Ancient Φilosophy Reception at the 12th Seminar of Historians of Polish Philosophy
Seminar of Historians of Polish Philosophy (SHPPh) is a cyclical academic event held at various universities in Poland since its first edition in Warsaw in 2006. In 2025 (May 19th-20th), it was for the first time at the University of Zielona Góra (UZ) where Polish researchers of their native philosophical traditions gathered. Central topic of this edition of SHPPh was the problem of classical thinkers and epigons in the development of Polish thought. Detailed programme of the whole event can be downloaded here.
The seminar was also an opportunity to celebrate the second edition of the book Classics of Polish Philosophy by Ryszard Palacz, an essential figure for historians of philosophy at UZ, and a researcher of reception of Greek philosophy in medieaval thought, about whose passing we have informed in the autumn of 2024. Full program of the event can be downloaded here and a brief report (in Polish) on the UZ’s website can be found here (with a photo gallery). The seminar was accompanied by an exhibition devoted to Professor Palacz and many speakers referred to his work and his understanding of classical Polish philosophers.
Two AΦR group members delivered their papers during the SHPPh. Tomasz Mróz talked about Bohdan Kieszkowski (1903-1997) and about Polish and international disputes on his works on Florentine Platonism.
In the thirties in Poland Kieszkowski was engaged in a dispute with Marian Heitzman (1899-1964), who accused him of underestimating the influences of medieval neoplatonism on Ficino. Heitzman and Kieszkowski, two scholars of one generation, two researchers of Renaissance Platonism, represented two different academic centres, conservative Cracow and more progressive Warsaw, and their polemical texts were published separately in philosophical journals in Cracow (Heitzman) and Warsaw (Kieszkowski). Kieszkowski, naturally, considered Heitzman’s position to be an overestimation of medieval influences on Renaissance’s thought and labelled it as ‘medievalism’. On international niveau a polemic against Kieszkowski’s work came from a Portuguese scholar, José Vitorino de Pina Martins (1920-2010), who praised Kieszkowski’s scholarship, yet spared no words of criticism against Kieszkowski’s edition of Pico della Mirandola’s Conclusiones (Geneve 1973).
Adrian Habura’s talk smoothly concluded the whole conference focusing, on the one hand, on a paper titled Four Understandings of Classicism by Władysław Tatarkiewicz (1886-1980), and on the other hand, on Palacz’s (1935-2024) arguments for including Tatarkiewicz among the classics of Polish philosophy.
Habura analysed Tatarkiewicz’s notion of classicism and supplemented Palacz’s arguments for including Tatarkiewicz among the classics, demonstrating that not only his History of Philosophy, History of Aesthetics, and History of Six Ideas, that is, basically historical studies, but also his Analysis of Happiness, the original philosophical work by Tatarkiewicz, bears the mark of classic. Ethical considerations in the Analysis of Happiness, noticeably influenced by Aristotle, not to mention Tatarkiewicz’s doctoral degree from Marburg on a thesis devoted to Aristotle, allowed Habura to highlight an additional aspect of Tatarkiewicz as a classic, for he was not only a classic among Polish philosophers, but also a classic in another understanding: as a follower or – to use the term proposed by Juliusz Domański – a user of Aristotelian philosophy. And it was Aristotle whom Tatarkiewicz himself regarded as the most classical among all the classical philosophers of ancient Greece.
Neverending Story of… Plato in Poland
This time it was at the University of Hradec Králové where the word about Plato reception in Poland was spread. Tomasz Mróz, among his activities in accordance with Erasmus+ Teaching Assignment, delivered a talk on political aspects of Plato reception in Poland. The focus was, naturally, on Plato’s Republic and on the connections between the interpretations of Plato’s political philosophy and the political situation of Poland from the 19th century to the post World War II era. This talk was delivered for international students enrolled in a course: Ancient Greek Democracy and Its Legacy taught in UHK by professor Jaroslav Daneš, with whom AΦR research group has successfully co-operated for many years.
The topics covered in this talk included a brief overview of how political situation of Poland changed and how various researchers of Plato interpreted his political ideas. The lecture started with Bolesław Limanowski (1835-1935), an advocate of socialism, who used Plato’s ideas as an evidence that socialism had been present in European thought from its very beginning. The next was Wojciech Dzieduszycki (1848-1909), a conservative politician, who ridiculed gender equality and socialism as political phantasies. Wincenty Lutosławski (1863-1954) considered totalitarian character of Plato’s polis as a natural consequence of his idealism, but after the World War II emphasised Plato’s evolution and his affinity to Christianity. Stefan Pawlicki (1839-1916), a Christian thinker rejected the connection between socialism and Plato, but praised the idea of preventive censorship. At the dawn of Polish independence after World War I Eugeniusz Jarra (1881-1973) welcomed the idea that social promotion or demotion in the state should depend on personal capabilities, and that the elites should no longer consist of the members of aristocracy but of the most gifted individuals. After World War II, in the Stalinist period, the criticism of Plato stemmed from various premises. Tadeusz Kroński (1907-1958), on the one hand, a Marxist thinker, considered Plato’s political philosophy as an aristocratic reaction to democratic changes in Athens, and in general as an expression of obscurantism and religiosity. Władysław Witwicki (1878-1948), on the other hand, was apparently critical towards Plato’s political project, assessing it as a monastery, concentration camp and a totalitarian state, but actually it was a criticism in disguise of the then political system.
In spite of the fact that the history of Poland or Polish philosophy was completely new for the members of the audience, their questions and remarks demonstrated that they were able to see the relations between the views of Plato’s interpreters and their interpretations of Plato’s Republic. Moreover, as usually, the discussion was the evidence that more general issues related to Plato’s legacy remain topical and stimulating as, for example, the chronology of Plato’s dialogues or reliability of image of Socrates.
H. Jakubanis’ Empedocles in OA
Last year we announced publishing Polish translation of a Russian study by Henryk Jakubanis (1879-1949), originally published in Kyiv over a century ago, Empedocles: a Philosopher, a Doctor and a Magus, therefore there is no need to repeat all the information here. Suffice to say that the text was translated by Mariam Sargsyan and Adrian Habura, and the whole volume ends with an afterword by Katarzyna Kołakowska, a contemporary Polish expert on Empedocles.
The book can be purchased on the publisher’s website here. We are now, however, glad to inform that it is available in OA, via online repository of the University of Zielona Góra.
Stefan Pawlicki on Greek Concepts of Human Soul
On March 15th-16th 2025 the first conference of the Academic Club for Ancient Philosophy (Koło Naukowe Filozofii Starożytnej) at the University of Warsaw took place. This academic event was organised by young enthusiasts of ancient thought and gathered scholars from various Polish universitites, and students interested generally in the topic of body and soul or in the subjects of individual papers, the list of which can be found here.
AΦR, naturally, was present at the conference. Tomasz Mróz delivered a paper titled Stefan Pawlicki on the concepts of soul in Greek philosophy. Pawlicki (1839-1916) was once in his career a professor of philosophy in Warsaw, but Mróz’s paper was focused on mature period of his career, when he was a respected professor in Cracow and the author of History of Greek Philosophy. Volume I of this book appeared in print in 1890 (front page on the right) and was the first Polish handbook for ancient philosophy, while the volume III, meant to be devoted to Aristotle, was not finished by the author.
Pawlicki was an admirer of Plato, but instead of presenting well-known opinions of Pawlicki on Plato, Mróz discussed Pawlicki’s criticism of the pre-Socratic thinkers. Pawlicki was a historian of philosophy who aimed not only to provide the readers with an account of the ideas of Greek thinkers, but considered the needs of the Polish reading audiences and supplemented his discussion of the Greeks with assessments and evaluations presented from the Catholic standpoint.
One of Pawlicki’s methods was to draw far reaching conclusions from the fragments of the pre-Socratic thinkers, especially materialist philosophers like Democritus, and then present them as unacceptable. For example, he stressed pantheist traces in Heraclitus and pessimism of Democritus, while at the same time he seemed to appreciate the concept of reincarnation and Pythagorean ethics, as encouraging human beings to improve themselves.
His arguments against most of the Greek concepts of human soul allow to structure them in order of perfection, starting with Aristotle (whom Pawlicki did not manage to present), followed by Plato and Socrates, with Pythagoreanism below, and ending with Heraclitus and Democritean materialism, which was – just like 19th century materialists – a constant subject of Pawlicki’s critical remarks.
Ancient Wisdom in a Lithuanian Interpretation
Connections between Ancient Φilosophy Reception research group at the University of Zielona Góra and the scholars of Vilnius University have been many times documented on this website. This time we want to report on an Erasmus+ teaching visit of a Lithuanian scholar, Mindaugas Stoškus from Vilnius, in the Institute of Philosophy (UZ). He was our guest between 10th and 14th of April.
Among dr Stoškus’ teaching acitivities, there was a lecture titled:
What Can We Learn from the Ancient Concept of Wisdom?
This lecture was delivered twice, during the classes of Philosophical Counselling (above on the photo by A. Habura) and on the course of the History of Ancient Philosophy. At the beginning of his lecture, Dr. Stoškus discussed etymological issues, focusing on the very notion of wisdom. The he took an attempt to enumerate the attributes of the wise man, as the Greeks saw them. They included, for example, knowledge, experience, ability to justify judgments, and desire to disseminate wisdom. Dr. Stoškus discerned philosophical wisdom from its sophistic version and, in conclusion, emphasised the essential connection between theory and practice of wisdom.
Greek philosophy still fares well!
Henryk Jakubanis and His Kyiv Years
Henryk Jakubanis (1879-1949), his life and intellectual legacy, have been in recent years the topic of research pursued by Mariam Sargsyan. In one of her papers, titled Henryka Jakubanisa (1879-1949) kijowski okres życia i twórczości historycznofilozoficznej (H. Jakubanis’ Kyiv Period of Life and Work in the History of Philosophy), she presented Jakubanis’ Kyiv years as fundamental and formative period of his intellectual biography. Her study has been published in Polish and can be downloaded here.
Kyiv period of Jakubanis’ life deserved a separate presentation, because our knowledge of his early career was far from satisfactory, not to mention some inaccurate or even false informations. M. Sargsyan was the first researcher who used Jakubanis’ documents from the University Library of the Catholic University of Lublin to such an extent, what was necessary to complete her task.
To present the life and academic activity of Jakubanis (on the right) in the Kyiv period in full, Sargsyan starts with his childhood and gymnasium education. Moreover, the history and philosophical traditions in the Saint Vladimir Imperial University of Kyiv are briefly sketched with an emphasis on Jakubanis’ study curriculum, the beginnings of his academic career and the personality of his supervisor, professor Alexei Gilarov. He was the professor who exerted the most significant impact on Jakubanis’ early works in the history of Greek philosophy.
To conclude, it was in Kyiv where Jakubanis’ career as a teacher of classics and a researcher in the history of ancient philosophy started. Some of his achievements from this period are still of significance in the Russian-speaking world, for he is still remembered as the author of a work on Empedocles and one of the pioneers in translating fragments of this ancient thinker into Russian.
A Biographical Sketch on Henryk Jakubanis
Mariam Sargsyan, an AΦR researcher focusing on the legacy of H. Jakubanis, has recently published a paper Henryk Jakubanis (1879–1949) – a Historian of Greek Philosophy Between Kyiv and Lublin, which aims at discussing the entire academic path of this researcher of ancient philosophy, presenting his work in both periods of his life, connected to Kyiv and Lublin. The paper was published in Polish and can be downloaded here.
It is not insignificant to remark that Sargsyan’s paper has been published in an issue devoted to classical philology of “Roczniki Humanistyczne” (“Annals of Arts”, Vol. 72 No. 3, 2024, pp. 79-97), a journal edited at the Catholic University of Lublin (KUL), where Jakubanis used to work for over two decades of his life.
Jakubanis’ life began in the Russian Empire, and Sargsyan presents his family and his initial education it the gymnasium, with a focus on classical languages and humanities. Then the story proceeds to the Kyiv period of his life, including a brief sketch of the history of St Vladimir’s Imperial University of Kyiv and the researchers of the history of philosophy there, with an emphasis on Jakubanis’ academic supervisor, Alexei Gilarov (1856-1938). During his Kyiv period Jakubanis won a scholarship for a study visit in Germany, notably in Berlin, and was active as a university lecturer, teacher at various courses extra muros, and started to develop his academic and research career.
The Lublin period began in 1922 with Jakubanis’ repatriation from the then Soviet Ukraine to Lublin in the independent Republic of Poland. Thanks to the support of Tadeusz Zieliński (1859-1944), his former examiner in Kyiv, Jakubanis was hired at the University of Lublin. His lectures and seminars there, his life during the war, his works and impact are further discussed in the paper.
To sum up: Jakubanis spent 26 years of his life in Kyiv and 27 in Lublin where he died in 1949. These two periods were almost equal in terms of time, yet they were quite different. In Kyiv he composed most of his works and was formed as a researcher and teacher in classics in general and in the history of ancient philosophy in particular, while in Lublin he was rather occupied with university life and lecturing, and it did not allow him to focus on researching and publishing. For his entire life, however, he remained faithful to his interests in ancient philosophy and, according to his students, spared no energy to disseminate his knowledge and expierience in this field.
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