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20th-century Polish philosophy is deeply marked by the
events which have affected political and institutional life in Poland. Hence
the traditional division made by philosophy historians into three periods:
from the beginning of the century to 1918 (when the 2nd Republic was founded
after a century of division between Prussia, Russia and Austria; see the
map 
); from 1918 to 1939; and from 1945 to the present. This feature
of Polish history also accounts for the importance in its culture of the
centuries-old struggle for independence and the defence of an identity constantly
threatened by ruthless attempts at denationalisation, above all on the part
of the German and Russian authorities (see the map of territorial changes of the Polish State in the course of
its history 
).
Traditionally very aware of Western culture, Polish philosophy
has shown throughout its history a remarkably receptive attitude towards
the dominant philosophical currents of its German-speaking neighbours, especially
Austria: not only were the two main Polish cultural institutions located
in Hapsburg-dominated territory (the ancient University of Cracow and the
University of Lvov 
, which were the only ones
that existed at the beginning of the century), but it was also customary
for Polish scholars to pursue their scientific studies in Vienna or at a
German university. The presence of the Universities of Cracow 
and Lvov 
and a more tolerant ethnic attitude
in the Austrian dominion created favourable conditions for the defence and
spread of an autonomous philosophical culture (also made possible by the
fact that use of the national language was allowed in the universities).
In Russian-dominated Warsaw
, on the other hand, Tsarist policy had
eliminated the Polish university and replaced it with a Russian-speaking
Imperial University. It was, however, in Warsaw that the first review specialising
in philosophy was published in Poland, in 1897 - "Przeglad Filozoficzny"
- thanks to the efforts of Wladyslaw
Weryho 
(1868-1916), who devoted himself tirelessly
to organising the national culture. Another important date for philosophy
in Warsaw is 1905, when the Russian authorities adopted a more conciliatory
attitude towards Poland and allowed a free university to be opened, where
Adam Mahrburg
(1855-1913) and M. Kozlowski (1858-1935) taught. Finally, in November
1915, the German occupying forces allowed the University and the Polytechnic
to be re-opened. This favoured a flow of intellectuals to the capital from
other Polish cities. Among those who held posts at the University and other
important institutions, an outstanding figure in this period is that of
Leon Petrazycki
(1867-1931), a polyglot intellectual who first worked in Berlin
and St. Petersburg. A scholar of law and a social theorist, his originality
lies not only in his specific theories (characterised by the importance
he attached to psychological factors in forging the various fields of culture
and society, especially law) but also in the innovative methodology he developed
and applied.
A further significant event is the flourishing, at the
end of the last century, of an important school
of philosophy and the history of medicine, a field in which Poland was
a leader: the first European chairs in these disciplines were founded in
Cracow and Poznan
at the end of the First World War and
the review "Archiwum Historii i Filozofii Medycyn", founded by
A. Wrzosek (1875-1965), was published in Poznan. The main figures in the
school were Tytus Chalubinski (1820-1889), the founder of the school, Zygmunt
Kramsztyk (1848-1920) who founded "Krytyka Lekarska" (Medical
Criticism) (1897-1907), at that time the only European review devoted to
theoretical and methodological problems in medicine, and Wladyslaw
Bieganski
(1857-1917), the author of a number of books of logic, methodology
and philosophy of medicine, who combined the medical profession with reflections
on methodology in medical science, of which he is considered to be one of
the founders.
Another important line of thought in this period is the
Socialist/Marxist current. Closely linked
to the issue of national independence, Socialist thought in Poland began
to spread at the end of the last century, mainly due to the propaganda of
Ludwik Warynski
(1856-1889) and the political activity of Stanislaw
Krusinski
(1857-1886), who respectively embodied the social-revolutionary
and social-democratic trends. Another significant representative of this
trend was the theorist of the Polish Socialist Party, Kazimierz
Kelles-Krauz
(1872-1905), whose interpretation of Marxism was strongly
tinted with positivism. Oriented in the opposite direction to positivism,
i.e. towards a subjectivist and anti-naturalistic form of philosophy, was
another Marxist philosopher, Stanislaw Brzozowski
(1878-1918), endowed with a complex personality and a controversial
intellectual physiognomy. Of importance for social and philosophical thought
was the work of Edward Abramowski (1868-1918), one of the most acute theorists of the co-operative
movement and a supporter of anarchic trade unionism (influenced by Sorel).
However, the event which was to shape the future of Polish
philosophy was the foundation of the so-called Lvov-Warsaw
School by Kazimierz Twardowski , who occupied the chair of Philosophy in Lvov in 1895. As one
of his pupils, Tadeusz Czezowski , recalls, "[...] there were no Polish schools of philosophy.
The school was created by Twardowski. It was ready at the moment in which
Poland regained its independence in 1918 and was so strong and had such
solid foundations that it not only dominated the other spheres of Polish
philosophy but also influenced philosophers who were not directly connected
with it; not to such an extent as to make them abandon their ideas and change
their interests, but in such a way as to permeate Polish philosophical works
with the methodological demands and way of dealing with philosophical problems
typical of Twardowski's school [...]. In this way the influence of Twardowski's
philosophical activity spread throughout the country, creating a typical
philosophical workstyle and uniting the disiecta membra of philosophy in
Poland" (K. Twardowski as Teacher, "Studia Philosophica
1939-1946", III, 1948, pp. 13-14). Among his pupils were philosophers
of note such as Jan Lukasiewicz , Stanislaw Lesniewski , Alfred Tarski , Kazimierz
Ajdukiewicz , Tadeusz Kotarbinski
, Izydora Dambska and others. It
was especially in the field of logic, semantics and metalogic that the Lvov-Warsaw
School achieved the international recognition it deserved: polyvalent logic
and the research into the history of logic conducted by Lukasiewicz, as
well as the semantic conception of truth elaborated by Tarski, not to mention
individual technical contributions to the various branches of logic, lost
any merely national colouring and became part of the world-wide heritage
in the field of logic.
The achievement of national unity had a beneficial effect
on the philosophical activity of the new Second Polish Republic. Alongside
the traditional centres of Lvov, Warsaw and Cracow, the new University of
Poznan (1919) took on a significant role. New philosophical
reviews were also founded ("Kwartalnik Filozoficzny" in 1922;
"Studia Philosophica" in 1936) and the first general philosophical
conferences were held (in Lvov in 1923, Warsaw in 1927 and Cracow in 1936).
The philosophical climate in this period was dominated by the presence of
the analytical Lvov-Warsaw School, which in a sense overshadowed all other
philosophical personalities and lines of thought, however lively and interesting
they were. The main philosophical trends in this period were those of analytical
philosophy which, besides the leading Lvov-Warsaw School, embraced other
philosophers who did not belong to the school, such as Leon
Chwistek , or who had weak links with it, such as
Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz ; phenomenology
with Roman Ingarden ; and
Marxism with Ludwik Krzywicki . Alongside these stand philosophers who are more difficult to
classify, due to the great originality of their thought, such as Stanislaw I. Witkiewicz , who
comes halfway between philosophical commitment and literary practice, or
Ludwik Fleck , who
combined his profession as a scientist with that of a scientific theorist.
The period between the two World Wars was also a favourable
one for Catholic philosophy: the existing theological seminaries and chairs
of philosophy were flanked by the Catholic
University of Lublin , founded in 1918. As in the rest of Catholic Europe,
its orientation was rooted in Neo-Thomism which had received a new impulse
from Pope Leo III's encyclical Aeterni patris (1879). Neo-Thomism
was the prevalent orientation of Polish Catholic thought, a general framework
comprising influences from both national philosophical circles and international
debate. The main activity in this area was that of the theologists and philosophers
who founded the so-called Cracow Circle,
promoted by a small group of intellectuals (J.M. Bochenski , J. Salamucha , Jan F. Drewnowski ) who accepted the modern formal logic developed in Warsaw but
applied it to traditional Thomist issues and theological argument.
The new geopolitical context in Poland after World War
II profoundly marked the development of Polish philosophy. After a brief
period of tolerance and open-mindedness, Marxism, which had become the official
doctrine of the new People's Republic, took on a hegemonic role: Stalinism
and the Cold War affected philosophy as well, since the Lvov-Warsaw School
was seen as an adversary whose myth needed demolishing. It was this school,
rather than Catholic thought or phenomenology, which constituted a prestigious
competitor for ideological supremacy over the younger generations. It was
actively fought by the most famous Marxist intellectuals of the time, such
as A. Schaff 
,
L. Kolakowski 
and B. Baczko, whose accused the school of being none other than
an unoriginal variation of Neo-Positivism, supporting a "semantic philosophy"
of an "idealistic" nature. The conventionalism
supported by Ajdukiewicz also came under attack, being seen as a sort
of idealism disguised by an elegant logical formalism.
The death of Stalin (March 1953) allowed a process of progressive
liberalisation, giving strength to people like the logician Roman Suszko 
(1919-1979),
who had tried, despite his fundamentally Marxist leanings, to maintain an
atmosphere of constructive debate. The change in the philosophical climate
had a significant effect on the controversy between the Marxist supporters
of dialectic logic and the defenders of formal logic and its cardinal principle
of non-contradiction. In 1995 Schaff recognised that behind Marxist criticism
of formal logic there lay a confusion between contrariety (or polarity)
and contradiction: only the latter is forbidden in formal logic, whereas
the empirically ascertainable contrariety between opposing forces and trends
by no means implies contradiction. Schaff refers to Lukasiewicz's essay
on the principle of non-contradiction in Aristotle; but even more immediate
was the connection with an essay by his greatest opponent, Ajdukiewicz,
in which he criticised the connection between change and contradiction.
The simultaneous revival of scientific activity, with a
series of conferences and seminars, led to a new phase in Polish Marxism,
made politically possible by the rise to power of Gomulka 
in 1956. This was the year in which the so-called "Marxist
revisionism" commenced, the leaders of which were Kolakowski and Baczko,
and later Schaff himself. This revisionism was essentially fired by the
reading and rediscovery of Marx's early works. Other Marxist thinkers, on
the other hand, made an attempt at a scientific formulation of Marxist philosophy
through a recovery of national and European epistemological and logical
thought. Two different philosophical trends therefore came into being within
the Marxist framework - the "scientific" school and the "humanistic"
school. According to the former, founded by Krajewski, philosophy is based
on knowledge of the world and so is seen as epistemology and methodology
of scientific research. With reference to Marxism, this meant that a fundamental
part of philosophy was dialectical materialism, enriched with the methodological
and logical achievements of contemporary epistemology, and therefore explicitly
inspired by the Polish analytical tradition and philosophical style. The
"humanistic" or "anthropological" school, on the other
hand, was inspired by the tradition of classical German philosophy and certain
philosophical currents which were popular at the time (i.e. phenomenology
and existentialism); philosophy was thus seen as an autonomous domain of
thought with its own method, different from that of the natural sciences,
i.e. the dialectic or hermeneutic method. The preference for Marx's early
works was obvious, along with interest in the works of Lukacs and Gramsci
and the rediscovery of authors like Brzozowski.
The fall of Gomulka in 1970 and the election of Gierek 
as
Party Secretary led to an increasing de-ideologisation of the system in
favour of a pragmatic attitude. This allowed Marxist philosophy to develop
without the need to adhere to an "orthodoxy" imposed from above
and gave rise to a a number of trends and a whole new generation of scholars
including Z. Cackowski, M. Fritzhand, M. Hempolinski, T.M. Jaroszewski,
W. Mejbaum and M. Siemek. However, the less tolerant attitude adopted following
the coup led by General Jaruzelski 
in
1981 made it increasingly difficult to be opponents and Marxists at the
same time. This situation continued up to the fall of Communism in the first
free elections since the War (1989), when Marxist philosophy seemed to disappear
into thin air and its old supporters either remained silent or rapidly converted
to other philosophies which were more acceptable and less compromised.
The end of the Communist regime and the liberalisation of the economy did not, however, give philosophical research the expected advantages, above all because the State no longer played a leading role in the promotion and financing of culture. The perplexity aroused in philosophers by this considerable deterioration in Polish philosophy was clearly expressed at the Lublin Conference in 1993.
Nevertheless, as confirmed by a survey conducted in 1989
by the Catholic journal "Znak", philosophical activity seems to
be continuing along the solid lines of the Polish tradition, and can essentially
be split into three well-known currents: the Neo-Thomism of Lublin, analytical
philosophy and subject-based philosophy, which is inspired by phenomenological
teaching. There is also, however, a line of thought more closely linked
to politics, with the spread of the debate on liberalism which has been
fired by the tumultuous transformation currently under way in Poland. Of
course no appeal is made to Marxism. The philosophy of the last few years
therefore features a strong persistence of logical and analytical research
inspired by the glorious tradition of the Lvov-Warsaw School and renewed
by philosophers like Marian Przelecki and Ryszard Wójcicki and semiologists
like Jerzy Pelc. One cannot, however, ignore other thinkers such as Klemens Szaniawski (1925-1993) or Stefan Amsterdamski, who has elaborated the concept
of the "ideal of science" which contains much of the "thought-styles" of Fleck. Nevertheless,
the younger generation have also overcome the limits of the Lvov-Warsaw
School by accepting more recent post-positivist trends (from Kuhn to Lakatos
and Feyerabend), and showing interest in the position of Rorty and the structuralist
conception of theories (Sneed and Stegmuller). An undoubtedly dynamic element
is represented by the Centre for Methodological
Research at the University of Poznan. On the other hand, themes linked
to hermeneutic reflection are also spreading in Poland (thanks to the fact
that a number of works are being translated into Polish: Gadamer's Truth
and Method was published in Polish for the first time in 1993, Heidegger's
Being and Time in 1994), along with the thought of Derrida, many
of whose works have been translated in the last few years, and Post-Modernism
(with the translation of various Lyotard's works).
(Translated by Jennifer Smith)
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dziejów filozofii w Polsce (Outlines of History of Philosohy
in Poland), Kraków, 1948
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