Bertrand Russell, His Views on Ancient Philosophy and Critical Reaction on Them in Poland
In August 17-18th T. Mróz took part in the sixth annual History of Analytic Philosophy Workshop organised by Tilburg Center for Moral Philosophy, Epistemology and
Philosophy of Science. This year’s meeting was devoted to Global Reception of Russell’s Scientific Philosophy.
T. Mróz’s paper was prepared in co-operation with Paweł Polak (The Pontifical University of John Paul II in Kraków), who presented his part in an on-line form. The title of their presentation was The Early Reception of Russell’s Philosophy among Polish Philosophers – a Diversity of Perspectives. P. Polak focused in particular on reception of Russell’s ideas among the representatives of the Lvov-Warsaw School, while T. Mróz discussed two cases of reception of Russell’s History of Western Philosophy (1945) among Polish historians of philosophy, and some other issues, e.g. the censorship of Russell’s texts in Poland.
What matters here is ancient philosophy. The first Polish critic of Russell’s History was Wincenty Lutosławski (1863-1954), who expressed his views on Russell’s Plato in a letter (Lutosławski’s draft on the left) to the author (a paper in “Russell” on the letters between the two philosophers has been announced here). Despite the differences between them, Lutosławski declared in his letter: “Your History proves that we agree in our esteem of Plato”. Moreover, he praised Russell, “In your six chapters on him [=Plato] I did not discover a single error and I agree with everything you say”. In fact, both authors set themselves different goals in discussing Plato and this resulted in disparate methods in their presentations of Platonism, yet Lutosławski’s opinion was so important for Russell that he passed it immediately to his publisher.
Marian Heitzman (1899-1964) was not a philosopher of a similar recognition to Lutosławski, he was an expert in Renaissance philosophy and in F. Bacon. His views on Russell’s History were published as an extensive review study in the oldest Polish philosophical journal „Philosophical Review” [Przegląd Filozoficzny]. His general opinion on Russell’s book was the following: “it is worth to read the book and it is worth to have it on a bookshelf, but it cannot be recommended as a handbook or a synthetic study of the history of philosophy”. He appreciated Russell’s style and his „humour coloured by a bit of Volterian scepticism”. His focus was Renaissance philosophy, but he remarked on many deficiences in Russell’s chapters on ancient topics. For example, the missing or too shortly discussed subjects, according to Heitzman, included Gorgias, Zeno and the logic of the Stoics. Although Russell intended to emphasise issues in political and social philosophies, in Heitzman’s eyes he missed the cosmopolitanism of the Cynics and misrepresented the problem of the Sophists and democracy. Finally, Russell aimed to present various philosophers as the effects of their social conditions, but he failed to illustrate this with Antisthenes of Athens (not an Athenian citizen) and his philosophy of cynicism.
Conference Annoucement!
As we have already informed, AΦR co-operates with the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Hradec Králové (FF UHK), in a project titled Oral History and the Classics.
One of the acitivities of the project team, led by prof. Jaroslav Daneš, Ph.D., is organising an international conference in Hradec Králové, which will be held on June 1st-3rd, 2024. The title of the conference is: Classics: the Past, the Present, and the Future. “Classics”, certainly, includes the history of research on ancient philosophy and its reception. Deadline for submissions is in March and the keynote speakers are professors Frisbee Sheffield, Neville Morley, Sophie Mills, Filip Karfík, and Cinzia Bearzot.
The most up to date information on the conference is available on the conference website: memoryclassics.eu
Late submissions will still be considered!!!
This post will be updated.
Conclusion of a Research Stay in Aleksander-Brückner-Zentrum in Halle
As we have already announced, a member of AΦR, Mariam Sargsyan, received a scholarship from NAWA for a three months (April-July 2023) research stay in Martin-Luther-Universität (MLU) in Halle (Saale), in Aleksander-Brückner-Zentrum (ABZ) for Polish Studies. During her visit she delivered there a talk on the topic of her dissertation.
This academic internship turned out to be very fruitful for the internee. The aim of her stay in Halle was to broaden her knowledge of historical and cultural background of H. Jakubanis’, whose research in ancient philosophy is the central problem of her dissertation. In addition to delivering her paper, M. Sargsyan conducted library query in the collections of the MLU in Halle and took part in the activities of the ABZ. Her stay in Halle turned out to be successful, for she managed to enrich biographical part of her dissertation with information about the history of higher education in Central and Eastern Europe.
A unique experience for M. Sargsyan was her co-operation with international researchers, since scholars from Germany, Poland and Ukraine were involved in academic work at the ABZ. M. Sargsyan appreciated their continuous will to help, provide advice or simply enjoy a friendly conversation during lunch. For all this M. Sargsyan is very grateful. She enjoyed to observe the scholars who were carefully and attentively involved in their interdisciplinary research and who thus contributed to the development of the ABZ, which as a whole is succesfully led by prof. Yvonne Kleinmann. M. Sargsyan is very thankful for the academic atmosphere she had the opportunity to experience.
During the two final weeks of M. Sargsyan’s research stay in Halle she was accompanied by T. Mróz, supervisor of her disseration. Apart from academic activities, thanks to the initiative of prof. Sven Jaros, they were able to visit Marienbibliothek in Halle.
We hope that M. Sargsyan’s visit in Halle is not the final act of the co-operation between ABZ and AΦR. Let us only remark that in September 2023 ABZ is celebrating its tenth anniversary and has great plans for future academic development. Best wishes!
20th Annual Conference of the International Society for Neoplatonic Studies
International Society for Neoplatonic Studies (ISNS) has for decades been a forum for scholars researching various phaenomena in the history of Neoplatonism, including even the latest developments of the reception of Platonism. In June 14th-17th, 2023, ISNS conference was held at the foot of Etna, in Catania, in co-operation with Università degli Studi di Catania.
One of the numerous panels at the conference was devoted to Plato’s Timaeus, the concept of time and its influence on various thinkers across the history of philosophy up to recent times. The panel was organised by the two professors, Laura Marongiu and Laura Follesa, both of University of Milan. Although this panel focused on relatively narrow topic, the response from scholars was impressive and thus the list of speakers in this successful panel demonstrated incessant interest of generations of scholars in the Timaeus, the late dialogue of Plato. The topics ranged from Speusippus, Aristotle, Xenocrates, Numenius, Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus, Simplicius and Philoponus to M. Ficino, L. Bruno, F.W.J. Schelling, G.W.F. Hegel, H. Bergson and E. Husserl (on the photo: L. Follesa, L. Marongiu & T. Mróz).
T. Mróz presented a paper titled The Timaeus and Three Scholars of One Generation: P. Natorp, P. Shorey and W. Lutosławski. Mróz discussed various interpretations of the Timaeus by the three scholars, focusing on their general methods in reading Plato and their views on Plato’s concept of the time, although none of them considered the time to be the central issue in the dialogue.
ISNS conferences have always been a forum for scholars who explore various aspects of Platonism, Neoplatonism and Plato reception from antiquity up to contemporary times. Professor John Finamore, spiritus movens of all of ISNS symposia, spares no efforts to hold ISNS events in various academic centres and to provide opportunity for scholars throughout the world to take part in them. He has recently announced that next year’s ISNS conference will take place in Dublin, in co-operation with Trinity College.
AΦR at the 11th Seminar of the Historians of Polish Philosophy in Częstochowa
Seminar of the Historians of Polish Philosophy is a cyclic academic meeting which gathers philosophers and historians of philosophy who focus on the history of philosophy in Poland. 11th edition of this seminar was held in Częstochowa at Philosophy Department of Jan Długosz University on May 15th-16th, 2023, and it was focused, not surprisingly, on the topics of war and peace.
Two AΦR members delivered their papers there. Adrian Habura’s paper was not directly devoted to the reception of ancient philosophy, for he focused on the first edition of Władysław Tatarkiewicz’s (1886-1980) work O szczęściu [Analysis of Happiness] (1947), and took an attempt to analyse the content of the book and search for the topics related to war issues to determine possible origin of each chapter, that is, to divide the chapers into two groups: those composed by Tatarkiewicz before the outbreak of the World War II and those compose after it.
Tomasz Mróz, in turn, presented a largely unknown biography of a 20th century Polish researcher of Florentine neo-Platonism. His presentation had a long title: Bohdan Kieszkowski (1904-1997): a Researcher of Renaissance neo-Platonism and His Career Destroyed by the War (with the materials collected by Professor Czesław Głombik).
Kieszkowski published his works in Polish, Italian and French, and edited Conclusiones by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (Geneve 1973). His opus vitae was the book Platonizm renesansowy [Renaissance Platonism] (Warszawa 1935), subsequently published in Italian as Studi sul platonismo del rinascimento in Italia (Firenze 1936). His studies were discussed mostly in Poland, Italy, France and Spain, but existing sources allowed only to reconstruct his biography to the first years after the World War II.
Materials collected by prof. C. Głombik (1935-2022) from family archives shed some light on Kieszkowski’s life on an exile in France. He was meeting there his former supervisor from the University of Warsaw, W. Tatarkiewicz, who was able to visit Paris several times in the sixties and considered Kieszkowski to be his best student. The letters from Tatarkiewicz to Kieszkowski’s sister, Wanda, reveal the facts concerning the details of a difficult life of a scholar on the exile. To Tatarkiewicz’s disappointed Kieszkowski was considering a turn in his focus from Renaissance studies to military history, yet he was very compassionate about his former student because he was aware of Kieszkowski’s physical and psychological limitations, resulting from his war and after war experiences. His legs, for example, were severely injured by German air raids already in 1939, he narrowly avoided amputation and throughout his life he experienced the negative effects of this until the end of his life. Communication between Tatarkiewicz and Kieszkowski was also affected by the fact that the former’s hearing was impaired and the latter spoke very quietly, as if he was afraid that someone could overhear them. Nevertheless, Kieszkowski’s works on Renaissance Platonism won recognition in the academic world and it is an interesting task to research their reception and impact.
A Presentation on H. Jakubanis in Halle
On April 26, 2023, Mariam Sargsyan gave a talk at the Colloquium of Aleksander-Brückner-Zentrum für Polenstudien & Professur für Osteuropäische Geschichte in the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. The title of her presentation was: From Student at the Russian Imperial University in Kyiv to Respected Professor at the Catholic University in Lublin: The Career of Henryk Jakubanis, 1879–1949.
It was an important experience for M. Sargsyan to present a substantial part of her doctoral research, that is, the biography and major works of H. Jakubanis, to an audience consisting mostly of historians and not philosophers or historians of philosophy, and to receive their feedback and questions. The presentation, in addition to the highlights of Jakubanis’ life and career, included historical facts about Kyiv University, the 1st and 2nd World Wars, and peculiarities of academic life in pre-war Kyiv and post-war Lublin. The philosophical works of H. Jakubanis were also briefly discussed.
Results presented by M. Sargsyan, for example, approaching Jakubanis’ biography from the basically historical point of view, was in larger part an outcome of her NAWA scholarship at MLU Halle and her co-operation with the colleagues from Alexander-Brückner-Zentrum. It was an opportunity for her to take an attempt to compare life paths of Jakubanis with other imperial biographies, although at the moment it is impossible to research Kyiv archives.
The audience at M. Sargsyan’s paper asked questiones on a variety of topics: the academic identity of H. Jakubanis, was he a classics scholar, a philosopher, a historian of philosophy, or an academic teacher. The question of the connection and relationship between H. Jakubanis and his supervisor, Alexei Gilarov (1856-1938), turned out to be interesting as well, for Gilarov had a significant influence on Jakubanis and his methods in historiography of philosophy, on his lecturing at the university, but at a certain moment, their paths diverged. Jakubanis’ relations with Tadeusz Zieliński (1859-1944), who had not spared benevolent gestures to his younger colleague, turned out to be particularly interesting for the audience. Methodological questions appeared as well and they concerned a possible reconstruction of Jakubanis’ academic contacts in a form of a network. What proved to be attractive for the audience was the graphic depiction of Jakubanis’ journeys.
To sum up, M. Sargsyan’s presentation was informative for the public and beneficial for further development of her own research.
Erasmus Teaching Visit in Vilnius University
In April, 18th-22nd, 2023, Tomasz Mróz enjoyed his third Erasmus teaching visit in Faculty of Philosophy, Vilnius University.
Vilnius University is a unique research and teaching institution in Central-Eastern Europe. It has a long and sometimes turbulent Polish-Lithuanian history. Some of the lectures delivered by T. Mróz to philosophy students in Vilnius concerned a part of this history and, naturally, reception of ancient philosophy.
One of the lectures discussing the issues of ancient philosophy reception had Wincenty Lutosławski (1863-1954) as its topic. The focus was on his Vilnius period and his vision of a philosophical development of Plato from idealism to spiritualism. Since Lutosławski considered Polish Romantic Messianism to be founded on spiritualism, consequently he could consider this unique tradition to be rooted in Plato, who was presented by Lutosławski as an ancient philosophical predecessor of Polish 19th century literary and philosophical tendency.
Another lecture in which ancient philosophy reception appeared was devoted to Vitello (ca. 1230-1300?) and his theoretical reflection on the nature of the daemons. Vitello’s demonology stemmed from his research in natural sciences and it employed neo-Platonic and Aristotelian elements, such as a belief in a mathematical structure of the universe and the theory of four elements. Vitello’s philosophical investigations were presented against the background of the 13th century developments in philosophy.
Teaching duties were supplemented with meetings with the Faculty members and discussions on the plans of a future co-operation activities between philosophers of Vilnius University and University of Zielona Góra.
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