was the author of many original works on descriptive psychology and was a pioneer in psychology pertaining to film and radio. Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (d. 1963) produced important results in theory of language and logical analysis of the theoretical problems of cognition. His works, especially those published in Erkenntnis and in the Polish Studia Philosophica (along with Tarski’s famous 1933 paper ‘Pojęcie prawdy w językach nauk dedukcyjnych’ – translated as ‘The Concept of Truth in the Languages of the Deductive Sciences’) influenced the development of the Vienna Circle and gave birth to logical semantics (see Tarski, A.; Vienna Circle). Czeżowski (d. 1981), another student of Twardowski, turned from formal logic to general theory of science and treated logic as learning in the general form of a science. Admitting various forms of immediate knowledge, he was a probabilist in terms of evaluating knowledge in relation to reality. Zawirski (d. 1948) also became prominent: he produced the book L’évolution de la notion du temps as well as various works in the philosophy of physics, multivalent and intuitionist logic and was a founder of causal logic (see Polish logic).

Other philosophical orientations were evident in interwar Poland. Empirical-critical thought was promoted by thinkers such as Władysław Heinrich (d. 1957), Narcyz Łubnicki (d. 1988) and Bolesław J. Gawecki (d. 1984). Joachim Metallman (d. c.1942) was primarily interested in epistemology and methodology of the natural sciences. Leon Chwistek (d. 1944) pursued formal logic, searching for the logical system most compatible with nominalism which could simultaneously serve as a basis for metaphysics. He was also an artist and art theoretician. Władysław Tatarkiewicz (d. 1980) was distinguished in the history of philosophy, the history of aesthetics and art history. The style of philosophizing in his works on axiology is evocative of G.E. Moore and similar authors in analytic philosophy (see Axiology).

Benedykt Bornstein occupies a unique position in this era through his metaphysical speculation, connected as it was with logic and mathematics (known as geometric logic or ‘topologic’). He linked pan-rationalism with accentuation of the foundational role of intellectual intuition. His last publications include Geometric Logic (1939), Teoria absolutu. Metafizyka jako nauka ścisła (The Theory of the Absolute. Metaphysics as Science) (1948). Roman Ingarden (d. 1970) promoted an objectivist version of phenomenology, thereby providing an alternative to the Lwów–Warsaw School and to minimalist analytical-positivist thought.

Notwithstanding the presence of several active representatives, Thomism in Poland before the Second World War possessed an eclectic and derivative character compared to Thomism abroad. The dominant influence came from the Louvain School, from whence came the founder and first rector of the Catholic University of Lublin (KUL), Idzi Radziszewski. Two important initiatives deserve note. First, the international project ‘Corpus Philosophorum Medii Aevii’ was founded at this time by Konstanty Michalski (d. 1947), a distinguished historian of philosophy and pioneer of the Thomistic philosophy of history. Second, on the occasion of the third Polish Philosophical Congress in Cracow in 1936, the project of the renewal of Thomistic philosophy and theology was formulated by what came to be known as the ‘Cracow Circle’. This group of four opted to employ contemporary tools of logic. Their initiative was a novelty, even beyond Polish Thomism, and their aims were in part accepted at KUL after 1945.

Despite the loss of many promising academics and students during the Second World War, philosophy in Poland has been significantly active since that time. Having strengthened its political position, the ruling communist party sought to subordinate the whole culture to its Marxist ideology. However, despite many pressures and restrictions, the Communists never quite succeeded in eliminating non-Marxist orientations in Polish intellectual life. The traditions of the Lwów–Warsaw School continued in logic and in the methodology of the sciences. The objectivist phenomenology of Ingarden continued, at least in aesthetics and art theory, while at KUL, the Lublin School of existential Thomism developed. Polish thought passed through periods of Stalinism, Marxism, the Solidarity phase of 1980–1 and into the final breakthrough of 1989–90, which ended the domination of the Communist party.