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Abstract:
In conclusion professor Kolakowski says that those three political positions are currently
compatibles; there is no reason to not be conservative-liberal-socialist.
It was a time when Marcin Król and Leszek Kołakowski collaborated closely in order to
the Unia Demokratyczna program creation. Later their political paths have mowed away,
far one from another. Marcin Krol became more conservative with the “Res Publica”
Publishing and without appreciation by the “Gazeta Wyborcza” political side. His last
notebook contains a lot of actual remarks based on powerful conflict between two main
parties: Platforma Obywatelska and PIS, nevertheless he stays always on the deeply critical
position in front of the PiS government. Notebook by Marcin Król, to be published in the
next academic year, we dispose of it thanks to the M. prof, Król daughter.
It is often said that the twentieth century has been devoid of political thinkers who can
stand comparison with Locke or Mill or Marx, let alone with Hobbes, Aristotle or Plato.
It is almost equally often said that this strange vacuum exists only in what might be
called ‘Anglo-Saxon political thinking’ – in the United States and Britain—the
suggestion being that continental Europe has been in continual intellectual ferment. The
tranquility of British politics has meant that there has been no great pressure to rethink
the intellectual foundations of social and political life.
One thing to be said about these contrasts is that most compelling twentieth-century
philosophy has been anti-political or un-political.
Was Jean-Paul Sartre very persuasive as a political analyst? Martin Heidegger’s brief
flirtation with the Nazis was not a considered attempt to derive political conclusions
from his analysis of human being, Albert Camus remains vastly more impressive as a
novelist than as a political thinker. Marxist theorists were rather political actors than
political thinkers. The next point is perhaps more important. The twentieth century has
been a century of doubts about reason and State. The success of the Nazis who were
avowedly contemptuous of rationality brought home both to their supporters and to their
victims the limited success of appeals to reason in political affairs. The rise of
analytical, anti-metaphysical philosophy gave intellectuals rather strong grounds for
doubting whether there was such a thing as rational moral commitment. Books like
Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic popularized the notion that moral expressions were a
sort of emotional bludgeon rather than candidates for truth or falsehood. This was called
the “boo-hooray” theory of ethics because of the way in which it analyzed statements
like “democracy is better than fascism” as ‘democracy hooray, fascism boo’. Thinkers
like Max Weber struggled to explain the paradoxical ways in which reason and
unreason interacted.
The latest attempt to reconstruct liberalism’s defences against blind reaction and wild
utopianism was being made by John Rawls, a Professor of Philosophy at Harvard
University, who had been patiently working away at the fundamental principles of
liberalism from the mid-1950s.
A Theory of Justice appeared in 1971; unlike most philosophy books it did not drop
stillborn from the press, but became compulsory reading for almost every American
intellectual. Rawls argued that we would want to institutionalise two principles: the first
is that everybody should have as much freedom as is compatible with a like freedom for
everybody else. The second is that where there were gains from social co-operation,
these should be shared out in such a way that the worst-off person did as well as
possible. Moreover, these two principles stand in a determinate order to each other, the
first takes absolute priority over the second – no rational person would risk his liberty
for the sake of prosperity.
1-2 Anglo-Saxon political thinking
In terms of initial claim that what modern liberal theorists have had to do is come to
terms with the twin pressures of Marxist attacks on liberalism, and irrationalist accounts
of political motivation. Rawls’ theory is both more old-fashioned than Russell’s (The
Principles of Social Reconstruction) and yet in some ways more successful. It sticks to
one crucial task – clearing liberalism of the charge that its conception of justice and its
notions of human rights are simply a screen for the operations of the capitalist economy.
The idea that serious thinking about politics on a grand scale has ceased in the twentieth
century as a consequence of catastrophic events and disabling insights regarding the
nature of mind itself is an Anglo-American idea, a mid-Atlantic – one might almost say
Nato-politan – thought. In the epoch of the camp, the bomb and the bureaucrat, it came
to seem that to write, to teach with urgency and ambition regarding the human condition
or politics was to be part of the problem rather than a contributor to possible solutions.
For a while the crucial challenges of the twentieth century seemed to have stunned
political philosophy into silence; and this was particularly true of Britain and America,
where a certain distance from the central dramas and ideological conflicts had added
strength to the belief that Belsen and the Gulag, Freud and Marx were evidence of the
fact that the promise of politics is a lie. Often it has been émigrés, exiles and
intellectually displaced persons who have responded most directly to these dramas and
conflicts, and in attempting to make them intelligible have generated fresh ways of
thinking about our present situation.
There is already a critical tradition based on Hannah Arendt’s works, especially Eichmann in
Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil, what seems to be confronted with the other
philosophers, represented by Gershom Scholem. Their letters where the controversy is
expressed, became a ground material of this communication, following the challenge to
affront philosophically unspoken evil. Arendt’s report of the Eichmann trial became a piece
of evidence for insufficient understanding what justify and moral is. Also Karl Jaspers has
pronounces his own opinion. The examination in details of each part of that controversy,
comparing to Kant’s metaphysics and in front of the Eichmann trial was one of most
important Cezary Wodziński’s achievements in Światłocienie zła (Clair-Obscur of Evil).
She wrote in Postscriptum of Eichmann in Jerusalem: „And the question of individual guilt or
innocence, the act of meting out justice to both the defendant and the victim, are the only things at
stake in a criminal court. The Eichmann trial was no exception, even though the court here was
confronted with a crime it could not find in the lawbooks and with a criminal whose like was
unknown in any court, at least prior to the Nuremberg Trials. The present report deals with nothing
but the extent to which the court in Jerusalem succeeded in fulfilling the demand of justice.” 1
Kant is certainly one of the most influent German thinkers of the Modernity. His political
work, Zum ewigen Frieden. Ein philosophischer Entwurf, proves that beside German
tradition, Leibniz and Wolff, he was open to the ideas of such philosophers as Locke, Hume
and Rousseau who, in the 760s, began to have influence in Germany. It would be a mistake to
characterize Kant’s view during this period as either a thoroughgoing rationalism or as a
traditional form of empiricism. Though he was convinced of the truth of Newton’s physics, he
was far from clear as to how this science of phenomena was to be founded in a metaphysical
system. Like most of his contemporaries, Kant was for a long time an eclectic who did not
dogmatically accept one fixed metaphysical system as the only possible explanation of the
world. Paradoxically, when in a middle of developing of the Heidegger’s philosophy we find
a seminar (1929) about Fichte (his first work was published anonymously and, being in tune
with Kant’s philosophy, it was initially supposed to be by Kant himself, from whom a long-
awaited book on the philosophy of religion was expected at the time), Der Deutsche
Idealismus und die philosophische Problemlage der Gegenwart(GA 28), Fichte becomes a
precious ally in combat with dominant neo-Kantianism.
Unlike what he will employ to do after his Turning Point, Heidegger does not live to go
beyond metaphysics (Űberwindung), but rather tries to provide it with more solid bases, by
deploying it from finitude of Dasein. When he stages his philosophical debate with German
idealism, Heidegger locates his nodal point in the prefix 'meta' which has the meaning of an
overtaking: "the first philosophy is metaphysical, that is to say overtaking (Hinausgehen )
constitutes its very heart. It is a crucial moment in order to surpass the universe of
Heidegger’s official masters: Wildelband and Rickert, both neo-Kantian philosophers in
Freiburg and Heidelberg. Their convictions follow the slogan Back to Kant! (Kant und die
Epigonen, Otto Liebmann, 1865), the aim to encourage a sense of intellectual responsibility
and a renewed recognition of the limits of human knowledge, in a Kantian spirit.
After the Second World War Jürgen Habermas, the major contemporary representative of the
‘second-generation’ Frankfurt School, resumed the critique of the view that social theory can
and ought to be objective, disinterested and value-free. In Erkenntnis und Interesse
(Knowledge and Human Interests, 1968) he argues that the Kantian problem of how reason
can provide a motive for action can only be solved by taking knowledge itself to be grounded
in fundamental human interests, in deep-seated needs. Human beings seek to master nature
through labour, and the interest in technical control inherent in labour underpins the natural
1
H. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, Penguin Books, New York 2006, s. 298. W języku polskim: “Tym zaś co się
liczy w sądzie kryminalnym, jest wyłącznie zagadnienie jednostkowej winy lub niewinności, akt wymierzenia
sprawiedliwości zarówno oskarżonemu, jak i ofierze. Proces Eichmanna nie był wyjątkiem, mimo że sąd stanął
tu w obliczu zbrodni, jakiej nie wymieniają podręczniki prawa, i zbrodniarza, jaki nie stanął dotąd przed żadnym
sądem, w każdym razie do czasów procesów norymberskich. Niniejsza relacja zajmuje się wyłącznie stopniem,
w jakim sądowi w Jerozolimie udało się sprostać wymogom sprawiedliwości.” H. Arendt, Eichmann w
Jerozolimie, tłum. Adam Szostkiewicz, s. 387.
sciences. Moreover, human beings also interact and communicate with one another, and the
interest in this generates another kind of inquiry, that of the historical and hermeneutic
disciplines (history, social anthropology, cultural and literary studies, etc). A third type of
interest is emancipatory. It underpins inquires with a critical orientation such as philosophy,
psychoanalysis, and critical social theory, which analyses and seeks to overcome the
distortions imposed by the workings of power and domination in society. Its aim is to realize
human freedom and responsibility, and its ideal is a society in which social arrangements are
those that would result from an unconstrained consensus achieved in open and well-informed
dialogue.
One of the great articulations of the difference between Habermas and his predecessors comes
from the status which the latter confers on language. Herbermas' inaugural lesson in Frankfurt
refers, on this point, to a motif by which he links structure of language and emancipantion.
Stefan Muler-Doohm makes the ironic connection with extracts from Horkheimer's
correspondence unknown to Habermas. It is this point that seems to make a link as much as a
discontinuity with the first critical theory: the preeminence of language in Habermas' thought
will lead the latter towards new territories in the 1970s. Thus, if Theorie et Pratique as well as
L'Espace public are works marked with the Franctortois seal of social theory; If Habermas's
positioning in the quarrel of positivism which opposes Adorno to Popper confirms it in a
scientific proximity with his master, the little-known meeting with the psychologist Alexander
Mitscherlich will lead Habermas to take into account the cognitive dimension of the accounts
of the dimension cognitive social processes, of which language is a prominent manifestation.
The Theory of communicative action, pure in 1981, is thus undeniably a work of rupture,
which inaugurates new and fertile scientific tracks. Anglo-Saxon influences, but also French,
are strong there through long discussions on Parsons, Mead, the psychologist Kohlberg and
also Durkheim. It of its political philosophy of religion, is already drawn there. It is to this
Habarmas that we owe the research leading to a possible synthesis between critical theory and
pragmatism and the strategic insertion of critical theory in the space of discussion of
globalized philosophy. this centrality of language will also have been, for critical theory, a
happy metamorphosis which has ensured that tradition still occupies an important place in
contemporary discussions.
It is in the political domain that this aspect is most alive: Habermas can be considered as the
organic intellectual of the German democratic left. We must underline his demand in this
area, expressing the rejection of demagogic and reductionist explanations of politics, attached
to this civic space that he privileged, thus administering a steal of green wood to the writer
Hans Magnus Enzensberger, who essentialized politics and crime. For Habermas, there is
nothing above the citizen. His public interventions are consistent with the complex
discussions with John Rawls on the nature of political liberalism.
In his two-volume magnum opus, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns I-II (Theory of
Communicative Action 1982), Habermas modifies his position somewhat. In recent years,
especially in Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne ( The Philosophical Discourse of
Modernity, 1985) he has engaged in a vigorous debate with French post-structuralists, e.g.
Foucault and Lyotard, arguing that their radical rejection of ant notion of foundations destroys
the very possibility of social critique. After 11 Septembre 2001 a book was published with a
kind of reconciliation: Jacques Derrida and Jürgen Habermas signed it together.
Bibliography:
Works by Hannah Arendt:
Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought, Penguin Books, New York
1977.
Denktagebuch:1950 bis 1973, red U. Ludz i I. Normann, P. Verlag, Monachium 2003.
Forgiveness and Politics.
Ideology and Terror: A Novel Form of Government, “The Review of Politics” 1953 Vol. 15,
No. 3
Kondycja ludzka, tłum. A. Łagodzka, Wydawnictwo Aletheia, Warszawa 2010
The Human Condition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2013.
Korzenie totalitaryzmu, tłum. D. Grinberg i M. Szawiel, Świat Książki, Warszawa 2014.
The origins of Totalitarism, Harcourt, Orlando 1973.
Love and Saint Augustine, red J. Vecchiarelli Scott i J. Chelius Stark, The University of
Chicago 1996.
Nieposłuszeństwo obywatelskie, tłum. W. Madej, w: tejże, O przemocy, Nieposłuszeństwo
obywatelskie, tłum. A. Łagodzka i W. Madej, Fundacja Aletheia, Warszawa 1998.
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Harcourt, San Diego – New York – London 1972.
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Madej I m. Godyń, Wydawnictwo Prószyński i S-ka, Warszawa 2007.
The Promise of Politics, red J. Kohn, Shocken Books, New York 2005.
Życie umysłu tłum H. Buczyńska-Garewicz, R. Piłat, B.Baran, Wydawnictwo Aletheia,
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Additional bibliography:
Works by Cezary Wodziński, profesor at Artes Liberales
Books
Przechadzki po ogrodach. Traktat Gorgiasza. Utopia Eudaimonii, Wydawnictwo Łazienki
Królewskie, Warszawa 2017.
Interviews
Prawdziwe życie jest poza akademią, z Cezarym Wodzińskim rozmawia Krzysztof
Siemieński, „Przegląd Polityczny”, nr 143 (2017), s. 20–33.
Bracia K., w: Teatr Prowizorium. Bracia Karamazow [program teatralny, strony nie
numerowane], Lublin 2011, przedrukowane w: „Przegląd Polityczny”, nr 143 (2017), s. 96–
100 oraz C. Wodziński, Próby z Dostojewskim, red. P. Augustyniak, P. Pękala, Centrum
Kultury w Lublinie, Lublin 2017, s. 99–109.
Ćwiczenia w światłoczułości, z Cezarym Wodzińskim rozmawiał Filip Łobodziński, w:
„Tygodnik Powszechny: Katolickie Pismo Społeczno-Kulturalne”, nr 27 (2016), s. 54–57.
Dostojewski, Nietzsche i inni, rozmowa Cezary Wodziński, Janusz Opryński, w: „Przegląd
Polityczny”, nr 137 (2016), s. 160–162.
Jeż i lis, z Cezarym Wodzińskim rozmawiał Wojciech P. Duda, w: „Przegląd Polityczny”, nr
126 (2014), s. 109–131.
Przyjaźń ukryta między zaimkami, z prof. Cezarym Wodzińskim rozmawiała Aleksandra
Klich, w: „Gazeta Wyborcza”, nr 141 (2016), s. 36–37.
Filozofia religijna J. Tischnera (wypowiedź), w: „Znak” ?, Kraków 2004.
O słowie. Zaklęty krąg mowy, rozmowę przeprowadził Jarosław Makowski, w: „Dziesięć
ważnych słów. Rozmowy o dekalogu”, Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków 2002.
Święty szaleniec, rozmowa przeprowadził Jarosław Makowski, w: „Tygodnik Powszechny”,
nr 45 (2000), s. 17.
Zło w krainie milczenia: głos w dyskusji o sprzedajności zła, z Cezarym Wodzińskim
rozmowę przeprowadził Jarosław Makowski, w: „Tygodnik Powszechny”, nr 22 (1999),
s. 12.
Z powodu zła, z Cezarym Wodzińskim rozmawiali Andrzej Bernat, Paweł Kozłowski, w:
„Nowe Książki: przegląd nowości wydawniczych”, nr 2 (1998), s. 10–13.
Heidegger i wartości burżuazyjne. Z profesorem Krzysztofem Pomianem, rozmawia Cezary
Wodziński, w: „Aletheia. Heidegger dzisiaj”, nr 1(4) (1991), s. 465–478.